Having a brand is hard work in itself, but differentiating from your competitors in a saturated market is even more difficult. Is essential to help you stand out in your industry and create the foundation to build the rest of your business around it with your customers at the forefront of your design and marketing strategy.
As a small business owner, it can be difficult to know where to start the process of building a brand. Branding can be anything you want as long as it says a purpose if it meets your customer’s needs and resonates with your customers, then it is working. there are even some businesses out there that skip overbranding completely and go straight into marketing as it has quicker results through paid social and paid ads through Google.
If you are struggling to brand yourself, there are options out there. The first option is to research online and find articles like this. The other option, you could hire a branding agency Manchester based or Leeds for some of the best talents in the UK.
There is another option that won’t cost you much, just your own time and some effort on your behalf. In this article, we will go through some of the best tips for defining your brand without a large budget. This is exactly what people need to help when costs go up and more businesses are trying to cut back.
Start A Blog
One of the best ways to define your brand is to create a blog regarding the industry or even niche that you are in. To be honest, the blogs that work the best are extremely niche as this brings a more qualified user to the site. It’s also one of the best ways to market yourself for free, so content marketing is essential for your business to get exposure and reach your audience. You never just want to be a place where people make a transaction and then get on with the rest of your day, instead, you want to be the place to go for advice or news on your industry niche.
The more traffic you get to your site, the better the chance of people making a transaction or making an inquiry, so create as much useful and relevant content as possible. Once you have a loyal following, you will find that you will be able to turn your followers into customers by leading them to your product or services. If you struggle to create content, you could accept guest posts so you have people offering to create them for you.
Define Your Brand Identity
Your brand identity is not only how you present your business to your audience but also how you want them to perceive you. When you start creating your brand, think of it like a person. Your brand will have a personality, values and brand missions. Your brand’s personality should influence your brand’s appearance too, if your brand personality is modern and fun this should be reflected in everything your customer sees from the packaging down to your label fonts.
Prior to establishing your brand identity, you will have to research your target market in some depth. Think about who your target market is by picturing your ideal customer, think about their interests by imagining their life, where they work, what they do in their spare time and what media they might use. Doing this exercise combined with in-depth research should get you a good level of knowledge on your target market, but you should also think about how people perceive the brand additionally. Ask your customers to answer a survey on your brand, to find out what they like or dislike about your brand. If you haven’t launched your brand, test it out with friends and family first, this will help you from making any major mistakes before launching. You don’t want to launch your brand to find out months later that your brand appeals to a different market.
You should also think about what your competitors are doing. It’s important to stand out from the crowd, but you should still do your research. Try looking at reviews of your competitors, see what people like about their service, see if there’s anything they are doing badly and try and display that quality in your brand. You should also look at your competitor’s social media, note which of their social media posts are doing well, note their language, and image choices and see how their customers respond. This is also useful for deciding your social media strategies and possible collaborations, you shouldn’t copy what worked well for them, but this can influence your choices.
Define your brand story
When defining your brand identity, you have to first outline its story. It’s more than just how your business started and where it is now. You should think about why the brand, why the brand needed to exist. You should also state the brand’s values, and what the brand has set out to do. This will help customers relate to the brand and will influence people when it comes to choosing between you and your competitors.
Think about these questions to build your brand story:
- What is the reason you made your brand?
- What does your brand aim to solve with its product or service?
- Why does my brand care about this issue?
- What action have you taken so far to help solve this problem?
- What is the future goal you working toward for your brand’s solution?
Put your answers together into a story of where your brand came from and where it plans to go. You can draft it in a Google Doc and save it as a PDF when you need to share it externally.
Use your answers to put together your story, it will change as your band grows and develops. You can save your brand story in a Google Doc, then it is easy to share it externally as a PFD. You should also have a page dedicated to your brand’s story on your website, so people who are interested in your brand can find something they resonate with.
In conclusion, there are many ways to define your brand without a large budget. Building a blog is not only a good way to connect with your customers with topical news, trends and information, but it also helps build domain authority for your website, which should then lead to more people finding your brand or service. It is also important to have a clear brand identity that stands out from your competitors but portrays your brand in a way that is recognisable to customers, and resonates with them. Additionally is it also important to know your target audience, for your brand to communicate with them effectively. To know that your efforts in defining your brand are not going to waste, you need to know how your brand is perceived, what to highlight and also areas to improve on. Finally, it is important to have a strong brand story, this could be the difference why a customer might go with you over a competitor, so you should spend some time on this to communicate your brand in the best possible light to attract the target market you set out to connect with.
