Building a brand, that too from scratch is no piece of cake. Even more so if you’re a small business owner in Bangladesh.
It’s one thing to set a business up, go about running it and counting the profit at the end of the day but – building a brand? That’s a whole different story. So, if you’ve got a dream and the ambition to make your dream come true and take it to a different height of recognition and success, branding is a must!
8 Simple Ways to Build a Powerful Brand
With hundreds and thousands of businesses trying to make a name for themselves, having a strong brand has become crucial, especially for businesses to set themselves apart amidst a sea of competitors. Take a look at these tried and tested ways you can make that possible through branding.
1. Define your brand identity
Brand identity is more than just finding the right logo to place on shopping bags or mount above your front door. It’s about the core of your company and crafting a personality that amplifies your brand’s DNA.
It focuses on the values you convey to customers. You need to remember; your product leaves an impression on your customers long after you’ve made the sale. And brand identity is the process of shaping that impression. So, before you can move forward with the more tactical steps in your branding strategy, you need to take the time to get really clear on who you are as a company—or, your brand identity.
You can start defining your brand by doing exercises like:
- Picking out 3-5 words that describe your brand and define your brand’s voice
- Establishing your POD
- Deciding what you want to be known for in the marketplace
2. Know your target audience
When you know who your target market is, you can use it to guide your branding strategy – and have your brand truly connect with the customers you want to work with most.
So, you need to identify your brand’s ideal customers and understand the user stories. Start by asking –
- Who are they?
- What’s their age bracket and overall demographics?
- What matters to them?
- When and why would they need your product or service? And how’s it gonna make a difference to them?
3. Get visual with your branding and use the right content
Your brand’s visual identity is vital when it comes to branding and marketing. Starting from the packaging to ads or billboards, every visual element along the way matters.
Your brand’s visual identity includes your logo design, fonts, photography, brand color palettes, visual style, website, social media content, business cards, corporate letterheads etc. It can be absolutely worth the investment to have an expert or an agency with branding experience develop your visual identity.
4. Use social media
Now, we all know the effect social media has in our lives and businesses. By leveraging the power of social media, you can build your brand as well as a robust network of fans and potential customers for your small business.
However, what you need to keep in mind is that a brand is more than a logo or set of colors, and it’s so much more than a cover photo. A brand is how you make your customers feel, and it’s built by taking a consistent approach across every interaction they have with your brand. Social media branding makes it easy for you to get more relevant people into your sales funnel by giving them a reason to trust you.
And you can do that by starting with –
- Developing your marketing personas
- Establishing your brand voice & tone
- Use multiple accounts/channels e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn for different areas of focus
- Focus on the design and content. Establish yourself as a subject matter expert with the right content
5. Use print advertising
Even if many marketing professionals argue the longevity of print advertising, it continues to hold its reign against digitization. Some of the common print advertising mediums you can choose for your small business are: brochures, banners, catalogues, leaflets, business cards, posters, flyers, newspaper advertisements.
Besides everybody loves receiving presents, so feel free to have your logo printed on pens, USBs, notebooks and similar giveaways. They will remind your clients of your brand experience and hopefully, trigger some interest as new potential customers.
6. Build a website
Living and breathing in the digital world, having a website has become a necessity for any business to set its foothold. Especially for a growing business, it creates a certain level of credibility and convenience for the interested customers. It helps your business –
- Create brand awareness
- Generating leads, attract organic traffic
- Improve customer experience
- And facilitate digital marketing. However, be mindful of how cookieless marketing is becoming a thing in the marketing scenario.
Based on the type of your product/service offering, you might even want to have a mobile application. Be it developing your very own software or website, Proficient Information System can offer you a top-notch Web/App Development service in Bangladesh.
7. Look for partnership opportunities
Consider it as trust building by proxy. If your customers are introduced to your brand by a brand they already know and trust, they’re much more likely to extend that trust to you and your business. And that can raise your visibility to a great extent and help win even more partnerships.
The key to success with this strategy? Finding business with similar – but non-competitive audiences.
8. Be consistent
Brand consistency across all marketing touchpoints is a challenge for every company. But with some practice and understanding, it’s possible to build and maintain a consistent long-term image in the market.
It is absolutely necessary that your brand strategy is consistent if you really wish to break into a market. At the very beginning, you cannot afford to have minor alterations every now and then – those would be the sign of weaknesses.
No matter where a customer encounters your brand – whether it’s by seeing your logo or visiting your website or checking out one of your products in store – the look, feel, and design should be consistent. What you say on your website should match your Facebook page. Stay true to yourself, and the people will begin to swarm in once they see you mean business.
The branding of your business should not be viewed as yet another cost against your marketing budget; it should be treated as an investment. An investment, if nurtured properly, has the potential to yield exponential returns throughout the life of your business. It’s the first impression of your business and how your customers will remember you. Make it count!
