Building a brand requires a lot of work. It doesn’t happen overnight. We’re going to skim over 6 key components of building a brand in this article, but if you’ve already built your brand, then don’t fear – we’re also looking at growing your brand.
Identify your audience
How many times have you thought to yourself or said to a friend, “Why has nobody ever invented X?”. The answer is that somebody probably has, but either there wasn’t a big enough audience or they didn’t manage to identify and reach that audience effectively.
Before you begin building a brand, you need to be able to form a clear consumer demographic for that brand. That’s where the next step comes in…
Research, research, research
Researching your competitors is critical to building a brand successfully. But the research begins before that in the audience identification stage. Who are you trying to appeal to? Are they interested? Is there a brand already dominating the market that customers are loyal to? You need answers to all these questions.
Researching your competitors allows you to find your niche; creating a brand identity that is different enough from existing competitors, while also understanding what makes those competitors successful. Knowledge is power.
Define your position
Building a brand in a marketplace with no room for you isn’t a profitable business venture. You need a mission statement and a purpose in that market that provides a clear-cut vision of what you’re trying to achieve with your brand and how you’re going to make it happen.
This involves defining your market position. Ask yourself:
- What problem does my brand solve for consumers?
- Why should they get that solution from me instead of a competitor?
The mission statement is an internal tool, but it should be reflected in your brand’s customer-facing proposition.
Build your persona
This is where your brand comes into its own. As we’ve explored before, this is the personality. Imagine building your brand like Frankenstein building his monster: taking parts from here, there and everywhere to form a carefully-crafted creation. What you’re going to do is give your creation a personality; the persona that you want.
Your persona should take the lead from your mission statement, and it’s critical that you get this right before moving to the next stage (see how it’s all coming together?). Before all eyes are on you – before you take the stage and stand in the spotlight – you need to know that what consumers are seeing is what you want them to see in your brand. That’s marketing.
Grab the microphone!
If a tree falls and nobody hears it, are you really a brand?
Brand awareness means everything to you. Frankly, people need to know your brand exists and, when they become aware of your brand, they need to find it appealing. That’s why you need to build your brand persona before putting out your marketing content.
Whether you’re a small business posting about the grand opening of your cafe in the village Facebook group or a data analysis company with designs on world domination, follow the key stages of building a brand, lock-in your persona and then start shouting about it with your marketing content. Consumers need to know you’re there!
Contact KAYBE
Whether you’re building a brand from the ground up or you’re looking to grow and expand your existing brand, KAYBE’s team of experts can help you. This article only skips across the surface of the infinitely-complex process of building a brand, so don’t hesitate to lean on experienced experts to get it right.
We’re happy to help! Simply get in touch with us.
