Small Business Brief

Entrepreneurship

The Ultimate Entrepreneur’s Guide on How to Start a Brand


Having an amazing brand is important to the success of your small business, but how do you create one? Click here for the ultimate guide on how to start a brand for your business.


Having an entrepreneurial spirit, you’ve decided to take the chance and delve into creating a small business. You’ve outlined the kinds of products and services you want to offer customers but haven’t gone much further than that.

Have you thought about the kind of brand you want to build? If you’re thinking you can just slap together colors and source a random image off of the internet for a logo and call it a brand–you have another thing coming.

A brand is so much more than colors and a logo. It’s a promise to customers on what you can deliver to them. Not only is it a guide for your business purposes but a good brand can create loyal customers.

Curious on how to start a brand? Look no further as we have you covered on this topic. We’ll go over more than just colors and logo design.

Let’s get into it!

Determine Your Target Audience

What kind of people are your marketing efforts going towards? Is it busy, single moms? How about millennials that are on a tight budget?

The more specific you can get, the better. And unfortunately, you can’t be everything to everyone. If you spend your time trying to appeal to a wide audience, that’s wasted time you can’t get back.

Going into detail about being specific, think of the lifestyles you think your audience will have.

For example, a millennial on a tight budget might be frugal. They don’t want to spend money on something expensive. However, that doesn’t mean they won’t spend money on products that are of great value.

With that said, you can then convert that millennial who’s frugal onto your products because you offer something of value and that’s well-made. It’s all about how you market your products as well.

Get into the mind of your consumers by researching what they do, how they behave (especially online) and what makes them buy. The more narrow you can go with your target audience, the more of a chance you’ll have of snagging paying customers.

Create a Mission Statement

Once you’ve found your target audience, you can focus on crafting a mission statement. A mission statement defines what your business is passionate about. It states the value you will provide to customers in order to start building trust with them.

If you’re confused on how to put your business’ values and passions into words, let’s look at an example. We all know the athletic shoe brand, Nike, along with their famous tagline: Just Do It.

But their mission statement is even better than their tagline. It’s: “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” But then they follow up with stating that “if you have a body, you are an athlete.”

With a statement like that, they’re offering inspiration, innovation, and an inclusive brand. They’re not just for hardcore athletes who make a living playing sports but anyone who’s active or that wants an active lifestyle.

Use Nike’s brand as inspiration when you create your own mission statement. Keep it simple and to the point.

And remember to always keep your target audience in mind. Don’t try to imitate Nike by appealing to almost everyone. With time, you too may be able to widen your audience like them.

Define Your Brand’s Benefits and Key Qualities

Start a new business is scary. It can easily get overwhelming once the excitement of this new adventure wears off. Unfortunately, bigger brands with bigger budgets and more resources will always be there.

But before you get defeated, this is where defining your brand’s benefits and key qualities come into play. This is what will set your business apart from the competition.

What makes your brand different? Is it because you use plant-based materials? Or that you employ women living in homeless shelters?

Think of what you offer that no else does. If you’re having trouble figuring that out then turn your focus onto how your products or services will improve the lives of your customers.

Defining these parts of your brand will give customers more of a reason to choose your business over others in the area. Since we’ve given examples with every category so far, let’s continue on with another one.

This time, we’ll use Apply. The benefit of going with Apple is how easy their products are to use. You don’t need to spend hours configuring the software to start enjoying your new smartphone.

For one of their qualities, it’s clean and sleek design. Nothing is complicated about the interface of their software. Even the design of the phones doesn’t include a lot of buttons.

Let Apple’s benefits and qualities serve as inspiration for what you should focus on when defining your own brand’s benefits and qualities.

Get Visual

Now comes the fun part of building a brand–the visuals. Every brand in the world has at least one color and a great logo that they’re identified with. But creating a memorable and exciting brand requires serious execution.

Not nailing the build of a great brand can be the downfall of your business as a whole. You’ll either be forgotten or not noticed in the first place.

With all that being said, let’s go over the much-needed elements for a strong brand.

Logo

Think of your logo like the face of your business. This is what’ll greet customers and what’ll be associated with people when they think of your brand.

You can have a picture as your logo or use the name of your business. Either way, make it exciting and memorable.

Color Palette

The colors you use to define your brand should evoke emotion in customers. When they see your brand, do you want them to feel happy? How about empowered?

Use color to assist your brand with what you want it to represent.

Fonts

Fonts are the same as picking a color palette. Choose ones that’ll not only complement each other but help to define your brand.

If all these design aspects make your head spin, consider enlisting the help of a creative service company like Studio Misfits. You can collaborate with them to design the brand you’ve always imagined. It’ll not only save time but you’ll be left with a brand that’ll last for years.

Develop Your Brand Voice

How you communicate with customers and other industry professionals is essential. Your business is a separate entity and you should treat it as so. You don’t want to email customers using shorten words and lingo as you might when texting friends.

Your brand voice could be professional, conversational, informative, even technical. Whatever you choose yours to be, this is how you’ll connect with customers from now on.

But don’t think you’ll only use it when typing emails. It’s best to use your brand’s voice when writing blog articles, social media posts, and product descriptions along with emails.

While it may seem asinine to create a voice for your brand, there’s one big benefit to it. It ensures consistency.

The same goes for when you need to handle customer complaints. Remain professional and answer back to emails or online reviews using your brand voice. Also remember not to add fuel to the fire–use your voice for good, not to egg on a fight.

Stay Consistent

When it comes to a brand, consistency is the name of the game. Minor tweaks here and there are okay but don’t go overboard.

It’s important to not make a lot of changes as that can alter your customer’s trust within the brand. It can make you seem unauthentic.

That’s why it’s vital to create a brand that’ll stand the test of time but also one that you’ll be happy with. You also want to take your time developing your brand. Slapping random colors and a picture together is a sure-fire way to start off on the wrong foot with customers.

But there’s also a fine line between staying timeless and resisting change. It’s important to understand when you should take the steps to stay relevant and not have your brand fall by the wayside.

Be Your Own Brand Ambassador

Sure, you can hire people to promote your brand but the first person to always promote your brand should be you. You know your business better than everyone so you better get started on spreading the word!

That’s why building a strong brand is so important. It’s so you get to know your business better–inside and out.

Introduce your company to potential customers and employees. Give them a brand that they’ll be proud to shop at and work at.

How to Start a Brand 101

We hope that the questions you had when it comes to how to start a brand are answered. Remember to build a brand that’s not only strong but will remain consistent.

Looking for more business advice? Check out our small business category today!



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