Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur ready to take your dream to the world or an experienced brand manager expanding an existing business, the strength of your brand is critical to your success. The branding decisions you make now will shape your customers’ perceptions, determine the direction of your business, and guide every decision you make going forward. That’s why it’s important to take your time during this phase. In this article, we’ll learn the basics of branding, understand the benefits of having a strong brand, get inspired by best branding examples, and explore how to update your branding as you grow and scale.

What is branding?

Branding is the process of creating a unique identity for a company in the minds of its target customers and the general public. Essentially, branding consists of the company's name, logo, visual identity design, mission, values, and tone and manner. A brand is also determined by the quality and uniqueness of its products, customer service experience, and pricing strategy.

How is branding done?

Actions like building a website, designing advertising and marketing materials, choosing a color palette that aligns with your brand, creating a brand logo, interacting with customers in live chat, and posting comments on social media set the tone for your brand. These initial interactions are already shaping people’s perception of your business.

✏️ Key takeaway: Your brand can be determined by the market. That means that no matter what you do, consumers will form an impression of your business based on their experiences. However, it is best to control this brand image through intentional branding and a solid brand strategy.

What is the purpose of branding?

The goal of brand building is to help customers understand what you offer and what you seek through effective positioning. Great branding communicates your unique selling proposition (USP), your brand’s mission and values, and your brand story. This helps customers determine if your business meets their needs or aligns with their values.

Ultimately, the goal of branding is to attract loyal customers, strengthen your position in the marketplace, and generate sales.

Why You Should Take Branding Seriously

From the moment you start your business, you already have a brand. When a potential customer visits your website for the first time, that’s when they start to form their perception of your brand. That’s why it’s important to set the right tone from the beginning before you create the wrong impression.

Ultimately, what your customers think and say about your brand is reality (not what you want them to think). It’s how your customers feel about their experience, which can be positive or negative.

No business intends to create an untrustworthy or “bad” brand, but if you don’t take your branding seriously and take a strategic approach from the beginning, your brand could take unexpected turns.

Effective branding requires a strategic plan that guides every decision with clear values ​​and goals, influences every customer touchpoint, and includes clear brand guidelines.

How to build a brand

Branding is more than just choosing a business name and designing a logo. Successful branding must be consistent from the first customer touchpoint to the last.

So how do you meet all the important elements? Let’s take a look at the branding elements you should consider when building your brand.

1. Decide on your mission and values

The mission is the 'North Star' that guides your business and should be a central part of your business plan and brand guidelines. It helps all other decisions move in the right direction. The branding process also involves clearly defining the values ​​of your brand, which are core elements that cannot be compromised even as your business grows and expands. The mission and values ​​ensure that your brand remains strong even as your logo or products change.

For example, Loop emphasizes its social impact, linking its mission directly to its homepage and making it a central element of its brand.

Younger consumers increasingly demand that brands make their social stance clear. Being clear about your company’s mission and core values ​​during your branding process will help Gen Z and upcoming Gen Alpha consumers decide whether or not to support you. These consumers are looking for transparency from brands on ethics, sustainability, manufacturing practices, and more.

2. Determine your brand’s voice and tone

Simply put, it’s how your brand communicates. Within your branding guidelines, spend time establishing your brand’s tone of voice across all your communications, from social ads to customer service emails. Is your brand’s tone playful and fun? Or serious and calm? Or educational and confident? Consider whether there are any specific slang terms you’ll use or not. Understanding how your target audience communicates will help you refine your brand’s voice and tone.

For example, Hardgraft effectively communicates its brand through the tone of content on its homepage.

3. Create a brand story

Stories are a key element of your branding strategy. Consumers, especially those using social commerce, want authenticity from your brand. Telling your brand’s origin story or founder’s story can give your brand a human face, give your business a face, and build trust and brand affinity. Share your brand story on your website, social media, and wherever you interact with your customers.

For example, Oatly uses its product packaging as a vehicle for brand storytelling.

4. Developing your brand identity

Brand identity refers to the visual elements of your brand. Visual branding work should begin with a mood board or word association exercise, which will help you determine the tone or feel of your brand (what emotions do you want people to feel when they interact with it?). This will make it easier to pinpoint the colors, fonts, and other visual elements that represent your brand.

For example, every design decision on Flakes ’ product page was intentional. Every visual element, from the colors to the fonts to the product photos, is consistent across the brand’s website, social media, and packaging.

Additionally, your brand needs a unique and memorable business name. You can choose a personal name (e.g. Macguire), a creative word (e.g. Sanzo), or a name that intuitively describes the product you sell (e.g. The Cheese Bar). It’s important to make sure you have a domain name and social media accounts that match the name you choose.

Benefits of Building a Brand

Branding is a fundamental activity that guides every decision you make going forward, from new product collections to email marketing copy. A solid brand guideline helps you maintain a consistent vision as you expand your business or enter new markets.

Building a strong brand has additional benefits, including:

• Potential for increased sales
• Reach your target customers and desired audience
• Increase customer loyalty and awareness
• Setting a clear and inspiring mission or purpose
• Building a strong corporate culture
• Attracting the best talent
• Developing strong brand assets
• Increased opportunities for collaboration
• Encourage mentions from media and social media users
• Maintain consistency with staff, agencies, and contractors

Brand Strategy and Guidelines

Clear brand guidelines are critical to maintaining consistency no matter where your brand appears or who creates content or assets.

The strategies and guidelines you set during your branding process should take into account all the ways and places your brand will be represented in the world. When developing your brand guidelines and refining your strategy, keep the following areas in mind and consider them:

Store environment and atmosphere

Do you want your store environment to be vibrant and modern? Or do you want it to be emotional and mysterious? Your store environment is an important extension of your brand, so it’s important to consider how your brand will be represented in your employee training materials. Clear guidelines for how your employees should treat customers will help them effectively communicate your brand through their interactions with customers.

Products and Pricing

What you sell and how you price it can signal to your customers what your brand stands for. Is your product known for being high-quality? Or is it unique or niche? How does your branding communicate this? If your product is aimed at luxury consumers, it’s important to build a branding that appeals to those customers. Conversely, think about how you’ll communicate to customers who value value.

Product packaging can be an important element in telling your brand’s story, even when customers stumble upon it in a retail store. Consider how you can represent your brand outside of the online environment.

Marketing, PR, and Collaboration

Effective advertising is crucial to building brand awareness. The message you send to your target audience should directly reflect their pain points, challenges, and needs.

Also, consider PR (public relations) as part of your branding strategy. How you respond to a problem or crisis can make or break your brand. Include worst-case scenarios in your plans and prepare details on how you will handle it when it comes to the public eye.

Collaborations and sponsorships can be great ways to expose your brand to new audiences. However, not all opportunities are right for your brand. Decide in advance what type of organization or event you want to sponsor, and which businesses or creators you want to collaborate with.

3 Examples of Successful Branding

Big corporate brands are some of the best examples of successful branding. For example, brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Nike are instantly recognizable to consumers all over the world, just by hearing a few lines of a jingle or seeing a small swoosh logo. These long-standing brands spend a lot of money and effort to reach their target audience.

Here are some of the best examples of successful brand design and branding communication from D2C (Direct-to-Consumer) brands loved by consumers.

Glossier

Glossier quickly gained cult status after the popular beauty magazine Into the Gloss transformed into a full-fledged beauty brand. Glossier’s early success was largely due to its content-based assets. But the company is unrivaled in its branding, quickly becoming a household name in an industry dominated by a few traditional brands. Glossier is so popular with social media creators that it’s often featured in memes.

Momofuku

Wherever you go, you’ll see Momofuku ads popping up in your feed or getting compliments from your favorite food influencers. Momofuku had to build more than just a brand; it also had to create a market for its revamped version of the college dorm-style instant ramen. The brand’s fresh design and modern photography are helping it reach new audiences with its “modern Asian-American cuisine.”

Starface

Starface had a unique branding challenge: reshaping consumer attitudes toward skin conditions like acne. While previous brands had focused on covering up skin imperfections, Starface positioned itself as a brand that highlighted “imperfections” with its fashion acne patches. The brand’s colors, tone, online store design, and content all resonate with a young, daring target audience.

4 Management Tips for Growing and Changing Brands

As your brand grows or ages, it may become outdated or lose its connection with your growing audience. In these cases, it may be time to consider a rebrand. However, it is always important to keep your target audience in mind before you begin a rebrand.

Avoid the temptation to start from scratch. Rebranding can help improve the health of your business or realign with your brand’s values, but you need to be careful not to lose loyal customers in the process.

When rethinking your business’s branding, follow these guidelines to ensure a smooth transition:

1. Identify what is currently working well and what is not.

Find out what your customers and target audience like most about your business. What makes your business stand out? What are your strengths? Keep these branding elements as much as possible and tweak the rest.

2. Reset brand value

Are the brand values ​​you set when you first launched still relevant? Have changes in consumer behavior, political developments or social movements, or your own evolution as a founder influenced your values? If you don’t believe in the brand values ​​you set, it’s hard to maintain a consistent brand message. Modify and communicate your brand values ​​to fit the realities of you, your customers, your business, and the modern world.

3. Update your brand identity

Are you a traditional brand or family business with old branding? You can adapt it to modern design preferences while maintaining the aesthetics and elements that your customers recognize. Just be careful not to stray too far from your core brand or follow fads.

4. Roll out your new branding

Apply your new visual elements and brand message to all your marketing tools, including advertising, signage, and customer emails. This will help ensure that both existing and new customers see a consistent brand message and feel comfortable with the new look.

Good branding is the foundation of business

You don’t have to run a multinational company to reach your target market through branding. From your online store’s homepage to TV commercials to sandwich boards in front of your local business, you can help your customers connect with good brand storytelling wherever they are.

You can’t always get it right, but the cost of not investing in branding far outweighs the potential negative consequences. And you can always adjust as you go. Build a brand that delivers on your promises, speaks the language of your ideal customer, and leaves a lasting positive impression.

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