How to build a brand people love: Five branding best practices to implement now
Marketers are constantly looking for ways to make consumers fall in love with their brands and retain loyalty.
If you are just starting, you may be wondering if brand love is something you can achieve. The truth is, brand love is possible with the right logo design and good brand building.
TikTok, the video-sharing social media platform, has grown into a brand that is loved by many, and recently it was named the world’s fastest-growing brand, although Apple still retains the title of the world’s most valuable brand. The US and China continue to dominate, and the two claim two-thirds of its value; however, India has seen the fastest growth amounting to 42% post-pandemic among nations.
The brand success stories referenced above are not a result of overnight success. Achieving significant achievements and milestones require years of planning and strategy.
It is also a result of following branding best practices by following guidelines that keep your brand message cohesive, consistent, recognizable, and powerful. Let us explore some of the practices you can implement to achieve brand love.
1) Establish a unique brand identity
Contemporary consumers are looking for more than just a product. Consumers want to connect with the message, the voice, and the general aesthetics of the company. Yet, building a brand takes time. You need to identify the best ways to market your brand identity and consistently live it as a business.
To build a strong and unique brand identity, you need to center your brand on your story. Take a look at your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to help understand your goals better and find ways to achieve them.
Your brand identity should help you achieve your key business goals, identify your customers, and create a consistent perception among current customers and prospects.
2) Keep your branding consistent across all platforms
Creating standards and clear rules for your written and visual marketing and communication materials is the first step to achieving branding consistency across multiple platforms.
Think about your brand personality, the tone and voice, color palette, logo, images, fonts, and how often you send emails, post to social media, and do direct mail outreach. Keep engagement levels high as they determine how your audience perceives your brand.
Keeping your brand consistent across all platforms can be easy if all assets are accessible by everyone. You can use an asset management tool to ensure that everyone uses the right assets for every campaign.
Take advantage of planning tools to keep your team in sync with multiple campaigns happening across platforms. Create a marketing calendar to help you keep track of campaigns and promotions your team is executing. Of course, you may wish to consider employing a professional brand messaging agency to assist if this is something you are not confident carrying out yourself.
3) Use visual elements to communicate your brand messaging
The online space is saturated with content. People have little time to store wordy or visually unappealing content. Therefore, brands have to rely on visual elements to express their intentions and values. People tend to remember images more than what they hear or read.
According to research, an average person gets distracted in the span of eight seconds. It further indicates that some people can be distracted in 2.8 seconds. People form their first impression within 50 milliseconds, so people are likely to buy your product if they view a video.
There is a growing trend in the power and value of visual content that your brand cannot ignore. The way people are consuming content is changing, and now they are creating, watching, downloading, and searching for content like never before. Visual content can help increase brand awareness, engagement, and message association.
4) Make sure your brand is relevant to your audience
Understanding a market landscape can help you with the risk that goes along with launching a brand. Focusing on brand marketing might not be enough if you don’t identify the right audience for your brand. Therefore, before embarking on marketing efforts, define your target market, find their pain points, and craft messages that resonate with the audience.
5) Evolve and update your branding as needed
Whether you choose to conduct a simple brand refresh or a complete rebrand, evolving and updating your brand is a good strategy for creating a brand that people love. The best time to refresh your brand is when you feel outdated, you’ve made changes that customers don’t know, you’ve been inconsistent, or when you’re growing.
Be open to inspiration
Building a brand that people love requires you to keep the message and image as fresh as possible. To remain consistent, you need to ensure that any changes are reflected in your messaging and resonate well with your audience.
Whether you plan to make small changes or major ones, find inspiration and craft a design that is right for every channel you use.
Photo by Jeff Sheldon
