A strong brand is something that customers immediately recognize. It should instill a sense of positivity in customers and instill a sense of trust. A strong brand should also be clear, focused, and know exactly the type of customers it is trying to attract. If you feel you need to improve your brand, we have listed 7 critical elements that you should consider below.
1. Uniqueness
All brands should be unique. Your branding needs to stand out from the competition. How can you hope to have a strong brand if your logo design and colors look incredibly similar to your competitors? A lack of uniqueness will simply make your brand fade into the ether and get swallowed in a mire of forgetfulness.
When creating branding, look at your competitors. See what elements they have used and make sure you do something different and unique!
2. Relevance to its target audience
Each business has a target audience. This should have been researched beforehand – during product research and development. The target audience is the type of person that is most likely to buy your product/service or interact with your business.
Your branding must reflect this to be effective. You could take your target audience’s research one step further and research what shapes, colors, and words they associate with most. This research could then be used to improve your brand image.
Creating a relevant brand has everything to do with segmentation in marketing. When a business decides to target a certain group of people, it increases its chances of producing a successful brand.
3. Consistent use
The strongest brands are continually used across all channels. This includes a business website, blogs, social media, and physical marketing like business cards. You must do this. Any type of content relating to your business must utilize your branding.
The same concept applies to personalized video marketing. For example, when you make personalized videos at scale, you want to make sure that your brand assets are consistent. Even if we are talking about user-generated content (UGC).
To illustrate, think about a real estate brand with national or international presence. Often, the corporate brand team gives real estate agents resources and branding ideas to help them improve their online presence. With a video automation platform, the real estate business can automate video creation while keeping all brand assets coherent.
By doing this, you reinforce your brand image. It helps create an association. The more people see your branding, the more they will recognize your company. Whenever you see a Mcdonald’s advert, you can guarantee the M logo is always used, for example.
4. Visually appealing
The best brands are also visually appealing. They are instantly recognizable and cause a positive mental reaction from customers.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the use of bold colors, or over-the-top language, for example. It simply means that your brand elements like logos and web content should look great. It should be professional, aesthetically pleasing, and if possible, eye-catching.
People are drawn to things that are visually appealing, and when a brand utilizes visuals effectively, it becomes more memorable. The human brain is wired to process visuals more quickly and effectively than text, so if a brand wants to be remembered, it needs to use images and other visuals in its marketing.
There are a few ways to make visuals more effective for a brand. The first is to make sure the visuals are on-brand. That means they should be consistent with the look and feel of the rest of the branding, from the logo to the color palette to the fonts. The visuals should also be high quality and accurate; if they’re not, they can actually harm the brand’s reputation.
5. Focused and purpose-driven
The strongest brands are also focused. They have a clear purpose and understand exactly what they are trying to achieve.
Some businesses make the mistake of trying to make their branding appeal to everyone. This simply isn’t possible. It also makes their branding unfocused and without a clear purpose. As a result, it is usually far less effective – even when appealing to a larger audience.
Your brand is the face of your company. It’s what people see and associate with your company. That’s why it’s so important to make sure your brand is aligned with your company’s values. If the two are out of sync, it can cause confusion among customers and employees.
One of the best examples of a company with a strong brand that’s aligned with its values is Apple. Apple has always been about simplicity and elegance, and its brand reflects that. Customers know what to expect from Apple and its products because its brand is so closely aligned with its values.
6. Adaptive to feedback
The best brands also listen to their customers. Feedback is important and it is how your brand evolves and stays relevant with its customer base.
For example, let’s say that you have created a new business logo. You think it looks fantastic. However, you send out a customer survey. The overwhelming response is that the logo is hideous.
To create a strong brand, you would ideally listen to this feedback and make changes! If you simply stuck with the design and ignored your customers, this would be a quick way to lose business and diminish your brand reputation.
7. A clear identity
Lastly, your branding should show that your business has a clear identity. The best brands speak volumes to customers. You can clearly see what the company does, what they stand for, and how they operate simply from the branding.
Creating an effective marketing campaign that resonates with your audience becomes easier when you have a clearly defined brand identity for your company.
This doesn’t mean you need to have a lengthy mission statement or a set of core values, but it does mean you should have a solid idea of what makes your company unique. Once you know what makes you different, you can start to craft marketing content and messages that will speak to your target audience.
As you can see, it is entirely possible to create a strong brand. However, it takes hard work and a thorough thought process.
