How to Build Your Brand in 5 Simple Steps
Starting out as a new business is like jumping into a swimming pool, and while it’s possible to drown, you can also wade your way inside with just the right skills and tools at your disposal.
The surest way to success is to build a brand identity, use effective marketing methods and adapt to your audience’s needs. We’ll highlight the key steps guaranteed to strengthen your firm’s foothold in the market from the brand’s inception.
Know Your Audience
Knowledge is power. Knowing your target audience intimately is the first thing you need to do, so the content and products you create are catered towards their need. Your customers have a problem, and you can provide them a solution.
Here’s a couple of questions you can ask yourself in gauging and finding your audience:
- Where do they live?
- What’s their age?
- What do they wear?
- What are their ideals?
- What are their goals?
- What frustrates them?
- What makes them happy?
- Where are they online, and for how long?
These questions are generic on purpose, and you can expand on them depending on your industry. If you run a shoes brand, you’ll be interested in the kind of footwear they wear on various occasions, including their preferences.
Of course, there is more to catering to your audience’s differences. The true experts in any field are trendsetters, and often decide their audience’s tastes. Nike, Ford and Levis are some of the many brands that have influenced lives through quality products and spot on marketing efforts.
Now you know the who of marketing, it’s time to look at the how.
Design your Logo
Color palettes, fonts, illustrations and a core message are all things mixed together to make up your brand’s logo, and the logo itself is a reflection of your brand’s goals, aspirations and values. Once you have your brand logo set, you can create a whole line of your brand stationery, including envelopes, business cards, and even layouts for your Instagram stories.
Having a color palette that is complementary to your brand’s ideals is necessary as the human mind subconsciously associates different personalities and values with different colors and this evokes various emotions and associations in their minds. So do your research and see what color is the right fit for your brand.
Image credit: https://medium.com/@Velir/color-theory-the-role-of-color-in-creating-an-effective-brand-website-9367653fb461
The coolness of Facebook’s solid blue color is associated with trust, while the bright red of McDonald’s does a great job in catching your attention, it is associated with passion and excitement. Each color has a story behind it, and your brand can tell its own with your preference.
To get started, you want to experiment, and pick around colors, fonts and shapes to get a logo in order. In other words, visualization. Visualization is not easy, and for both visualization and getting a finalized logo ready, the PosterMyWall editor not only offers a wide range of custom logo templates, but the means to edit, save and download in high resolution.
PosterMyWall is a free online graphic design tool that helps you create polished marketing graphics with the help of professionally designed templates for logos, flyers, videos, social media posts, documents and more.
Once your brand’s look is in order, your next step is to set up a process to effectively present yourself to your audience. In other words, via marketing.
Social Media Marketing
Digital marketing has taken leaps and strides forward, and with more people coming online every year, having an online presence is tantamount to a successful brand. Having a social media presence is not simply about posting and scheduling content on your channels, instead it is a two-way conversation.
You can create a conversation by:
- Allowing customers to review your product on Facebook.
- Interacting with customers on Twitter, including answering questions and giving advice.
- Address both negative and positive feedback in a cool, helpful way.
Another great conversation starter is by creating interesting, useful content and sharing it on your social media. These include:
- Tips to using your product better.
- Sales, discounts and special offers.
- A new product launch.
- Blog posts that are relevant to your industry, and customers.
Creating visual content for these posts is far from easy, and having a graphic designer work on this can create a hole in your wallet. These resources could be better spent on your product or service.
Fortunately, PosterMyWall is one online tool that can make the task of creating all kinds of social media graphics fairly easy, while guaranteeing great results. And it’s all free!
You’ll find templates for all kinds of themes, including small businesses, restaurants, retail and your own industry.
Pick a template, add your logo, color scheme, text details, visuals and then save. Getting the free basic quality download in one of PosterMyWall’s social media sizes will give you a nice graphic that has no watermark and is great for sharing online. But there’s more! Use PosterMyWall’s Resize option (also available for free) to resize your content to all kinds of sizes, whether it’s banners, social media graphics or flyers. You no longer need to go through the hassle of creating separate graphics for each platform.
Promote Locally
While digital is all the rage nowadays, digital marketing isn’t everything! You may optimize your ads to the greatest extent but it will still not target the people who are (a) not on your preferred social media network, or (b) they aren’t online.
Having a physical presence, building a relationship with the customers offline is not something you can overlook even in this time and age. That’s where your flyers, banners and posters come in. They help sway the heads of your target market – helping you create awareness for your product and acting as a means of reinforcement for existing users.
These can be created easily, without relying on a professional graphic designer, and without spending time designing each and every element by using PosterMyWall’s huge range of templates. You’ll find a great deal of options for your next big sale or brand awareness campaign.
Hype Up your Launch
Throwing a grand opening event that is all the rage is a powerful way to get your business on the ground. Having a successful launch means:
- You will be on the radar of a much wider audience
- Your first impression will come off as great, meaning a greater trust in your brand.
To make your event successful, start creating hype way ahead of the actual launch. Both digital and traditional marketing comes into play here, with flyers in your locale, regular updates on your social media channels and more.
For both kinds of content, PosterMyWall offers an easy solution by allowing you to create exciting content for your opening event, with both image and video templates at your disposal. Couple this with creation of a timeline of events, teasers and backstage footage – highlighting the people hard at work to make the brand launch a success. This helps the audience resonate more with your brand.
A party itself is great, but may not produce the lasting impression you’re looking for. If you want to keep your brand in the minds of customers for a long time, offer something interesting in return. One such way is to offer a new life skill, by organizing a workshop. As a florist, you can teach about flower arrangement, as cafe personel, you can teach about producing a particular brew of coffee.
Workshops allow you to showcase your products without coming off as salesy, while offering something they can take home with them.
Over to you
Starting your business from scratch is a lot of work but every big business starts small. We’ve highlighted some of the ways you can get a headstart towards a successful brand launch.
PosterMyWall is revolutionizing marketing for small businesses by offering a consistent, cost-effective way of producing a stream of high quality content for social media and traditional marketing.
Now, let’s take your business to the next level, shall we?
About the Author
Ivan Widjaya A mobile entrepreneur who loves to work anytime, anywhere he wants. He runs several popular business blogs, make money online and live a geoarbitrage lifestyle. He typically works at home and travel with his family when he wants to, often without his business.
