Top Ways to Brand Your Business

Building brand awareness is no longer only about flashy ads that may or may not pique someone’s interest. In today’s marketing landscape, brand awareness takes creativity, determination, and most importantly, a solid strategy that pushes customers through the funnel. So, as a business owner, you might think that garnering attention only requires paying more money on ads that you are currently running. While this tactic might work initially, it may eventually stop working. To continually grow and boost brand awareness, you must think like a consumer. You also need to understand the psychology behind marketing and how it influences your target audience. But before you can get to that point, you need to focus on branding. In this guide, we’ll dive into some of the best ways to brand your business.

What is Your Brand?

If you had to sum up business in one sentence, what would it be? Although it sounds relatively easy to do, summarizing what your company stands for isn’t always easy. In a nutshell, your brand is the story your business tells, or wants to tell, across all consumer touch points. From your website’s layout to the verbiage you use, it’s all part of your branding strategy.

Broaden Your Education

Even if you already worked in marketing, there is always something new to learn. In fact, digital media trends come and go in a blink of an eye, so you need to stay in the know. There are plenty of free resources online that provide up-to-date information to help you succeed.

Do Your Research

Before you flesh out style guides, you need to do your research. See what your competition is doing. Identify whether their target audience interacts with them and if there is an ongoing engagement. Regardless of what niche your business caters to, audience engagement is a very important aspect. Interacting with your target audience is key to building a loyal consumer base. It shows you care about their wants and needs. You can interact with your audience through a variety of methods including:

• Create multiple accounts on various social media platforms
• Respond to as many comments and questions as you can
• Publish meaningful and valuable content
• Host polls, surveys and questionnaires on a regular basis

Hosting surveys and polls is a great way to collect data from your audience. It can also provide valuable insight into who makes up the norm of your clientele. Furthermore, most consumers want to be a part of a company that’s personable, and not just out for a profit. Whenever a company is prioritizing money over its customers, it’ll become evident real fast. Though making a profit is the goal of pretty much every business, you don’t want to come off as greedy. Engaging with your audience is a fantastic way to show you’re in it for them and not just yourself. This alone can put you way ahead of your competition.

Hire an Expert

Even with the best intentions, sometimes it’s not easy to align your branding efforts with your goals. If that’s the case, you can always enlist the help of an expert. Marketing and branding experts work with you to map out your message across all channels. If necessary, you can look to small business loans to cover the cost of getting your branding on point. If you’re just starting out, a loan can also be used to create your website, secure a physical location, or even host pop-ups to build awareness.

Spend Time Thinking of a Unique Logo

Namebrand companies all have their own creative logos they use to give themselves an identity. Whenever you look on the back of a phone and see that apple icon, you’ll know it’s from the Apple company. Creating a logo can take some time, however, as you need it to be unique and have it coincide with your brand. A great way to make this process easier is to assess the niche of your company. If your business is about delivering food and supplies for pets, for example, your logo can be something such as a silhouette of a dog chasing a frisbee. This logo is not only identifiable, it also conveys the nature of the business, which in this case is fast delivery services.

Stay True to Yourself

You know how your business plan has the mission statement and goals of the company? It’s in your best interest to always stay true to them. It can help convey your authenticity to your target audience. If you stray from your original marketing message, people will notice and might lose faith in you.