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The 3 Secrets Of Good Branding

Good branding is an important part of any business. It’s crucial that you have branding that results in brand loyalty and that is unique to your company. However, having good branding is often easier said than done.

Although a strong logo and memorable company name plays a crucial part in good branding, they aren’t the only components of building this. Good branding has many elements, with a solid company name and striking logo only being two minor elements. While it’s important to put forth adequate time developing these elements, your brand is much more than this. 

Your brand is, in total, the entire experience that your customers take away from your company. Good branding manages to portray what your company does, the offerings and benefits you provide, and how your company goes about providing these offerings – all the while helping to build trust and brand loyalty with consumers.  While many may think that building a strong brand is just a few designs and/or social media shares, building a strong brand actually involves every aspect of your company. 

That means that every phone call, image share, and website update are all part of your brand. When so many parts of your business make up your brand, it’s important to not leave any aspect ignored. So now the question remains, how do you ensure you have good branding? And how can you ensure that you’ll build relationships with clients to have a brand that stands out? Although we can’t teach you every tip on how you can build a successful brand, we can cover a few of the top pointers that will help you on your journey! 

Keep reading below to find out three top helpful tips which detail how you can build a top brand that’s not only unique but that customers will trust!

The 3 Secrets Of Good Branding

1. Be Consistent 

When it comes to brand consistency, we are referring to how well an organization delivers their same core values, mission, promise, and identity across a variety of channels. No matter what marketing channel a business utilizes, the brand should be easily recognizable. 

As you think about how to implement brand consistency for your business consider the following tips. 

  • Ensure that your branding guidelines are easily accessible throughout your organization. This includes not only the visual brand guidelines, but also the narrative ones as well. When you take the time to do this, you are encouraging all members of your organization to externally represent your business in the same unified front. 
  • It’s inevitable that your brand will need to go through a change, or rebranding, at some point, so prepare for this before rolling out a new brand strategy. Ensure that all your new brand guidelines are outlined in detail and communicate where these new guidelines live. As you house these guidelines, also ensure they are in a centralized location that is easily accessible to everyone. 
  • Educate your internal team on brand guidelines. Encourage your team to learn your brand values, messaging, and story behind your brand so they can best serve your business as brand ambassadors. When your entire internal team does this, everyone can carry over the same brand guidelines across their everyday work. 

The number one mistake that we see small businesses make is constantly modifying their branding based on their audience and what they see other companies doing. A lot of companies will even change their tone and messaging depending on the platform, meaning that a company’s Facebook page may look drastically different than their other social media platforms. 

This is wrong for a variety of reasons, starting with that if you have inconsistent branding, you’ll have an inconsistent customer base. Your brand must be consistent across the entire board, including social media and your website. All your branding must line up with your company and logo to be successful. Brand consistency means that you not only have to have a plan set in place, but you must have every detail planned out. Your team needs to be on the same page with every aspect of branding so that your brand can be received through every channel effectively. 

2. Invest In A Good Name and A Good Logo 

 

Although they may not be the most important part of a company, a good name and logo are essential to a brand. Without these, you don’t have a strong foundation and base to build a solid brand from. 

There are many reasons why investing in a strong name and professional logo can help your overall brand which includes:

  • Building a memorable first impression – A first impression is a lasting one. Your logo and name are what customers often see first, so this is the first impression they get, and you want it to be a lasting, positive one. Customers often decide on a business within the first seconds they encounter a brand, so you want to invest in a name and logo that hooks them and encourages them to return to your business again. 
  • Promoting longevity – Your name is an aspect of your business that will stick with you forever and is what customers will always associate you with. When you invest in a strong name and great logo, this will last with you for many years. 
  • Building trust – It’s universally known within the marketing industry that a professional logo design is a component of a brand’s identity that almost immediately produces trust to its clients. A strong logo and name help to attract the type of clients you aim to reach and will result in more sales, site traffic, positive reviews, and partnerships. 
  • Creating an effective, universal brand – A good name and logo is used across an entire marketing strategy. That means that this shows up on websites, graphics, promotional materials, and more. Investing in this helps your brand overall and creates an easy way for you to create and foster consistency. 

One of the biggest struggles of startups and small businesses is choosing a name. After all, there’s a lot of pressure put into a company name. A company name will stick with you forever and it’s what will leave impressions on customers for years to come. Fortunately for you, there’s no right and wrong when it comes to naming your company. We’ve seen top, reputable brands use real words, misspelled words, long names, and short names. 

The most important thing to remember is that you want a name that is unique and signature to your company. You want customers to be able to recognize your company by the name or logo alone. It’s okay to gather inspiration from other companies, but keep in mind that you want a logo and name that belong solely to your business and brand.  

3. Focus On Community 

Companies are built by customers. Without a community that respects and trusts your company, you have nothing. Build relationships with customers and work on building a community that will have people begging to be a part of it. Doing this starts with sharing on social media, encouraging customer service, and ensuring that your branding is all-inclusive. 

The benefits of focusing on community building are lasting. If you want to learn more about these benefits, we’ve listed them out for you below. 

  • Focusing on this is profitable when done correctly. It’s more cost-effective to offer livestream AMA sessions, webinars, and customer service practices than it is to create a once-a-year conference that customers need to travel to. Regular activity helps to build community and it gives customers more opportunity to connect with your company one-on-one, building loyalty. 
  • Speaking of loyalty, community building and loyalty are synchronous. Focusing on these intimate conversations helps customers feel more connected to your company and mission, making them feel valued as a consumer. 
  • Your company will grow because of its community. Friends and family ask their networks for recommendations, rather than relying on advertising or their own search. Word-of-mouth advertising is what the result of a strong community is and that is one of the most powerful marketing tools a company can have. 
  • Community management helps promote strong customer service. Having more regular interactions with customers allows you to be the first one to hear about an issue that you can troubleshoot. Without this, many customers will turn to negatively reviewing your company to get their problems sorted out. 

It’s important that you have relationships with all customers from the second that they first find your company until they purchase from you. If people see that a company has a strong community that trusts and respects them, they’ll be more apt to buy from that company. Ask customers for advice and include them in big decisions for your company because it’ll make them feel included and build trust. With a loyal customer base, what more could a company want?