Building your brand foundations to achieve long-term results

Often overlooked by businesses as more of the ‘fluffy’ side of marketing, building a recognisable brand is now essential to drive long-term growth and revenue. Brand building sets you apart in often overcrowded marketplaces, and with the right strategy, it can attract customers and enable you to grow long-term.

A successful brand strategy crafts together your brand image, brand narrative, and brand vision, which, once established, forms the basis for connecting with your target audience. 

So how can you start to build a long-term brand strategy?

Start at the beginning and build your brand identity 

This activity is the most important part of your brand building process as it builds the foundational blocks of all activity moving forward. This process should involve a cross-section of your business and your customers, so you can find out exactly what they think and whether what is said dispels any firmly held beliefs. Here, it would be best if you started to workshop and document:

Target Audience: Identify who your ideal customers are and understand their needs and preferences. You should ideally talk to your customers and find out what made them sign up with you, what they are using you to do and where they get their industry information from.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Determine what sets your business apart from competitors in your particular marketplace. Make sure you analyse direct competitors and not those that you aspire to be competitive against. That work only needs to be carried out when you grow beyond your current category.

Mission and Values: Clearly articulate what your business stands for and what you believe in. What values do you have as a company and how these values are beneficial for your customer. This will serve as a starting point to start building your story and narrative.

Set your brand narrative and establish a storytelling framework

You can still have a brand in look and feel but to bring your business to life you will need a compelling story and narrative. This ultimately builds trust and authenticity, which in turn will develop into revenue and upsell. So, how do you build that trust within your target audience?

Build your complete narrative: Develop a compelling brand story that connects with your audience on an emotional level. How did the business come to be? Does the product/business solve a core problem and how has that evolved? Who are the humans behind the brand and what is their story?

Establish your storytelling framework: What is the most important story to convey and how? What are the core milestones that need to be celebrated and which stories on which channels will be key to building that trust and authenticity. 

Here you should also already have an idea about what your brand image and tone of voice should be.

Create a consistent brand image

All of your hard work in building the foundations and brand narrative has led you to this point and also the step that most would associate with brand. By the time you get to this stage, there will already be an image in your mind of the personality and the voice of your brand and that all now needs to be captured and brought to life.

Visual branding needs to reflect your values and what you stand for as a company. If you already have a brand and it needs a refresh, you’ll need a graphic designer who specialises in brand and they’ll be able to take you through colour theory, what a refresh means, and also what assets you’ll need to update.

Once you have a visual brand you are happy with, then you will need to update the brand on all assets and materials. Start internally so that your peers and employees embrace the change and understand why a uniform brand is important externally. Once that’s complete, then you can start to update externally. Be sure to stick to your newly created brand guidelines.

A tone of voice document is a clear definition of a brand’s personality and how this can be communicated externally. Like visual branding, a uniform tone of voice is essential as it not only defines what you want to say but also how you say it. With tone of voice mentioned, the big players like Monzo and Oatly come to mind but it’s also a huge part in B2B and small businesses too - your tone of voice will resonate with your customers and filter down through all of your channels.

Of course, brand building is an ongoing process which can take years to perfect. This is why brand is always a long-term strategy and will always continue to attract new business even when solid leads are hard to come by. It’s an important process to establish and involves more than just the marketing team in a business to manage. Your company’s brand image is the most important thing you can cultivate and should always be carried out with care. Once you’ve built these blocks and created you brand strategy, then you’re in a great position to start delivering your brand activation plan and measuring the results.

If you are struggling with your brand building efforts, whether you don’t know where to start or require marketing assistance with your business, get in touch to see how I can help you.