What Makes Good Branding?

Branding is an incredibly complex component of your business and is a package that is not just to do with how your business looks but highlights a sense of consistency across how you represent yourself, from the logo to the copy, but it also gives your business a sense of credibility, which will encourage customer loyalty through recognition. A great brand is a great identity, and in order to establish this, you need to gain insight into what makes good branding. Here are some essential factors of an amazing brand strategy.

Aim to Your Target Audience

The success of your brand is only possible because of the people supporting it. Identifying who your potential customers are and where they are will inform your brand strategy. It's critical that you study your potential customer first, because this will help you anticipate their moves before they do, so when they are looking for a solution to their problems, you will be there.

Creating a Cohesive Visual Language

The branding package is down to a number of components, like the logo, the fonts, the colours, and the copy. All these need to work together to create a visual language that appeals to your customer and makes them instantly trust your brand. For example, an excellent logo needs to cover a number of fundamental aspects, such as being easy to describe, functional in a number of sizes, and recognisable, but it also needs to be effective in any colour.

Spending time on a logo that communicates your brand through the typeface or the colours will help you put across that right impression the first time. When it comes to colouring, it's important to understand what emotions you can elicit from the customer, purely based on your colour choice. For example, the colour red is going to evoke a more active response. Choosing your colours carefully will ensure you create a more effective representation of your business that will get the right response. When you incorporate this into your promotional materials and your business website, you start to evoke a sense of trust in your business.

A very good example would be the tools you use within your website. A live chat tool for website use is a very simple thing but can be customised to blend in with your branding, which makes for a better user experience for your customer, and it subconsciously gives them that notion of trust in your business. It's always about the subtleties in our visual language, which we cannot underestimate.

Thinking Differently

The toughest thing about thinking differently is that almost every permutation has been thought of. When it comes to your branding, it's about not being “different for different’s sake,” but about assessing every single angle and ensuring your out-of-the-box methodologies are different enough to keep your product and your brand unique.

In order to do this, we cannot opt for obtuse promotional tactics because while this may stand out, it's unlikely they will stand out to our desired customers. What is the best way to do things differently? Make the product stand out. If you can make the product stand out, this will inform any marketing strategy, ensuring that you are being different, while also being true.

The most important thing to consider in your branding is simplicity. When we opt for “different,” we have to dampen down the desire to be complex, because this switches people off. Be different, but recognise that you must come to this conclusion organically.

Understand Your Mission

Your modus operandi will inform how you develop a brand and promotional strategy that truly serves your products. To come to this conclusion, you've got to determine what the product is for. For example, Nike wants people to get running and “Just Do It,” and BMW wants people to have the drive of their life in “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” But in order to come to these taglines or slogans, you've got to have a solid mission that contributes to the needs of society. When you define your company's objectives and you direct your actions towards achieving those goals, this will inform the brand’s mission and deliver on its promise.

The mission you have will also inform your story. Your brand may not have been around long enough to have a history, but you can create a story that will tap into the human desire for a solution. As humans, we all feel an affinity with stories, and this will make your brand appear more human. This is why many companies are now opting for, in addition to a logo, a face for their company, providing the human counterpart can help to elicit empathy, sympathy, and a sense of connectedness that we don't necessarily get with a logo. This is why, when you are crafting your mission statement, you've got to look at what the natural stories are in your service and products, based on your mission.

Delivering a Promise

Customers will expect a promise made by you through your advertising, and this will stimulate engagement with the brand. Additionally, it's not just about the promotional package, but the experiences a customer will get through the product or service you offer.

When you are interacting with a customer, you are always showcasing your brand. If a customer is on your website, they are interacting with your brand. When they want more information through your customer service agents, this is the perfect opportunity to position your brand and build trust with them. A live chat tool for website use is an amazing way to interact with a customer, not just visually, but in terms of how the customer service agent communicates.

If a customer feels that your business is more human and on their level, naturally, they will be more inclined to buy from them and not a competitor.

Branding goes beyond a logo; it's a reflection of the entire company, from imagery to tone of voice, the product, and how we interact with a customer.