The brand of a business is one of the most important (yet most underrated) aspects of success. If the brand is recognizable and lovable, your clients will come back time and time again. Think about some of the most well-known companies. Walmart, for example, is the largest corporation in the entire world. What is its logo? Their logo is a small burst of sun rays. What this logo tells their target audience is that Walmart is a happy place to go shop. It’s a ray of sunshine. Now, think about Target’s logo. It’s literally a target. This tells the audience the same thing that an “x” on a map tells you. You can go to Target to find the things that you’re looking for. Both of these examples have simple designs for their logos and their brands, yet they have built empires that exist all over the world. For your business, you need to build your brand to be simple, recognizable, and competitive.
To help you with that process, here are the basics that you need to know to build your brand. What is Your Brand?
To put it simply, your brand is how your customers view your business. To be successful, your brand needs to be consistent across several areas of the business. These areas are the storefront, the print, packaging and signing, your website and online material, your social media, and the sales and customer service . If you create a motto for the company that implies that you specialize in customer service, then you need to follow through. For example, Amazon’s logo has an arrow that points from “a” to “z” implying that they have every product from a to z. The arrow also implies speed in shipping. They follow through with this promise by providing everything they promise to the customer. When you give a promise to a customer, follow through.
Determine Your Target Audience
The first thing that you need to do when building your brand is establish a target audience . If you’re new to the business world, you can’t expect to provide your service to everything and everyone. You’ll have a target. You might say that you’re focusing on new mothers or new homeowners. Maybe you’re a toy company advertising to families and children. Or perhaps your target audience is businessmen and businesswomen. Whoever it is, decide who will be most interested in your product and services.
Create Your Image
Once you have a picture of your you’re advertising to, create a logo that would attract that group of people. Find a logo creator who will work with you and your company to perfect this aspect of your brand. You want your logo to be easy and simple enough that the average person could both remember the logo and draw it for a friend. You should stay away from logos that are purely words or logos that are too complicated. You should be able to draw it on a piece of paper with no more than 7 strokes. Companies who use this as their guideline usually excel farther than those who create more complicated designs.
Create a Brand Mission Statement
Your logo should help to fulfill a promise that you’ll be making to your customers. Walmart’s motto, “Save Money. Live Better.” fulfills the promise of the logo and the mission statement that promises they have the lowest prices. You should strive to do the same thing. When you create a mission statement, it should be what all your resources are striving to fulfill. Your image, motto, storefront, and your quality of customer service should all point back to what your mission statement says about the business. What do you want to create? What do you want your company to be known for? Once you answer those questions, create the mission statement .
Conclusion
Everything should point back to what you want people to know about you. Once you have established your logo and your mission statement, the rest of the work is all about fulfilling those promises to the customer. Make sure that they get exactly what they expect from you and you will have loyal customers who refer their friends to your business.