Building a Business Brand the Right Way

Building a business brand is one of those essential business activities that you need to prioritize if you want your business to succeed. Building on our post from yesterday on branding, today we’ll discuss some other aspects of building a business brand the right way. But what does that mean? Let’s take a look now at some of the things that you might need to bear in mind when it comes to getting this right.

Building a business brand the right way

Yesterday, we discussed why you need a strong brand and some steps to build one. Today, I’d like to get into the nitty-gritty of building a business brand to represent your business by discussing some of the creative elements associated with building a business brand, like brand name, logo, and colors. So, buckle up.

Make your brand name memorable

This is perhaps what matters most of all: finding a brand name that’s easy to remember, pronounce, and spell helps consumers when it comes to buying a brand they enjoy. As long as it is genuinely memorable, you can ensure the name will stick in consumers’ minds  – which is precisely what you should be aiming for, of course. Remember, consumers don’t have any desire to remember your brand, at least until they try and discover it’s excellent. So, make it easy by choosing a name that sticks in their minds.

You can reinforce the brand name by creating a catchy jingle or a tagline that becomes an earworm that won’t leave.

Go for something unique

Above all, you want to ensure your brand name stands out from other brands, especially those in a related market, as the whole point of a brand is as an identifier that your target market relates to. Please do your research to discover what the competition is doing when it comes to building a business brand name in order to make sure that your brand is as unique as possible.

In the digital age, it’s especially important to choose a unique brand name as you also want to buy the domain name for your website and create profiles on your chosen social media platforms. Since internet-based applications require a unique name for these purposes, you must find a brand name that’s unique. Don’t expect prospective buyers and customers to find you online with some variation of your brand name, such as having to settle for adding an adjective or a small extra word to your brand name to create a unique domain name. Worse is being forced to purchase something other than the dotcom as your business domain, as you end up sending traffic to whoever owns the domain as a dotcom. By the same token, you want to buy up all variations in spelling and extensions related to your primary domain to shut out potential competitors who want to piggyback on your success. Simply redirect all your purchased domains to your primary domain, which should be the dotcom.

When I established my company ten years ago, I wanted Market Maven, but that wasn’t available, at least not at a price I could afford. Rather than settle for something else, I purchased MktMaven, which was available. Since MKT is a common abbreviation for market and the Market Maven domain doesn’t have a website that uses the name, I think it worked out OK.

Ensure your brand name reflects your desired brand image

Spend some time researching your target market and what’s important to them, how they view your market, the meaning of words, and how they construct the world around them. Armed with this information, you can create a brand name that evokes meaning for your market. For instance, Facebook grew out of an effort by a bunch of college students to create a compendium of female students’ images and then allow the males on campus to rate them based on looks, i.e., a book of faces. While the misogynistic aspects of this name vanished over the years, the platform remains a place where users post images or text that others critique. Of course, this aspect of social media led the Surgeon General to ask for a warning label on platforms so users can protect themselves from the harmful elements of using them too much.

Create brand collateral

Once you have the basics of a brand name, you’re ready to animate your brand with images, colors, and fonts. Adding these elements to a style guide ensures everyone uses these elements consistently for the most significant impact.

Color psychology in marketing is the study of how colors can affect consumers’ perceptions of a brand and influence their purchasing decisions. The right color scheme can help build trust and reliability, which can lead to increased conversions. The wrong color scheme can have the opposite effect. For example, a soothing blue color scheme can instill trust in a website, while a red palette may evoke feelings of anxiety.

Next, invest in collateral such as business card printing to network effectively. You might even include your headshot on the card to evoke a recall of your meeting. You definitely need a professional website when building a business brand. Don’t settle for something from a website builder like Wix, as they end up looking cookie-cutter rather than unique. You might also want signage and letterhead if you run a physical business.

Spread your brand name far & wide

Some of this can seem a little complex, and, in truth, building a business brand isn’t a simple matter. Hence, it deserves your full attention and effort if you want to do it right. All you really need to do is to make sure that you spread your brand far and wide as much as possible to ensure your target market not only knows your name but builds possible associations with that name. As long as you focus on doing that, you are going to get so much more out of it and it is going to be a lot more effective, so this is absolutely what you should be aiming to do here all in all.

Conclusion

Building a business brand isn’t something you do once and forget it. You must constantly work toward building your brand by living up to the expectations consumers have regarding the brand. Become a trusted brand and the sky’s the limit when it comes to success.

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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.