6 Steps To Building Your Brand Strategy
Whenever you listen to the word ‘branding’, you’ll presumably think of a logo. That’s even where the term comes from, originating in the old Norse word ‘brand’ meaning ‘to burn’ and referring to burning a mark to demonstrate ownership of livestock. The golden arches of McDonald’s the iconic red Coca-Cola script, or the easy outline of Apple—these are all immediately recognizable brand marks. However, a brand is so much more than just a logo and to build a strong brand you’ll require a complete branding strategy.
More than only your name and logo, your brand is what people talk about you when you’re not in the room. It lives as a concept in the ‘hearts and minds of your consumer. That doesn’t suggest it’s not in your control, because you can and will shape that brand with your efforts, your messaging, your communication, how you interact with your consumers, and so on. But for your actions to be successful, you require a plan. Here’s how you can create a solid branding strategy.
Why is branding necessary?
Allow you to differentiate yourself versus competitors: Making a brand above and beyond your products and services will guarantee that you are more than just an entity. It will let you communicate what you actually stand for and how you’re different from the competitor in a meaningful way.
Help you win loyal consumers: Creatives around the world will go directly to Apple when they require a new device rather than waste time researching different computers. A powerful brand will build a community of fans who will always select you over competitors.
Let you charge higher prices: A strong brand makes a higher perceived value and fans will preferably pay more, even when the product or service is no better on paper than another generic or less appealing brand.
Why do you require a branding strategy?
Guide your company decisions: It will allow you to work out what products and services you should create and how to show and market them, the tone of voice you should be operating in your communication, what kind of content to place on your website.
Keep the team on the same page: Even if you’re a ‘solopreneur’ and you don’t have any permanent staff, you’ll even be working with freelancers, designers, and so on and if your brand only lives in your head then it’s improbable that you’ll get the best work from them.
Help you be coherent and consistent: Each interaction with your brand is another piece of the puzzle and a strategy will make sure that you make a consistent brand image in the hearts and minds of your customers—and that the brand image is what you want it to be!
Effective brand strategy for your website
Your brand strategy will require to be aligned with your overall business objectives as well as your target audience or ideal consumer. Make sure you have these in place so that you can build an effective branding strategy that will work for that consumer and assist you to achieve overall business goals.
Make sure your website copy is customer-oriented
Potential consumers come to your website to get details that are useful to them. Sometimes they arrive for educational content on your blog, and additional times they are focused on researching the products and services that you sell. Either way, you should give appropriate info that will engage your prospects, give them something of value and make their trust in your expertise.
When you are planning the content on your website, try to think about it from the consumer point of view. If you were a prospective consumer, what details would be helpful to you? What level of learning or expertise would you have already, and what would you require to be described in more detail? By concentrating on your content from the consumer perspective, you can save them on your site longer and are more likely to build a long-term relationship with them that results in a sale.
Content Perception and Scrolling
Contrary to famous perception, people do read things online. But to complete them read, the copy has to be seriously good. Now, just making texts grammatically excellent or structurally correct is not the end of the job. The write-up has to capture the users’ awareness or vision, otherwise, they will not remain on the website for long.
Your website document should correlate with your brand. Say for instance, if you are marketing tech products, a funky or informal approach is going to cut the ice. Whereas, if your brand has something to do with women’s beauty products, you need to make sure that the copy is elegant and has a feminine charm. Try not to offend anyone through your content. They are not just easy words; bad words can ruin the brand image of your organization forever. So be attentive to what you are putting on your website. Hire a professional to get it checked before completing the copy goes live.
Known brands like Adidas always use copy that reflects their brand. It is genuinely crystal clear and crisp. It uses a memorable teaser for every single page and this is what propels the brand on the web. The copy is user-friendly yet powerful, brief yet well- crafted.
Incorporate SEO best practices
You may have the best website in your field, but it won't do you a bit of good if people can't find it. While you can spend money on advertisement to drive prospects to your website, it is more cost-efficient and effective in the long run to bring free organic search traffic to your site.
When somebody is looking for info online, they go to search engines, especially Google. Usually, they see what they are looking for on the first page of the search results, so that is where you would like your company to appear. Google and other search engines have their own proprietary algorithms that they use to rank sites for search terms, also known as keywords.
Search engines utilize three methods to choose where your listing appears: crawling, indexing, and ranking. Crawling implies that they find your site through links from other sites. So, make sure that web links to your website seem on as many outside websites as possible.
After your website is discovered by the crawling bots, it is indexed, which signifies that it is analyzed for content, including keywords, freshness, relevance, links, and multimedia. Make sure that your website has plenty of new, relevant content linking to the keywords you want to rank for.
Eventually, ranking is how the search engines determine the best results for a given search. The ranking is based on relevancy and command. Include plenty of appropriate content, such as individual articles on different aspects of a particular topic. Authority is established by the pages and size of your website, its traffic, and how many other well-respected sites link to yours. Small business SEO tools make it simple to optimize your site.
Keep your design simple and unique
Specify the usage of fonts, colors, and GIFs, which can distract and draw the eyes away from the focus of the webpage. Short paragraphs and bullet points also make the facts more scannable and likely to be read. Ian Lurie, CEO of internet marketing company Portent Inc., suggests keeping paragraphs shorter than six lines.
This is particularly necessary when it comes to mobile responsiveness, which is a major element in how Google ranks websites in its algorithm. The better a website's ranking, the higher it seems on the search engine results page (SERP). If a competitor is mobile- friendly and your website isn't, you could get pushed down lower in your user search results.
Make your site mobile responsive
Mobile responsiveness is necessary for a website to be effective. American adults spend more than five hours on their mobile phones regularly, while more than one- third do all of their shopping online through mobile phones. Needless to state, your business's mobile website must deliver a positive user experience.
If a potential user lands on your website but finds it difficult to read or navigate on a mobile phone, they may simply abandon you in favor of competition. Moreover, a negative mobile user experience affects your website in search engine rankings, making it more difficult for users to find via a Google search – which gets us to our next point.
Pick your brand’s colors and fonts
Once you've got a name down, you'll require to think about how you'll visually show your brand, namely your colors and typography. This will come in handy when you begin to create your website.
Choosing your colors
Colors don't just represent the look of your brand; they also convey the feeling you would like to communicate and help you make it consistent across your whole brand. You'll like to select colors that differentiate you from direct competitors to avoid confusing customers.
Color psychology isn't an actual science, but it does help to tell the options you make, particularly when it reaches the color you select for your logo.
This infographic shows a nice overview of the emotions and associations that different colors generally evoke.
It’s necessary to think how legible white and black text will be over your color palette, and how colored text might look over white and black backgrounds. Try using a tool like Coolers to brainstorm colors that work together, hold the hex codes to keep handy, and sift through different shades to find the ones you like.
Choosing your fonts
At this moment, it's also good to look at fonts you might want to operate on your website.
Pick two fonts at most to avoid unnecessarily confusing visitors: one for headers and one for body text (this doesn't include the font you might use in your logo).
Conclusion on Brand Building
All in one, to build brand strategy and succeed, your website should:
- follow the unique style;
- present the philosophy of your company;
- convey your values and make a particular image;
- Show expert knowledge and quality services products.
In conclusion, a launch of a quality site is a perfect way to show the competence of your company on the market, get clients and sales accordingly. It’s not a simple task to keep all the information but you should strive to make every component on your site follow the style of your brand.
