5 Ways to Create a Strong Company Brand

Building a strong brand benefits any company regardless of their size, industry, or location. Good branding can influence how often your company is chosen over competitors due to the perception, expectation, and emotion a customer associates with a brand. However, it takes time to build your brand, not just in your market space but among your target audience. Here we look at 5 ways to create a strong company brand.

1. Unique logo

A logo is ultimately the face of the company. Before anything else, people tend to form their perceptions about a logo before they know who you are and what you offer. When done creatively and strategically, a logo can represent your brand’s attributes and core values well.

The key to creating a logo that stands out to your target audience isn’t down to coming up with an out-of-the-box idea but is about designing something that resonates with your audience. You can develop the most creative logo, however, if this doesn’t align with your target audience, then this will make no sense. Airbnb is a great example; each element of the logo represents what the business stands for and reflects the “community” feel that the brand wants to communicate.

This fits under their brand positioning “Belong Together” which is communicated through their logo. The icon is an abstraction of four principles — People, Places, Love, and Airbnb — all blended into this single “A” which is a very identifiable shape customers easily recognise.

A great logo tells a story about the brand and highlights your company values. Brainstorming ideas, as well as creating a mood board is a great starting point to mapping out your brand’s ideology. The most important thing to remember is to keep your brand’s value in mind and design something that will stand the test of times.

2. Focus on your audience

The power of your brand relies on the ability to focus. By identifying and understanding your target audience, this will help you to solidify your message and increase your confidence. Define them by conducting a market analysis and list a set of questions.

1. Who is your target audience?
2. How will your product/service appeal to them? What values do you offer?
3. What perception do they have of your brand?
4. What would you like them to think about your brand?
5. Who else is in the market is targeting the same audience?

Your brand values and proposition must be relevant to your target market, as this will make the brand message relevant, compelling, and clear.

3. Define your story

Branding is more than just creating a logo and visuals, but it goes much deeper, it is strategic and is a layered and sculpted process.

The building blocks of a strong build is defining your brand story, which is a powerful tool for building relationships and to keep customers engaged.

• Where does the story begin?
• Where are you taking your customers and prospects?
• What does your company stand for?
• How will your brand solve people’s problems?

Most of the time, businesses seem to mistake the brand story as something that is written on the company’s website, brochures, and presentations. Your story isn’t just what you tell people, it’s also what they believe about you and the perceptions they have about you. Every element of your business from the colours you choose, to the employee, is part of your brand story.

4. Emotion

Depending upon the type of industry you’re in, creating emotion is a great way to build a connection with your customers. Emotive branding is all about forming a connection with your customers.

With much of our decision-making process as humans, being based on emotions, it’s an obvious strategic point in any marketing or branding strategy. Studies have also shown that people rely on emotions, rather than information when making brand decisions and it is one of many reasons why consumers prefer brand name products.

Look no further than the example of life insurance companies who appeals to the emotions of their audiences, they know that customers who purchase from them will do so due to emotive reasons such as life events. Thai Life Insurance’s named “Unsung Hero” is a great example, the company uses emotions in their brand and tackles the dark subject of poverty but ends the story on the acts of kindness. The ad received over 27 million YouTube views and in a week achieved 800,000 Facebook shares and 22,000 tweets.

5. Consistency

Your brand message and visuals should be clearly and consistently applied across all your communications. This reinforces your brand identity, build trust, and creates a long lasting positive impression.

Consistency is key, you can bend things slightly and give it a new slant but you must ensure you maintain your brand’s essential characteristics. Once they’re planted in the brand they should never be changed.

Consistency helps you manage perceptions and can even shape how people perceive your organisation. The consistent use of logo, colours, font and themes are all a crucial factor contributing to the success of a strong brand identity, as well as communicating professionalism and trust.