Building a Brand: 18 Ways Any Business Can Do it Successfully

How can companies successfully build their brand? 

 To help you build a successful brand for your business, we asked CEOs, consultants, and marketers this question for their best insights. From communicating your company’s values, researching industry rival brands, to creating an effective brand logo, there are several pieces of advice that may help you along the journey of building out and promoting your brand. 

 Let's examine the brand-building process in detail. Here are 18 ways these leaders have successfully found their target market and built their brands:

• Communicate Your Company's Values 
•  Focus On Names and Handles Your Audience Can Find 
•  Create Referral Programs 
•  Put Employees And Customers First 
•  Use Real Stories to Demonstrate Your Impact 
•  Become An Authority In Your Industry 
•  Get Involved Within Your Community  
•  Create a Logo And Tagline 
•  Understand Your Unique Selling Point (USP) 
•  Develop a Consistent Brand Message  
•  Have Empathy For Your Customer  
•  Double Down On Brand Voice And Story  
•  Consistency is Key to Success 
•  Understand Your Target Audience Through Personas  
•  Improve Your Site's Search Visibility 
•  Invest in the Testimonial Economy 
•  Integrate a Brand Building Expert Into Your Team 
•  Research Industry Rival Brands

Communicate Your Company's Values

A values-driven approach is essential to building a solid brand. After all, people are more likely to do business with companies that share their values. Yet many businesses make the mistake of failing to define their values or communicate them clearly. As a result, they miss out on the opportunity to connect with potential customers on an emotional level. By articulating what you believe in and why your company exists, you can create an emotive brand positioning that will resonate with people who share your values. 

 Michael Sena, Founder & CEO, SENACEA

Focus On Names and Handles Your Audience Can Find

materials need to be easy to recall. Having a simple or memorable company name that invokes your product is invaluable. You also need social media handles and domain names that people will remember, instead of long or unwieldy ones. This is an area to spend — acquiring simple domains is an important move. While you're in the early stages of expanding your company's presence and name recognition, you need to make it easy for customers to find you. 

 Chris Vaughn, CEO, Emjay

Create Referral Programs

A great way to build your brand is to use referral programs. These programs can be in the form of discounts for customers who refer friends, or for existing customers who refer new ones. Building brand loyalty is important, and referral programs can help with that as well as increasing your brand awareness. You can also use referral programs as a reward for employees or other brand advocates. 

 The best referral programs are easy to use and track, so you can see how successful they are. It's also important to make sure rewards are high enough to be worth it for customers and employees. 

 Matthew Ramirez, Founder, Paraphrase Tool

Put Employees And Customers First

Focus on creating a solid company culture and providing excellent customer service. Interlacing these elements into your brand messaging will not only differentiate you from competitors but also foster a positive perception among consumers. By putting people first, your brand will naturally resonate with audiences and foster loyalty and word-of-mouth promotion for your brand. This is because happy employees tend to provide better service, and satisfied customers are more likely to become brand advocates. Consumers also love supporting employers that prioritize their workforce because most of them are employees in their own lives and can relate to the importance of a positive work environment. 

 Joey Sasson, Vice President of Sales & Logistics, Moving APT

Use Real Stories to Demonstrate Your Impact

Leverage user-generated content to demonstrate your impact. Over the past 2 years, I've been successfully using an approach focused on building stories that revolve around my clients. With this strategy, I’ve witnessed a 102% increase in the number of new customers I’ve onboarded over the past year. 

 "Stories" can include anything from video campaigns to blog posts to case studies. Ideally, the story you develop will demonstrate how your product or service assisted in achieving your client's goals. More importantly, it should also illustrate why your solution was the best option on the market for them, and how it fit with their mission and purpose. 

 When done effectively, these stories help identify customer pain points and show how you solve or address them in a way that other brands may not. They also help build trust with your audience by showing results and demonstrating your expertise in solving problems like theirs. 

 Arthur Worsley, Founder, The Art Of Living

Become An Authority In Your Industry

Be a conversation starter! One of the biggest ways to build your brand is to become an authority in your industry. A good start to this is to become a thought leader. Thought leaders are those who can express their opinions and expertise in their fields. Becoming a thought leader is one of the best ways to build authority, which will increase your brand visibility. By being a conversation starter, you'll gain the ability to lead the conversation, both engaging with your peers and your audience, while at the same time being able to express your knowledge as a brand and as an individual. Together these elements can help you carve a niche within the business world, which you can develop to define your brand to the world. 

 Soji James, Certified Personal Trainer, 1AND1 Life

Get Involved Within Your Community 

A great way to build your brand is to be involved in a community and events surrounding it. This can help smaller businesses build a name within specific circles as people become more aware of you, and they will also see you as a part of something that is more than just sales-focused. 

 In particular, a great way to do this is by getting your logo and identity seen by either the local community, or relevant consumers within the sector - how you approach this can depend on whether your company works directly in a specific community, or is more wide-reaching. 

 For example, you could sponsor a local event such as a race, or even a local children's football team, which will help to introduce you to a local community audience, or you could look to sponsoring a larger business or creative seminar which will help introduce you to consumers in a particular sector. 

 Brett Downes, Founder, Haro Helpers

Create a Logo And Tagline

Having a consistent logo and slogan across all of a company's marketing materials is, in my opinion, the best approach to generate brand awareness and loyalty, which is essential for any business hoping to succeed. It is recommended that you use a design agency or someone very creative to help you develop a logo and tagline for your business. For this reason, it is important to put resources into designing a logo that will stand out and be easily recognized by customers. 

 A branding agency may assist you in developing a distinctive logo that incorporates your company's name, a color scheme appropriate to your industry, icons, online components, and typography. Target, Apple, and Nike all have iconic logos that are sure to be remembered. The majority of today's logos are minimalist in style, using minimalistic designs and color palettes. 

 Mark Valderrama, Founder & CEO, Aquarium Store Depot

Understand Your Unique Selling Point (USP)

When building a brand, it’s vital to understand your Unique Selling Point, (USP). Not only will this help you to distinguish your brand from competitors, it will also enable you to build a strong, cohesive image, which encourages consumer trust. What is it that makes your business special? Be as detailed and specific as possible. Once you have identified this, you can use it to inform your marketing strategy, and incorporate it into your brand identity. 

 It’s crucial to keep the customer in mind when determining your USP, so that you can gain an awareness of how exactly it will help you meet their needs in a way that your competitors can’t. Your USP needs to be real, and relevant. It won’t be effective if it doesn’t reflect consumer concerns. It’s also essential to truly embody it throughout your business. If consumers feel it is simply a token phrase, rather than an authentic characteristic, they will lose confidence. In-depth knowledge of your USP can greatly enhance your brand. 

 Mario Cacciottolo,   PR & Branding Manager, SBO 

 Market research is critical when you're developing your unique selling point. You have to understand the full range of your competitor's offerings so that you can zero in on what makes you different. 

Develop a Consistent Brand Message 

I believe that developing a consistent brand message is one of the most crucial things companies should focus on when building their brand. A brand message is the overall idea or theme that you want your customers and clients to associate with your company. Your brand message should be reflected in everything from your website and social media presence to the way you answer the phone and interact with customers in person. Creating a strong, consistent brand message will help you attract attention and build trust with potential customers, which is essential for any successful business. 

 Helga Dosa, Head of Marketing, Brand Rated 

 Try developing your brand message in concert with the rest of your brand marketing collateral. Structured brand guidelines that include your brand's logo, brand image, brand strategy, and a unique brand voice can help keep every customer interaction consistent.

Have Empathy For Your Customer 

Walk in your target customer's shoes. Understand on a fundamental level their everyday lives. Engage in fluid conversations with your users as they go about their day.  Surveys, interviews, and focus groups only give you a partial view into your brand. Find what is often hidden or not said. Use exploratory and discovery technology to get an immersive, fully digital, holistic view of users and customers. 

 Anne Collins, Director Of Business Development and Strategy, EthOS

Double Down On Brand Voice And Story 

Focus on what makes you unique, then double down! Building your brand is as simple as finding what your brand's voice is. Figuring out the brand story will help naturally dictate what the voice of the company is. How did they begin? What are there core principles? These things will help shape their voice and will ultimately define what they stand for as a company. Focusing on the points that make them stand out further ensures a company will hire employees that best reflect them and will help build their overall brand. 

 Charles Tichenor IV, Founder, Disrupter School 

 Again, remember that marketing campaigns that carry your brand voice and story throughout are the most effective because they're honest.

Consistency is Key 

Building a brand like raising a child is a combination of several factors, processes and methodologies that cannot be reduced to a single item or way. To establish an effective brand, the first and foremost thing to do is to understand the purpose behind your brand. The next thing is to do in-depth research about what your other competitors are doing. This will help you find the gap and differentiate yourself from the competition. 

 Later, define your target audience. Make sure you tailor their needs. After all this comes one of the crucial parts, to define your brand personality & voice. Remember it should resonate with the audience. You want your brand to feel like the customer's own brand. 

 In my opinion, consistency is key to success. Being consistent is the most effective way to build a brand. Branding is the first & last line of emotional defense to have your target audience pick you over competitors. Building an effective brand needs consistency and continuous adaptation. It is a process and you must stay true to your brand and its purpose. 

 Billy Parker, Managing Director, Gift Delivery

Understand Your Target Audience Through Personas 

Your audience constitutes a large part of your brand. While your vision and mission are vital to your brand identity, your audience determines your various strategy. Identifying and understanding your target audience is fundamental to building your brand. Being specific is crucial to discover your audience. You must make a customer persona to target your marketing and sales strategies. This requires defining a detailed target audience. List their characteristics according to your product or service. Practice specific marketing strategies so that the right people will interact with your brand. Your target audience should identify with your brand. As you succeed, you can expand your audience; however, as a startup focused on a clearly defined audience. 

 Tali Ditye, Co-Founder, DITYE LLC

Improve Your Site's Search Visibility

In my opinion, this is the most effective method for firms to establish their brand, as it allows both existing and potential customers to get familiar with the company's name and logo. Optimizing your site's ranking in search engines is a great first step in this direction. About seventy-five percent of people who use the internet never get beyond the first page of search results. It is essential to boost your website's position in relevant search results if you want to increase traffic. 

 Your website's traffic will increase noticeably if it appears in the top three results for relevant search searches. Incorporating SEO practices across the board will increase your site's discoverability. You can increase site traffic and organic traffic by enhancing the speed of your site and including keywords in blog content. 

 Frederic Linfjärd, Director of Growth Marketing, Planday

Invest in the Testimonial Economy

Our economy now thrives on testimonials. We no longer pay attention to what others say about themselves. Instead, we check online to see what other people have to say about them. As a result of their comments, we are able to make a more informed purchase decision. 

 Do you want your brand to be successful? Build a community of ambassadors who will share their love of your brand online through the testimonial economy. However, how can I obtain constant positive feedback? The following are some ways to do it: 

 - Make sure your online presence matches who you are in person. 

- Don't try to be someone you aren't. You lose confidence when others see through that. 

- Be yourself (good and bad) so you will attract people who want to "get" you. 

 Kane Jason, Transforming Businesses, Ace Infoway

Integrate a Brand Building Expert Into Your Team

In my experience, businesses rarely have the experience or knowledge in-house that a brand-building pro can offer. Integrating a brand-building expert into your team during the strategizing phase will typically yield better results. As a seasoned expert, they can set realistic objectives and give advice on changes that need to be implemented before scaling up your efforts. 

 Ronald Osborne, Founder, Ronald Osborne Business Consultancy

Research Industry Rival Brands

This, in my opinion, is the most effective strategy for establishing a company's brand, since it is extremely challenging to develop a compelling identity in the absence of a detailed analysis of similar brands operating in the same market. While it's not a good idea to imitate these companies, you can learn from them to create a unique identity for your own business. Understanding the strategies employed by rival companies is essential to developing a distinctive identity that can successfully compete in the market. 

 Nely Mihaylova, The Content Editor, UNAGI Scooters