Building a business isn’t easy. It’s hard enough figuring out how it's going to make money, never mind what the brand might look like.

As a result, many business owners turn to ‘affordable’ design options when building their brands such as Fivrr, People Per Hour, Facebook or their cousin Mike who knows Photoshop.

The outcome is often a low-quality brand that isn’t built to last or scale. This leads to consistency problems which can damage your businesses reputation and make you look like you don’t know what you’re doing. Whereas a high-quality brand can rectify this by empowering you with the tools and visual consistency you need to market your business easily and effectively.

In this post, I’ve put together a list of the 10 key things I feel are most important when you’re considering branding your business.

1. Audience

Who are you aiming at?

One of the most important parts of a business is knowing who you are selling to.

You might be thinking “I know who my audience is”. The issue isn’t that you don’t know who you’re selling to, it’s that your brand can only target so many audiences at a time. Broadening your audience will dilute your brand, whereas simplifying your audience will clarify your brand, helping create a solid base for consistency and brand recognition over time.

*I helped Good Things Foundation focus on their digital offering they provide to their clients, which helped them define their offering and narrow down their target market*

Find your core audience

Start by narrowing down who your most important customers are and find the common ground between them. Are they similar in size? Do they require the same service or products? Once you’ve worked out this core group of customers, you can then start tailoring your messaging and market to this new customer base more effectively.

2. Competition.

Who are you competing with?

Your competitors are a great indicator of success as they sell a similar product or service within the same industry. Whether or not you consider your competitors a threat or not, they represent the benchmark you need to meet or exceed to stay in business.

If you’re thinking “I don’t have any competitors?” then you’re in an awesome place. You’ve got a gap in the market and you’re essentially breaking new ground which means your brand can clearly differentiate itself without having to consider the competition.

Finding your competitors

Whether they’re local competition who offer the same location-based benefits as you or a competitor somewhere else in the world – the important part is to focus on a competitor who offers near enough exactly what you do, regardless of location. This will help you understand your own product or service as they’ll have already gone through the task of positioning and marketing their own business.

*I injected humour into the East Wing Coffee branding to help elevate the business’ message above its more corporate competitors*

3. Start with why

Finding and articulating the reason why you’re in business besides making money isn’t easy, but it’s the best way of positioning your brand for success.

Companies spend a lot of time explaining what they do and how they do it, but in a world where customers align themselves with brands and feel self-assured about their buying choices and the businesses they associate with, why you do what you do is a critical part of building a brand that people can relate to, and ultimately, trust.

“People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.” – Simon Sinek, Start With Why.

4. Brand Positioning.

If you’ve followed step 3 and differentiated your brand through defining why you do what you do, positioning your business should be relatively straightforward as you’ve already figured out which area of the market you’re appealing to. The next step is looking at it from a different point of view, that of your audience.

What is brand positioning?

Brand positioning is shaping a company's offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of your target audience. For example, if your key differentiator is that your products are sustainable then you will occupy the socially and environmentally positive option within your marketplace.

*Patagonia has a history of telling its customers not to buy its products – especially on high traffic shopping days such as Black Friday*

Imagine your customers are deciding between you and your competition. Why will they choose you? Is there more than one reason? Can these reasons be copied by others? Try outlining how you’ll be marketing your offering in a distinctive and differentiated way.

5. Brand Messaging

Once you’ve figured out why you’re in business it’s time to start talking about it.

There are various ways of writing your brand messaging. It’s often the case that simple phrases and descriptions of your business can be the most effective. Try explaining your redefined offering to colleagues, friends or family. You’ll no doubt find a recurring sentence that starts to make sense. Start there and then begin to shorten it down into a concise statement – the shorter the better.

*Be original but more importantly, be yourself*

6. Logo

Are you evolving or starting from scratch?

As you’ve probably gathered by the length of this post, a logo is not a brand and it’s certainly not the most important part of it either. It is, however, one of the hardest to create.

A great logo should:

State the name of your business
Be memorable
Visualise what your business does
Is consistent with the rest of your brand
Works well in colour and black and white

These are just a handful of key considerations when designing a logo. Whether you’re designing from scratch or evolving an existing logomark these points should be at the top of your list.

The decision to evolve an existing mark or explore something new should be based on fundamental reasoning. If your logo is an already recognised mark with lots of positive brand recognition then evolving is where you should spend your time. Creating something new at this stage would require building that association again unnecessarily.

If change is what you’re after, maybe you’ve had some bad press or you’re trying to spark growth or maybe you’re simply looking for something new – then crafting a new logo which better represents you may be the way to go.

Leica logos over the years – if it ain’t broke…

7. Typography

Does your brand font match your message?

Typography is probably the most important part of your brand. It’s how you deliver your message to your audience and holds a lot of responsibility. A good brand typeface should emulate your brand values and suit the tone of your message.

Beyond carrying the meaning behind your brand, typography also needs to maintain legibility and readability.

*Recognisable logo even without brand colour show the strength in their typography and iconography*

Just like other tools of the trade, there are high-quality and low-quality typefaces. A great way to weed out the bad fonts from the good is to start with a credible source – Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts are amongst the best platforms to find a high-quality brand typeface, as each font will have gone through extensive checks to ensure its integrity. They also bypass the arduous and often expensive task of licensing a font.

Not all designers know what they’re doing

Just because the designer you hired from Fiverr sings the praises of your new brand typeface, it doesn’t mean it’s high-quality and it doesn’t mean it’s legally sound. Font licensing is much like image licensing – If you don’t buy a license yourself then you are not allowed to use it commercially so always make sure your designer knows their type licensing before setting your heart on a certain typeface that you may end up not being able to use!

8. Colour

Colour is possibly the most opinionated element in design and as a result, getting your brand palette right can be a slow and sometimes hard negotiation.

The most effective colour palettes use impact and contrast to gain an advantage. A bold and memorable palette can harmonise your brand visuals whilst contrast makes text legible and easy to read.

*Ownable and consistent use of colour helps elevate good brands to great*

Another consideration for your brand palette should be consistency. If you think of Coca Cola, McDonalds or Facebook you could instantly recall their colours. That’s no accident. By keeping your brand to as few colours as possible you restrict the ability to create inconsistency.

Building a core palette and a supporting palette is a great way to keep things consistent, so long as you’re clear on when and how to use them.

9. Brand Guidelines

Do you need rules for your brand?

Once your brand strategy and identity has been crafted it’s time to create a set of rules for how it’s going to work and look when used in the real world. Brand guidelines are often seen as a waste of time. Designers hate making them and most clients barely look at them let alone use them!

Brand guidelines don’t need to be fifty pages long, unless you’re a global organisation with offices all over the world! Instead of a creating a multi-page document of ‘do this not that’ I tend to keep my guides simple.

I try and create brand guidelines my clients enjoy using. This can mean having everything condensed onto a single page or mapped out across 6–7 pages. They will always contain:

Brand explanation (mission, positioning, values)
Logo (on different colours, exclusion zone, portrait/landscape variations)
Colour (core palette, supporting palette, full print and digital values breakdown)
Typography (primary typeface, secondary if necessary)
Photography (defined style)
How it works (examples of brand touchpoints)

*A short and concise brand guideline document is enough to feel confident when taking on your new brand*

The finished guide is for you, as it’s likely you won’t be paying a designer for every single bit of marketing material your business creates. Brand guidelines helps keep your brand consistent when using it across multiple touch points.

Don’t ignore your guidelines

Brand guidelines help make your brand effective, impactful and usable – make sure you refer back to your guidelines to help keep everything consistent. Speaking of which…

10. Consistency.

Consistent presentation of a brand can increase revenue by 33% (Lucidpress, 2019).

Look at the big guys and see how they do it – Nike for instance. Every video, social media post, print ad or item of clothing – it feels the same. There is an undeniable ‘Nikeness’ to it.

That’s branding.

That’s all of the hard work paying off. Consistency isn’t an added benefit of a good brand – it’s the goal.

If you’re looking to brand your new business and would like a free 30-minute chat about how I could help you, please get in touch with me today by emailing - rich@richcstudio.co.uk

10 Things to think about before branding your business