Getting The Most Out Of Branding: Do’s and Don’ts

Without realising it we could name tons of businesses and their brand/brands. Having a clear brand is becoming more and more important as the chaos of social media becomes more intergrated with out lives. So how do you create a brand? You can get ahead by following my Dos and Dont’s of Getting the Most out of Branding.

Let’s start with what you should do:

Understand your audience base:

• Who are they?
• What do they stand for?
• How do you fit in?

By understanding your audiences, you can create a brand that speaks to them.

My branding is clean and simple, professional yet friendly. That’s how I want my customers to see me and my business.

Create your mission and vision:

Mission: A mission statement describes What you are doing i.e. take for example Google their mission is to ‘To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful ‘.

Vision: Describes what their future directions or aspiration (Why). ‘To provide access to the world’s information in one click.’

Define personality:

A brand is the personality of the business so it is important to give your business one of its own. To do this you need to consider the following:

•  Language used
•  Tone: Honest, serious, Scientific (Can change)
•  Voice: Friendly, Authoritative, Professional (Never changes)

Create Imagery

Following from there you can move onto the fun stuff, the image of your brand. This is equally important as it is what your audiences/customers will associate with your business.

Imagery:

• What will your logo be,
• How will you showcase your product/service

Colours: All brands have a colour palette. So choose some colours that you want associated with you. 

I for one use my favourite colours (pink and blue) in a pastel form, these colours are also nice on the eye and compliment each other. They are simple. I also use grey as an accent colour along with black and white for   text and my logo itself. These are different from a lot of other marketers, who use bright colours.

Now for the don’ts:

Mix messaging

Nothing is worse than a brand who has multiple conflicting images/personalities. Mixing your message will not help your audiences to find you. That doesn’t mean you cant have sub-brands but they should all relate to one another and follow the narrative of the main brand.

Copy competitors

You also shouldn’t copy competitors. Just because something works for them it is not a reflection on your audience. If anything it is more likely to make your audiences think you are your competitor.

Mix branding between offline and online

Don’t mix your offline and online branding as it can confuse your audience. Have the same for both. If you speak one way online, speak the same offline, if you have two colours online use the same colours offline.

Create multiple imagery elements

Finally, don’t create multiple logos/imagery elements. You can of course have a white and black version of your logo but don’t have five different versions of it in different fonts, colours, sizes. Stick with one.

It is important to say that while you should try to stick to your branding, it is perfectly acceptable to make subtle changes over time. All brands grow and just as we change our image as we age so do businesses. Just don’t change it every day.

It goes without saying that there is a lot more than the lists above to consider when it comes to branding and there is no one size fits all approach to it either however I hope this guide serves you well as a starting point. If you want to learn more about branding you can grab a free copy of my “Your Business and the Journey into Branding” course here.

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