Building a brand from the ground up that stands out is no easy task. What should it look like? How should it make people feel? Will it resonate with mytarget audience?
These are questions that inevitably come up when you start thinking about how to connect the dots between what you’re selling and who you’re trying to reach. You can check our guide onhow to start a businessto get started.
Whether you’ve got nothing but a business idea or want to pivot your existingbranding design, here’s what you need to know about building a strong brand identity for your business.
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How to build a brand in 7 steps:
- Research your target audience and your competitors.
- Pick your focus and personality.
- Choose your business name.
- Write your slogan.
- Choose the look of your brand (colors and font).
- Design your brand logo.
- Apply your branding across your business.
While you might revisit some steps as you pivot or create your brand, it’s important you consider each aspect as you shape your brand identity.
Let’s start by laying the groundwork to inform how to build your business brand.
How do you create a successful brand?
In this video, you’ll learn the six steps to building a meaningful, recognizable brand for your online business.
1. Research your target audience and your competitors
Before you start making any decisions about how to create a business brand, you need to understand the current market, i.e., who your potential customers and current competitors are.
There are many ways to do this:
- Google your product or service category and analyze the direct and indirect competitors that come up.
- Check subreddits that relate to your customers and eavesdrop on their conversations and product recommendations.
- 说话的人是你的目标市场的一部分ob欧宝娱乐app下载地址and ask them what brands they buy from in your space.
- Look at the relevant social media accounts or pages your target audience follows and are receptive to.
- Go shopping online or offline and get a feel for how your customers would browse and buy products.
As you go about your research, make a note of:
- Who your “lowest hanging fruit” customers are—the ones you could most easily sell to
- Who your top-of-mind competitors are—the brands that are established and known in the market
- How your customers speak and what they talk about—the interests they have and the language they express them in
It’s important to have a handle on this before moving forward, as it will inform what your brand should focus on and how it can position itself apart from competitors.
Free: Competitive Analysis Template
By evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of your competition, you can begin to formulate how to give your company an advantage. Download our free competitive analysis template and gain an edge over the competition.
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2. Pick your focus and personality
You can’t establish your brand to be everything to everyone, especially at the start.
It’s important to find your focus and let that inform all the other parts of your brand as you build it.
Here are some questions and branding exercises to get you thinking about the focus and tone of your brand.
What’s your positioning statement?
A positioning statement is one or two lines that stake your claim in the market. This isn’t necessarily something you put on your website orbusiness card—it’s just to help you answer the right questions about your brand and aids in creating your brand’s tagline.
Your positioning statement should go something like...
We offer [PRODUCT/SERVICE] for [TARGET MARKET] to [VALUE PROPOSITION].
Unlike [THE ALTERNATIVE], we [KEY DIFFERENTIATOR].
For example: We offer water bottles to help hikers stay hydrated, while reducing their carbon footprint. Unlike otherwater bottlebrands, we plant a tree for every bottle you buy.
Yourunique value propositionis the one thing you’re competing on. Find it, go in on it, and make it a part of your brand's messaging.
Alternatively, if the company you want to start has a cause at its core (e.g., if you’re starting asocial enterprise), you can also write this out as a mission statement that makes a clear promise to your customers or to the world.
What words would you associate with your brand?
One way to look at how to build your brand is to imagine your brand as a person. What would they be like? What kind of personality would your customers be attracted to?
This will help inform your voice on social media and the tone of all your creative, both visual and written.
A fun and useful exercise for how to create a new brand is pitching three to five adjectives that describe the type of brand that might resonate with your audience. I compiled this list of traits to help you get started.
What metaphors or concepts describe your brand?
思考你的品牌identity as a metaphor, or personifying it, can help you identify the individual qualities you want it to have.
This can be a vehicle, an animal, a celebrity, a sports team, anything—as long as it has a prominent reputation in your mind that summons the sort of vibe you want your brand to give off.
For example, if you want to establish your brand targeting entrepreneurs, you might choose to use the raccoon as a starting point: they’re scrappy survivors who will do anything to thrive.
If your brand identity was an animal, what animal would it be and why is it like that animal to you?
3. Choose your business name
A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. But Nike by another name would be seen on fewer feet.
What’s in a brand name? Depending on the kind of business you want to start, you can make the case that your name matters very little or it matters a lot.
As we’ve said before, a brand is so much more than a name. The personality, actions, and reputation of your brand identity are really what give the name meaning in the market.
Resource:How To Come Up With a Brand Name
But as a small business owner, your company’s name is probably one of the first big commitments you have to make. It’ll impact your brand logo, your domain, your marketing, and your trademark registration, if you decide to go that route (it’s harder to trademark generic brand names that literally describe what you sell).
Ideally, you want astore namethat’s hard to imitate and even harder to confuse with existing players in the market. If you have plans to expand the product lines you offer down the road, consider keeping your business name broad so that it’s easier to pivot, rather than choosing a brand name based on your product category.
You can use ourfree business name generatorto brainstorm some names, or try one (or a combination) of the following approaches:
- Make up a word, like Pepsi.
- Reframe an unrelated word, like Apple for computers.
- Use a suggestive word or metaphor, like Buffer.
- Describe it literally (caution: easy to imitate), like The Shoe Company.
- Alter a word by removing letters, adding letters, or using Latin endings, likeTumblr (Tumbler) or Activia.
- Create an acronym from a longer name, like HBO (Home Box Office).
- Combine two words:Pinterest (pin + interest) or Snapple (snappy + apple)
Since your brand name will also affect the domain/URL of your website, be sure to shop around to see what’s available beforedeciding on a domain namefor your brand:
- Check out our guide tochoosing a good business name.
- Generate some potentialdomain name ideas.
- Confirm the availability of your domains with aWHOIS lookup.
- Hop over to ourdomain nameregistration tool.
It's also a good idea to run your name by a focus group of close people, if for no other reason than to make sure it doesn’t have an unintended meaning or is too similar to something else that you might’ve missed.
4. Write a slogan
A catchy slogan is a nice-to-have asset—something brief and descriptive you can use as a tagline in your social media bios, website header, custom business cards, and anywhere else where you only have a few words to make a big impact.
Resource: Try Shopify's freebusiness card makerto create your own custom business cards in minutes.
Keep in mind that you can always change your slogan as you find new angles for marketing—Pepsi has gone through over 30 slogansin the past few decades.
A good slogan is short, catchy, and makes a strong impression to boost brand awareness. Here are some ways to approach writing a slogan of your own:
- Stake your claim.Death Wish Coffee: “The World’s Strongest Coffee.”
- Make it a metaphor.Red Bull:“Red Bull gives you wings.”
- Adopt your customers’ attitude.Nike: “Just do it.”
- Leverage labels.Cards Against Humanity: “A party game for horrible people.”
- Write a rhyme.Folgers coffee: “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”
- Describe it literally.Aritzia: “Everyday luxury to elevate your world.”
Try our slogan makerto brainstorm some ideas, or play off of your positioning statement to generate potential one-liners to describe your business.
5. Choose the look of your brand (colors and font)
Once you’ve got a name down, you’ll need to think about your brand design—how you’ll visually represent your brand—namely your colors and typography. This will come in handy when you start to use awebsite builderto make your own website.
Choosing your colors
Colors don’t just define the look of your brand, they also convey the feeling you want to communicate and help you make it consistent across everything you do. You’ll want to choose colors that differentiate you from direct competitors to avoid confusing your potential customers.
Color psychology isn’t an exact science, but it does help to inform the choices you make, especially when it comes to the color you pick for your brand logo.
The infographic below offers a nice overview of the emotions and associations that different colors generally evoke.
Consider how legible white and black text will be over your color palette and how colored text might look over white and black backgrounds. Try using a tool likeCoolorsto brainstorm colors that work together. Grab the hex codes to keep handy, and sift through different shades to find the ones you like.
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Choosing your fonts
At this point, it’s also good to look at fonts you might want to use on your website.
The best way to build a brand when it comes to fonts is by keeping it simple. Pick two fonts at most to avoid confusing visitors: one for headings and one for body text (this doesn’t include the font you might use in your brand logo).
You can useFontpairto browse from a wide selection of fonts that go well together.
寻找灵感, useStylify.meon your favorite websites to see their visual style at a glance.
6. Design your brand logo
一个品牌标志设计可能是第一批things that come to mind when you think about building a new brand. And for good reason: it’s the face of your company, after all, and could potentially be everywhere your brand is.
Ideally, you’ll want to create your brand with a logo that’s unique, identifiable, and scalable to work at all sizes (something often overlooked).
Consider all the places where your brand’s logo needs to exist:
- Website
- Social media profile picture
- Product packaging
- Video ads
- YouTube channel banner
- Favicon (the tiny icon that identifies your open browser tabs)
If you have a text logo as your Instagram avatar, for example, it’ll be almost impossible to read. To make your life easier, create a square version of your brand logo with an icon or symbol element (called a logomark) that remains recognizable even at smaller sizes.
Invest in a logo that can appear anywhere around the web and in physical print.
Notice how the Walmart logo has both the “sparks” icon and the wordmark, which can be used together or separately.
The following are some of the different logo types you can choose to help you communicate with designers and find a style that makes sense and will help establish your brand. Keep the colors and fonts you chose in mind to make sure they work together with your logo to convey your brand.
Abstract: Google Chrome
An abstract brand logo has some meaning, but really, it’s just a shape and colors that you can’t easily tie back to anything in the real world.
The benefit of an abstract logo is that it has no innate meaning—you can make this up yourself and bring it to life in your customers’ minds.
Mascot: Wendy’s
Mascot logos are often represented by the face of a character. They may humanize your business by creating a specific and relatable brand identity or personality, but be aware that they are an antiquated style now and only recommended in certain contexts (e.g., you’re deliberately going for a retro look).
Emblem: Starbucks
Emblem logos are often circular and combine text with an emblem for a bold and regal brand design. If the design is too complicated, however, they can lose their impact when you shrink them down. But done right, they can play a big influence on brand building and make for a memorable style of logo.
Lettermark: IBM
Lettermark logos turn the initials of your full business name into a brand logo. If you have abusiness name ideaconsisting of three or more words, this might be a style you want to consider, especially if the initialism is catchy.
Icon: Twitter
An icon logo is your brand represented as a visual metaphor. Unlike an abstract logo, an icon logo suggests something about the product (Twitter’s bird is suggestive of the frequent short “tweets” on the platform).
As an unestablished brand still trying to build brand awareness, you should stay away from using an icon logo by itself. However, if you’re not sure about the kind of brand logo you want, pairing an icon logo with a wordmark is usually a safe bet.
Wordmark: McDonald's
Wordmark logos turn your brand name, colors, and font into a visual identity. The problem with wordmarks is that they’re often hard to create in a scalable square design and easily lose their legibility when shrunk. But they communicate your brand name loud and clear.
McDonald’s, for example, outside of its iconic golden arches, uses a bold workmark logo with its own typeface calledLovin' Sans.
Combination: Meta
Because of the limitations that exist for each logo type, many logos are a combination of styles.
As a new small business experimenting with the best way to build a brand and logo, you don't need to choose an icon over a wordmark when you feel they’re both essential to represent your brand. A combination logo lets you get the best of both. This makes it easier to satisfy the condition of creating a scalable logo while still putting your brand name front and center.
It can be as simple as turning the first letter of your wordmark logo into an icon logo, like what Meta does with its M.
Unless you’ve got design chops of your own, you’ll probably be delegating the creation of your brand logo. You can outsource the design throughFiverrorUpworkor run a logo contest on99Designs.
Check outSeeklogofor even more logo inspiration, or use ourlogo makerto start generating some ideas. There’s also our comprehensive guide onhow to design a logo, where we walk you through the process step by step.
7. Apply your branding across your business
Applying your branding across your business gives it a cohesivebrand story.A brand story represents “who” your business is and what it stands for. It sets the stage for every interaction customers have with your brand, in-store and online.
InShopify’s research on what wins buyer and customer trust, we found that buyers shopping on an online store for the first time often look for a business’s mission and purpose to see if they share any values with the business (e.g., sustainability). They will turn to itsAbout Us pageto learn more about who they’re buying from and, for more socially conscious customers, how the business is run. If your business has a brand story, share it, because it can help the shopper feel reassured yours is a legitimate business.
When building a new brand, your positioning statement can get you started, but you’ll want to ask yourself a few questions to nail your brand story:
- What motivated me to start my business?
- Why does this company exist?
- 我们如何向世界贡献吗?
- What is the story behind my business the customer should know?
Not every business is mission-driven, but if you create your brand with a mission or values at its core, share your brand story and tell customers why the business was started. Look at the businesses TOMS and Coca-Cola, the first a mission-driven brand, the second not so much.
TOMS, a footwear and accessories company, is “in business to improve lives.” TOMS earned its strong reputation as a social enterprise with acharitable programcalled One for One, where it donated shoes to children in need. Customer could feel good about every purchase they made with TOMS.
Your brand story can evolve over time, as it did for TOMS, expanding beyond giving shoes, to giving a third of its profits to grassroots organizations focused on sustainable change.
Coca-Cola, a globally recognized soft drink business, may have corporate social responsibility initiatives, but its brand isn’t grounded in a strong social good or environmental mission. Instead, it appeals to its target market through branding that tells the story of bringing together friends to experience fun, happiness, and connection.
A customer of a Coca-Cola product can walk away feeling as if they are more socially connected with friends or loved ones if they enjoy the products together.
For business owners building a new brand, there’s a lot to learn from Coca-Cola. It offers up excellent examples of brand marketing through timeless designs, fonts, images, and colors that are instantly recognizable.
Whether or not the best way to build a brand for you involves focusing on a mission, give your customers a story to tell themselves and others about your brand.
Learn more:The Best Free Stock Photo Websites For Finding Creative Images in 2023
Evolve your brand as you grow
Building a brand doesn’t stop with creating a logo or slogan, or even with your brand awareness after launch. Your brand needs to exist and remain consistent wherever your customers interact with you—from thetheme you choosefor your website to the marketing materials you produce, all the way to how youpackageand ship your products.
You’ll continue to shape and evolve your brand design and identity as you expose more customers to it and learn more about who your customers are and how to speak to them.
You need to appreciate you will never have 100% control over how people perceive your brand identity.
You can point customers in the right direction, make a great first impression, and manage your reputation, but you can’t control the individual perceptions that exist in each person’s mind (say, if they had a bad customer service experience).
All you can do is put your best foot forward at every turn and try to resonate with your core audience. But hopefully, at this point, you have the tools, knowledge, and resources to start building your brand today.
Illustration by Pete Ryan