How to Start Your Own Brand From Scratch
Have you ever thought about building a brand? When you want to start your own brand, you start looking around for tips that can help you take your first steps. Generally, you may want to opt for digital marketing services from a dedicated agency to entrust professionals with building a strong brand identity.
But if you want to know the basics for starting your brand from the ground up, check these 5 tips that can help you make the first moves.
1. Identify Target Audience
First things first, how can you ever build a brand without knowing who your target audience is? Think of who your potential customer is and dig deeper into the current market. What are the demographics of your target audience (e.g. age, education, income level, etc.)? The way you’re going to speak to them should be unique and different. Think of the following questions:
- Who are they?
- What pain points do they have?
- How can you solve their problems?
- What do they need and want?
- What is their behavior?
You cannot generate leads and convert them into customers if your audience isn’t specific. Identify your target audience by location, demographics, psychographics, and customer problems. Create buyer personas and stick to them when building a brand.
2. Research Your Competitors
The next step is to research your competitors when building a brand. While every company has competitors, conducting thorough competition research aids in the development of a distinct, yet relevant, brand. Even though you're in the same industry, your brand may be able to fill the gaps in the market that your competitors can't. With that in mind, follow these steps:
- Examine the direct and indirect competitors that pop up when you Google your product or service category.
- Search for hashtags on social media platforms to understand which brands are employing them.
- Search for industry-related information on Reddit or social media to find out which brands are being discussed the most.
Choose a few related brands to do competitor analysis after you've discovered them. This gives you a lot of information into what works and what doesn't in terms of branding. Instead of trying to duplicate everything they do, use this research to get ideas for how you want to grow your brand. When researching a competitor, keep the following points in mind:
- Examine your competitors’ websites.
- Examine client feedback to determine the advantages and disadvantages of your competition.
- Dig deeper into their brand assets, such as font, logo, and colors. Are they effective? If yes, why? If no, why?
- Do they have a tone of voice? How is it - friendly, funny, or else?
- Is there a consistent flow of content throughout their digital assets, such as blogs, social media posts, etc.?
- What is their marketing approach for establishing an online presence in the market? Examine their social media presence to learn more about how they interact with others.
- How are they different and what is unique about their brand?
Finally, conduct a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) to learn about their strengths and weaknesses.
3. Identify Your Brand Personality
You need to identify your brand’s personality and consider it as a person, rather than a business. By developing a personality, you will be able to build a connection. Consider your customers and find out what they are attracted to. By defining your brand’s personality, you’ll be able to create a tone of voice. For the first step, you need to just select up to five adjectives that will describe your brand personality. Think of the following:
- What is its age?
- How would it dress?
- How would it talk?
In this way, you’ll understand your brand better. Your customers will be more likely to communicate with your brand as it will seem like communicating with a person.
4. Select Your Brand Name
Your brand name is generally the first thing that attracts customers, so you need to put extra thought into it. The name will decide also your logo, marketing strategy, slogan, etc. The name must be unique and original — you can use acronyms, combine words, choose a word from another language, make up a name, use a word that has no relation to your brand (e.g. Apple), use a metaphor, etc. Keep in mind that the most essential thing is that your name should be memorable, simple, and original.
What about logo and slogans? Your logo is how people recognize your brand, so you need to be very original when creating it. It’s the face of your brand and it should be appealing, memorable, and scalable to various sizes. It must not be confused with other brands and will appear on your website, business cards, social media profile, print ads, etc. Here are extra tips for you to create a great logo:
- Choose colors that will reveal the emotions you want to convey to your customers.
- Choose fonts for the logo, website headings, and body text.
- There are different types of logos which you can consider when building yours — Abstract (Google Chrome), Emblem (Starbucks), Icons (Twitter), Lettermark (IBM), Mascot (KFC), Wordmark (Google), Combination (McDonald’s).
And a catchy slogan that is simple, brief, and meanwhile descriptive will have a big impact on how people get engaged and remember your business. Here are extra tips for creating slogans, choose the one you like the most:
- Use a metaphor.
- Apply a rhyme.
- Give it a literal description.
- Make a claim.
- Show your customer’s behavior and attitude.
- Consider labels.
5. Have a Brand Story
Having a brand story can show people what your brand is, why you do it, and why customers should care and trust you. Share your brand story to build trust and credibility. Inform your customers about something they'll almost certainly be interested in learning about. One of the most effective ways to interact with new and existing customers is through brand storytelling. Effective stories must follow a compelling and persuasive narrative. Convey your brand’s message through the brand’s story.
You also need to have a positioning statement that will tell people with two sentences what you offer, who your audience is, why you do it, what’s the value, how you’re different.
These were some tips for you to start your brand from the ground up. Check our blog, once you want to make your moves. Good luck!
