Brand-building is not for the faint of heart. It’s so much more than slapping a logo onto a website page and using buzzwords to make your services sound more complex than they really are.
If you have an idea worth turning into a business, then you need time, patience, and expertise on a multitude of levels to make sure you’re off to a great, not just acceptable start.
Without a solid brand identity to launch your business with, you might be facing more obstacles that will prevent you from growing your business optimally in the future.
Now, let’s move on to the most actionable tips to help you harness the intrinsic power of your digital business, put your knowledge and skills to great use, and build a memorable, authentic brand that will hopefully become a household name in the future.
Outline your purpose, mission, and vision
What is your business eager to accomplish for the world and most importantly for your customers? If you cannot communicate your goals successfully and succinctly, you’ll be at the mercy of free interpretation by the rest of the world.
Before you start developing your voice, your visual identity, and your digital presence, you need to clearly build your purpose, mission, and vision. Only then can you proceed to use them as guidelines for the rest of your efforts.
Without a purpose, how can you build a value proposition that will attract top talent in your industry? Without telling the world about your mission and vision, how can your target audience know what to expect from your brand?
Managing these expectations can go a long way in setting the right tone for your digital brand from day one. Add to that, these statements serve as guiding stars to ensure brand voice consistency when you start developing your business.
Hire and retain top talent to grow your brand
If your employees don’t believe in what you’re selling, you can hardly expect to earn passionate followers anywhere outside of your office.
The truth is, you need to start building your digital brand starting from gathering the right people around it – whether you choose remote workers or that classic office culture with a modern twist, it’s entirely up to you, as long as it matches your brand identity and your values.
In this fast-paced world of ours, your employees are always a single phone-call away from getting a new professional opportunity – so you need to make yours irresistible and worth their time.
Let them know that they’ll enjoy perks such as using a personalized payroll card to eliminate waiting for their salary and to automate the entire process.
Give them the freedom to use flexible work hours and show them how they’ll advance in your company. Let them know you appreciate them by giving them a personal coffee mug for the office.
A little can go a long way in tipping the scales in your favor.
Research your target audience
Although it’s admirable to want to help the entire world, you can only do so one target customer at a time. Hence the need to know and understand who your customers are, what their preferences may be, and the best communication tools to approach them.
Analyzing your target audience and learning about them is a long-term process that never truly ends. Since they evolve and grow, you’ll need to evolve and grow, too.
- Outline the perks your brand promises and you’ll narrow down the group of people that will benefit from them the most – maybe Millennial dads, or digital nomads, or mom entrepreneurs? You cannot know until you figure out how your brand fits into their life.
- Get as specific as possible, use descriptors such as location, age, gender, education and income levels, marital status, hobbies, anything to show you how you can better target your ideal customers.
- Go even deeper into the analysis by using social media and their shopping habits to determine their personality traits and values – this is where your brand can truly determine whether or not you’re a match made in heaven.
Look at your competitors and learn
From their employment strategies to how they treat their customers, your competitors are a vital source of information that you can use to your advantage.
Building a digital brand is not a one-time process, but it comes with a steep learning curve you’ll need to adapt to in order to thrive.
Just like you invest time and effort into learning about your target audience, you should do the same for your competition.
Ongoing competitor analysis can be beneficial in so many different ways, as it can help you determine any gaps in the market that will give your brand the edge it needs to earn the top position in your niche.
That way, you can create a sterling brand identity perfect for the digital realm that will be able to stand out, and continuously learn from others in your industry.
Building a brand in this oversaturated digital world is a growingly complex challenge. However, if you implement these tips to simplify your journey and to gain a competitive advantage from the very start, you’ll be able to grow your business from the ground up with greater success.
