How Branding Can Improve Your Business

Branding is a complex topic that spans multiple areas of expertise, including business management, marketing, design, and psychology. It’s important to take the time to understand branding thoroughly so that you can leverage it to improve your business.

병원마케팅

Branding creates an identity for your business that makes it memorable to consumers. It also helps employees feel proud to work for your business, which can lead to increased morale and productivity.

1. Create a Vision

Brand vision is the bigger picture that your business wants to achieve. This can be based on your product, the world or anything else that is important to your company.

It is important that your brand vision is aligned with your company’s mission and core values. This will create a stronger connection with your customers and allow them to trust your brand. It can also help you develop a strong marketing strategy and define the future of your business.

2. Create a Mission

Your brand mission describes how you put your vision into action. It defines who you serve, your core values and what impact your work will have in the world.

Start by free writing about why you started your business, the problem you’re solving and how you’re bringing value to your target audience. This will help you to formulate a clear and concise brand mission statement.

Brand mission shouldn’t be confused with other branding elements, such as brand vision and brand voice. They are distinctly different. Brand voice is the combination of logos, colors, and key messaging that creates your brand identity.

3. Create a Value System

Your values are the things you stand for as a business. They convey your desired ethics and emotions to customers through a catch phrase, slogan or other form of marketing. It’s important to create a value system that makes sense for your business and that you can stick with for the long haul. There are typically three major value systems: consequentialism, virtue and duty. They differ in how each looks at good and bad choices and what sorts of outcomes are considered to be ethically sound.

4. Create a Unique Identity

Brand identity is how your business leaves a mark on the world. It includes logos, color palettes, fonts, imagery and more. It’s the face of your business, and it should leave a memorable impression on customers.

Creating your unique identity starts with knowing who your ideal customers are. This allows you to create a voice and style that will connect with them. For example, Warby Parker has a cool, minimalist brand that extends from its website to its brick-and-mortar stores. Their unique identity helps them stand out from the competition.

5. Create a Consistent Experience

When branding is consistent, it fosters deeper connections with audiences and delivers results. Even the most valuable global brands recognize that brand consistency builds lasting customer relationships and increases recognition.

To maintain consistency, your company should have clear standards for its marketing and sales teams to adhere to. These standards should include key message and tone, visual components and core values. Lucidpress research shows that brands that get this right see an average revenue increase of 23%. Customers are more likely to buy from a brand that they know, trust and like.

6. Create a Visual Identity

Branding isn’t just about words—your visual identity is also incredibly important. A visual identity is what helps potential customers recognize your brand and connect with it on an emotional level.

Your visual identity can include anything that can be seen, including your logo, color palette, fonts, and iconography. It’s best to create a visual style guide that will help you maintain consistency. The guide should also reflect your brand personality, tone of voice, and value system.

7. Create a Tone of Voice

For a business, brand tone is how you communicate with your customers. It can be formal or casual, serious or witty, and it should always reflect your brand personality and values.

For example, messaging app Slack uses a friendly and approachable tone that’s also professional and respectful. While environmental nonprofit Greenpeace maintains a more authoritative and matter-of-fact tone in its communications.

When you’ve developed your brand voice, document it and share it with anyone who writes content for your business. This ensures consistency and creates a more recognizable brand.

8. Create a Voice for Your Brand

With so many media channels out there, creating a voice that can resonate across platforms can be challenging. Members of Forbes Agency Council discuss how to create a strong and consistent tone of voice that will stand out from the crowd.

Start by thinking about your audience and marketing personas. List personality traits, adjectives, and common vocabulary that you want to include in your brand voice.

Whether it’s supportive and reassuring or witty and humorous, your brand voice should be authentic and recognizable. Use it in every piece of content that you produce, including blog posts, social media updates, and even email communications.

9. Create a Logo

Your logo is the most important visual element of your branding. It will appear on your website, social media business pages and in print materials like business cards and packaging.

Make sure your logo is a good fit for the medium in which it will be used. For example, it should look great blown up for a billboard but still be legible when reduced to the size of your business card. You may also need to create a colorless version of your logo for use on dark backgrounds.

10. Create a Color Palette

A color palette can help you create a distinct brand identity. It’s important to use a color scheme that reflects your mission and values.

Complementary colors are opposite each other on the color wheel and can help your brand stand out (think 7 Up). Analogous colors are next to each other on the wheel and can be used to create a harmonious palette (e.g. Google).

Choosing a unique color palette doesn’t have to be difficult. All you need is a basic understanding of color psychology and these 4 helpful steps.