Are people really aware of your brand? Can they describe or recognize your brand by just seeing your logo or brand elements? To answer this it is important to know the complete aspect and process of branding.
Your brand guidelines and tone can be Professional, Practical or quirky but the message should be very clear to your prospects. You should follow brand guidelines and the processes to shape your brand. It is just not a daily task but it is a scrupulous process to create your brand identity by taking careful steps one at a time. Let us first understand the reason and then the steps to optimize the branding process.
Branding and Business Success
It is a question most of the clients ask me and I just give a smiling look at them. The first step I feel is to respond to such people by reminding them of the brands that have replaced their name against the category like BISLERI for packaged drinking water, COLGATE for toothpaste, etc. I am sure it is difficult to claim the role and influence of branding on the success of a business but this fact cannot be ruled out too.
Branding itself cannot ensure product sales in a consumer buying journey however it can change the perception of your brand and be an influencer to a consumer. It is time to dig more into branding process and understand the ways branding agencies can help in:
Process of Branding
The process of branding is multiple careful steps that you follow in order to create awareness of your brand among the people with the intention to build a reputation. Branding exercise needs to be followed by every new brand however it can be very well used for rebranding purposes too. While creating your brand strategy it is important to understand all the aspects like a product, consumer, taste, brand materials, location, etc.
Your brand guidelines can be very well designed with elements like brand color palette, font type, font size, typography, icons, etc. It should be well recognizable on all the platforms. Upon carefully using these elements your brand should convey a clear message and should create an impact on your consumer mindset.
An agency like ours can have a detailed discussion about your Goal, Objective, Vision, Tone, Consumer, Market, and other elements before we start shaping your brand. We help you get the answers to these questions with the help of detailed market research.
Steps for the process of branding
The process of branding can be understood with a detailed study of each step:
1. Build Brand Guidelines and Strategy
This is the first and foremost step in the entire process. It is important to know your stand as a brand and recognize its potential too. You should define the purpose of your existence and then completely focus on the core value of your brand or business. You should be ready for tough questions like the purpose of business, competitive advantage of the product, expected market share, etc. These guidelines should have everything documented clearly as it will be for an internal and external team to use throughout your business.
Define your business and objectives
Define your target audience
Mention your product or services
Comparison with a competitor on all parameters
Brand strategy is key while drafting your business strategy which can include aspects of brand loyalty.
2. Perform Market Research
Once the brand guideline is defined it is important to know the market for such a brand. You should be well aware of your market before creating a business and marketing strategy. You should understand your competitor's business, product, pricing strategy and marketing strategy before you plan for your brand. A thorough study and analysis of these aspects will surely help in outperforming the competitors in the business. It can also lead to a bit of easy entry into the new market.
You should put yourself in the buyer's position to think about his need. You need to dig more to study the buyer persona and trends in the past. You can also check the social platforms performing well for your products and delivering good results. You should analyze and study:
What do they need?
Where do they buy?
How much are they willing to pay?
Will they buy online or Offline?
Are they looking for cheap products or branded ones?
This step is also about positioning and differentiating the brand from others. You need to carefully analyze the one point where your competitor is failing and try to capitalize on the same. Create a niche for your brand. So research plays an important role in your complete branding and business strategy.
3. Create a Brand Guide and Identity
The main objective of any brand is to create a brand that is unique and easily recognizable by its consumers. Your brand should be interactive enough that consumers should be attracted to it. The most important part of your brand identity is the brand LOGO and that is the first step.
You should have a style guide for your brand. You need to work carefully on finalizing your Brand Logo, Brand Name, Colour Palette, Font Style, Font Type, Font sizes, Brand Tonality, etc. Brand Names should have meaning and impact on the mind of people for a longer period of time like TESLA for an electric car. Font variations will help in settling its use while writing content for various brand materials like websites, flyers, social media, etc by the agency. The agency will have strict guidelines to use brand elements as per brand standards.
This will help in achieving consistency in the brand designs irrespective of the number of agencies handling different campaigns for your brand. The agency will carefully follow all the brand guidelines while creating any brand assets. You can keep on updating these guidelines if there is any change as per your brand image by the management.
4. Brand Awareness Campaign
Branding is most important and so is the careful campaign design for the same. It is very difficult to achieve the objectives of the campaign especially when it cannot be measured in numbers so easily. You need to work on a comprehensive brand strategy for brand awareness in the market.
Your brand guidelines should appear consistent in all the creatives and brand assets so that people can easily relate to them. The awareness campaign should have a clear message for your consumers. You can work on the brand awareness campaign calendar to achieve your brand goals and keep constant tracking. You should consider the change request while the complete process of branding activities without hurting the main objective.
Branding is a continuous process
It is a very interesting and great task to build something from the scratch. It is a very careful step that needs to be taken when it comes to branding or brand-building activity for any brand. Active participation in the brand-building activity will help you utilize your analytical skills and put your complete experience. The fact is these activities can never be put on hold it is continuous in nature. As a brand sometimes you need to tweak or have a complete revamp of your brand identity like HOUSING.COM, a property portal based in Mumbai did a few years back and spent a huge amount of money on rebranding their logo.
Keep working on your brand-building activity and keep achieving your goals in the business.
To know more about branding building and brand strategy, connect us at sagar@syllotech.com