Branding Best Practices for New Businesses — Quick "How To" Guide for Building Your Brand Strategy by Christopher Haymon
Your brand is both the face and personality of your business, and it's a unique identifier. A powerful brand leaves a lasting impression and creates trust. Businesses with a strong brand often achieve greater success – which is even easier if you follow these brand-building suggestions from blogger Julie Taeko.
What is Branding?
The Branding Journal explains that branding is the process of creating identifiable features to make your business recognizable to the public. Your brand conveys a message that encapsulates the heart and soul of your business, and your branding should be carried throughout all business practices. A business's brand is a promise and expectation for clients.
Establish Your Niche
The first thing you should do for your new business is establish a niche, notes Business News Daily. Locking down your niche will help you narrow down your target audience. To establish your niche, market research is vital. For example, you might be interested in opening up a dog walking service in your city, but is there a need for it, or is the market too saturated? If your niche is competitive, you have to find a unique angle. If you've decided to open a travel company, what aspect of travel will you focus on? Having a niche allows you to focus on specific needs within a broad market.
Identify Your Target Audience
Who is your brand's target market? Everything, from your marketing collateral to logo and website, needs to be geared toward your potential customers. To reach your target market, analyze your customers and study your competitors. For example, if you're selling luxury items to seniors, it's unlikely that a busy logo with rugged fonts will appeal to them; instead, you might use minimal classic design elements.
Create a Marketing Strategy
If your business sells a product, you'll need a thorough marketing strategy when launching a product or service. The process can be arduous, so your best bet is to use a template that includes a marketing strategy, business plan, campaigns, launch dates, and marketing roadmaps. In your marketing strategy, you should identify what's trending for your target group, develop targeted online content, use referral marketing, and use word-of-mouth advertising.
Outsource a Marketing Consultant
If you have the experience, digital and social media can be handled in-house, and so can implementing logos and colors across marketing material. However, campaigns, product launches, design, and brand colors should be handled by a specialist. Consider hiring a freelancer to help market and brand your business. You can hire a specialized marketing consultant through online job platforms, which also have information that allows you to weigh experience, reviews, and cost before hiring.
Branding for New Businesses
It's important to have a clear, detailed brand strategy before launching your business. Colors, the logo, website architecture, and social media platforms should be synchronized. And don’t forget to search for a freelance marketing consultant for those tasks that are beyond your skill set and to save you time. Remember, every extra minute you invest now will save you hours down the road.
Guest Author Series by Christopher Haymon
