7 Things You Should Know About your Brand

Your brand is the identity of your company. It's who you are, what you do, and how you do it. That means that, just like your own identity, it’s more than skin deep. Your brand is not just your logo and colors. It’s how you talk to your customers and what they experience when they interact with you.  

A strong brand is an incredibly valuable asset for businesses of any size: it gives them an edge over competitors, helps people feel more comfortable with their purchases, and can even help boost profits by attracting new customers or encouraging existing ones to spend more money. But building a strong brand isn't easy. That's why I’ve put together this list of seven things every business owner needs to know about their brand.

1 Know Yourself

Before you can know your brand, you must first know yourself. What do you stand for? Who are you? What do you do? And what do you not do? These questions may seem obvious, but many brands lack a clear understanding of their values and identity—and as a result, they struggle to communicate effectively with customers. After all, customers need to understand how you are different from the competition and why they should trust you as their solution.

2 Know your Customer

It’s important to know who you want to reach. Your audience will be made up of people with different needs and wants, but they all have one thing in common: they need some kind of help. You need to understand what that is so you can figure out how best to communicate with them.

A popular way of doing this is by creating a customer avatar. A customer avatar is a page on which you describe all the qualities of your average “perfect” customer. Think about their age and location, but also their likes and daily struggles.

3 Know your Competition

Knowing who you’re competing with is essential in understanding how your product is different from what’s already out there. Whatever this difference is, it will likely be a core focus of your communication to your customers.

Researching your competitors can also be incredibly educational. How are they reaching their customers? What type of advertising content are they producing? Do they use formal or informal language? These are all things you can take note of and copy, improve, or change depending on the mission of your brand.

4 Know your Personality

Every strong brand has a strong personality. If you really want to connect with your customers, you need to connect on a human level – so use your personality to give humanity to your brand.

Think about what your ideal customer likes, the product you sell, and the way you are different from your competition. What type of person would your brand be? What do they value? How do they speak? That person is your brand. When you have a clear vision of who that is make sure that everything you do makes sense with that personality.

Read more about how to give your brand personality here!

5 Know your Story

If you want to talk to your customers, you need a story to tell. Storytelling is using a narrative to forge a connection between your brand and your customer. The stories you tell should show your customer how your brand’s values align with theirs and how whatever you do can improve their life. Most brand storytelling follows a simple pattern of problem → solution → success.

Do not forget the last step! Showing your customers what their life will look like after using your solution is an often neglected but very important part of your story. Show, don’t tell, and don’t assume that all your benefits are obvious.  

A framework that gives you a little more guidelines is “the hero’s journey”. It describes the steps of a classic pattern in storytelling along which you can start writing your brand’s story too.

6 Know your Touchpoints

Your customer creates a perception of your brand based on all the interactions they have with you. Therefore, understanding where, how, and when your customer will interact with your brand is incredibly important.

Sometimes the medium is the message. Think about what channels you will use to reach out to your audience. Facebook? Radio? LinkedIn? Where does your target audience spend most of their time? And what are you able to do consistently with your marketing budget? You could argue that you need to be everywhere, but if you can only handle 2 or 3 channels pick them wisely.

Your customer will also follow a set path to their purchase. Read more about touchpoints and the customer journey here!

7 Know your Look

Finally, there are your logo and other brand assets. People love beautiful images, but your visual strategy shouldn’t end there. Just like all the other elements your visuals need to communicate your unique identity as a brand. The color, shape, and style of your logo, the type of photography, and other assets like patterns or custom fonts all need to cohesively work together for the best results.

Having your whole visual strategy worked out in a brand style guide is a great way to keep everything cohesive. A visual guide will also save you time when you’re making new social media content or a flyer.

There’s a bigger lesson here…

Be consistent but not boring

Consistency is key to building trust. But don't get too boring! You can be consistent by offering your customers the same type of experience across multiple touchpoints, like a website, social media accounts, and email newsletters. However, it's important not to be afraid to change things up if you think they could use improvement. Think about how many times you've seen an ad or website that looks exactly like every other one out there; chances are it doesn't stand out in any way and no one will remember seeing it after leaving their browser window open for five seconds.

When considering how consistent your brand should be—and when it's okay for something to break from the norm—it all comes down to what makes sense for your business and who you're trying to reach with each piece of content.

Your brand is everything about your company

Your brand is everything about your company. Your logo, packaging, website, and marketing (and more!) all reflect the personality of your brand.

Branding is less about colors and fonts than it is about how customers perceive you when they interact with you and your products or services.

The same way that a person’s actions can reveal their character, so too does a company’s brand reveal its own identity through its visual elements like logos and colors.

Conclusion

We've covered a lot of ground, from defining your brand to understanding how it can make or break your company. There's no doubt that branding is a complicated topic, but cutting your branding project up into pieces will hopefully make it easier to get started.

Need more help?

Download the free Namely brand blueprint and start developing your brand!