Maintaining a consistent brand image can increase revenues by 10-20%.
Still, with so much that goes into a successful brand strategy, it can be difficult to wrap your head around the right steps to take to build a consistent brand that drives measurable results.
That’s why our industry experts at Digital Silk have compiled a list of 12 helpful branding tips to guide your brand strategy.
Split into distinct steps from defining your brand to building it, our expert branding tips will help you navigate every section of the end-to-end branding process.
But before we dive into the tips, why is branding important for your business in 2024?
Why Is Branding Important In 2024?
Branding provides your business with both quick wins and long-term benefits.
While many of the impacts of branding are difficult to measure, such as brand perceptions and associations, branding can provide tangible results for your business.
For example, branding initiatives:
- Increase brand recognition: 60% of global consumers prefer to buy new products from a familiar brand rather than switch to a new brand.
- Strengthen brand loyalty: Consumers with emotional connections to brands have a 306% higher lifetime value than simply satisfied consumers.
- Produce brand advocacy: 48% of global consumers post reviews online and 36% use online reviews when researching products.
- Grow brand value: The strongest brands have market valuations nearly five times higher than their book, or tangible asset, values.
- Boost revenue: Consistent brand presentation can increase revenue by 10-20%.
Top Tips To Define Your Brand
Shaping a successful brand that appeals to your target audience and helps you achieve your business goals requires attention from the get-go.
Here are 12 top branding tips for small businesses and larger companies to define your brand and set your brand strategy in motion:
1. Be Clear About What You Offer
Be authentic and transparent from the get-go to win over and retain a loyal customer base.
This is vital in 2024 as 86% of Americans believe brand transparency is more important than ever before.
Instead of claiming to provide certain values and services because you think it’s what your customers want to hear, understand your true offerings and stick to them.
Make sure you’re clear about what you offer by:
- Gaining customer insights: Conduct surveys and interviews with your existing customers to learn their perceptions of what your brand offers.
- Conducting internal analysis: List the benefits and features of your products, services and values to help clearly articulate what sets your brand apart from the competition.
2. Define Why You Are In Business
Outline what your business wants to achieve. This way, you can align your goals with an audience that supports your mission or customers who will be positively impacted by your services.
This can be solving an actual problem with innovative products or acting for the greater good with widely beneficial services.
Given that 62% of Gen Z want to work with brands to address societal issues, displaying a meaningful purpose in 2024 is an important way to drive real audience connectivity.
Define why you are in business by:
- Analyze internal perceptions: Lead feedback sessions or surveys within your company to understand what your employees believe your brand stands for.
- Find current pain points: Develop questionnaires that ask your target audience about how they perceive your brand, services and mission. Take the findings to discover where you are falling short regarding consumer expectations and values.
- Scan social media mentions: Check social media channels for discussion around your brand and the societal issues your wish to impact. Use common findings to align your internal values with external expectations.
3. Know Your Audience
A common branding myth is that your brand should appeal to everyone. In reality, your brand should focus on the opinions, personalities and preferences of your target audience.
Take Duolingo, for example.
The education platform knows most of its audience is learning a language for fun in their spare time. So, the brand chooses not to take itself too seriously with lighthearted messaging.
Get to know your audience by:
- Conducting market research: Ask your target audience directly or use audience tracking tools like Google Analytics to discover what they care about, what they want to hear from brands like yours and what channels they interact with most.
- Creating user personas: Develop example buyer profiles for your different market segments using the information gained from your market research.
Top Tips To Develop Your Brand
Developing a brand that connects with your target audience requires strong values and ways of communicating them to your customer base.
Some top tips to establish your brand include:
4. Write A Mission & Vision Statement
Establish a meaningful foundation for your branding efforts by writing a mission and vision statement.
Your mission is what you set out every day to accomplish. Your vision is where you want to be in three to five years.
See Google’s mission and vision statements side-by-side to understand the difference between the two:
Write your mission and vision statements by:
- Brainstorming: Come together with key stakeholders to define your brand’s purpose and long-term aspirations.
- Drafting: Note concise mission and vision statements that reflect your brand’s ethos and goals.
- Sharing: Ensure your mission, vision and values are accessible to all team members, stakeholders and customers to foster alignment and commitment.
5. Outline Your Brand Values
Your company’s brand values are the fundamental beliefs that you stand by.
They are a set of shared ideas that your team has chosen to represent and stand for both verbally and through action.
Outlining your brand values is crucial as it can help guide your company’s reason for being, build connections with those who follow similar values and develop positive perceptions of your brand.
63% of global consumers choose to buy from companies based on values alone. By laying out and sticking to your values, mission and vision, your brand can drive trust and loyalty from customers with shared opinions.
Outline you brand values by:
- Reflecting on your company culture: Analyze your business’ relationships with your employees, stakeholders and customers to see which values you are portraying as your own.
- Searching for value gaps: Compare your mission and vision statements with your current actions. If they don’t align, look closer at the values you are failing to upkeep and discuss with your brand management team for ways to address this.
- Communicating with your target audience: Ask your customers and wider audience the values they expect to see from businesses. Use digital surveys, printed questionnaires or forums and social media to gather extensive feedback.
6. Shape Your Brand Positioning
Brand positioning refers to the individual value your brand provides consumers within your market. This can range from a position that leverages value or quality to one that leans on benefits or problem solving.
This way, you can differentiate your unique value proposition (UVP) from that of your competitors.
Our branding team at Digital Silk worked with Bethpage Federal Credit Union (BFCU), an NYC-based credit union, to refine their brand positioning as an innovative banking provider for younger generations and craft meaningful interactions across customer segments.
In aligning BFCU’s various UVPs with the values and expectations of its wide range of customer segments, we managed to increase user acquisition by 4,200% in one year.
Craft your brand positioning by:
- Auditing your current positioning: Assess the style of messaging and UVPs your brand currently promotes across various branded collateral and marketing channels.
- Working on messaging: Establish a set of vocabulary and tonality to match the perception you want to convey to your target audience.
- Create brand guidelines: Maintain consistency in tone, style and messaging across all communication channels by building a brand kit.
7. Write & Tell Your Brand Story
Branded storytelling is the process of bringing your brand story to life through narratives that connect with your audience.
In fact, people resonate with stories more than facts or figures.
Chip and Dan Heath, presentation experts and authors of the New York Times bestseller Made To Stick, found that 63% of presentation attendees remember the stories they use while only 5% remember the statistics.
Make the most of your brand story by:
- Outlining key brand moments: Identify important brand milestones to refer to within your stories.
- Incorporating storytelling elements: Use literary techniques like characters, conflicts and resolutions to captivate your audience with your brand messaging.
- Understanding communication styles: Track forums and social media to see how your target audience communicates and what style of stories they will connect with best.
8. Design Your Visual Identity
Establishing a strong visual identity is more than simply designing a logo.
Make sure to consider every element of your brand’s visual experience, from font choice and colors to supporting color palettes, elements and imagery.
Take plant-based milk provider Oatly, for example.
Its brand overhaul focused on using packaging design as a main media channel, much like a poster. Through engaging designs and eye-catching messaging, Oatly became a progressive disrupter in the milk manufacturing market.
Oatly is now one of the most recognizable milk alternatives, operating with 73% brand awareness in the U.K. and having increased net sales in Sweden by over 15x between 2012 and 2022.
Design a winning visual identity by:
- Developing a brand style guide: Outline logo usage, color palettes, typography and imagery guidelines to ensure consistency.
- Hiring brand designers: Create visually appealing assets that align with your brand’s aesthetic through the support of professional brand design experts.
- Considering brand touchpoints: Consistently apply your visual identity across all touchpoints, including your website, packaging and advertising materials.
Meet our experts. Schedule A Consultation
Top Tips To Craft Your Brand Messaging
Your brand’s messaging is crucial in the way you promote your products and services, highlight your brand identity and drive brand awareness.
Here’s how to get your brand messaging right:
9. Match Your Actions & Words
Making unsubstantiated claims can damage your brand’s reputation.
Delivering on your brand’s promises and messages is an important way to gain trust. Your brand shouldn’t promote certain values just because you think you need to.
In fact, 63% of customers expect a brand’s values to be evident in what they do, compared to 62% in what they say.
Match your actions and words by:
- Delivering on promises: Don’t overcommit to, or exaggerate, values or goals you can’t achieve.
- Choosing collaborations carefully: Ensure all brand partnerships support your mission and vision statements, as well as the core values held by your target audience.
10. Have A Content Plan
Producing content that reinforces your brand identity and spreads brand awareness in 2024 is more than just writing articles.
Create a content strategy that leverages social media, forums and website content to inform and engage your audience through authentic conversations.
One of the best ways to leverage these platforms is through user-generated content (UGC) and influencer marketing.
As content created by people, not brands, UGC provides real insights to your consumers and works as a form of social proof for your brand, products and services.
It’s why 74% of U.S. marketers aim to spend at least a quarter of their budgets on partnering with content creators.
Create a content plan by:
- Choosing your channels: Decide which platforms your audience engages with most, from Facebook to Reddit, and invest in the touchpoints that will have the greatest impact on recognition and brand perception.
- Engaging with on-brand topics: Avoid conversations that do not match your brand’s tone or reflect your brand’s perception.
- Monitoring online conversations: Use social listening tools like Brand24 to track brand and topic mentions to shape your future content themes.
Meet our team. Schedule A Consultation
Top Tips To Maintain Your Brand
A brand is only as strong as its current perceptions.
Abercrombie & Fitch, for example, was a teen staple in the 1990s and 2000s but now has associations with unrealistic beauty standards and unethical hiring practices.
Maintain your brand reputation and value with these branding tips from industry experts:
11. Think Of Branding As A Continuous Practice
You don’t just create a brand and walk away.
You must nurture it through participating in the right brand activities, listening to your customers and adapting your messaging to reflect their needs and shifting competitive landscapes.
Take Coca-Cola, for example.
The carbonated drinks company is one of the most well-known brands in the world. But this doesn’t stop them from regularly refreshing the Coca-Cola brand image, or logos as shown below, to match changes in consumer preferences and trends.
Continually invest in your brand by:
- Get team members on board: Make sure everyone at your company knows your brand values and is organized and aligned to deliver, whether adjusting to a new team member or an updated brand strategy.
- Initiating regular feedback: Solicit feedback from customers and stakeholders to assess brand perception and identify areas for improvement.
- Monitoring and auditing your brand: Be ready to adjust your branding to match shifting variables in the marketplace like new entrants, macroeconomic events and changing trends.
12. Stay The Course
While tactics may evolve, the core foundations of your brand should remain consistent over time to build credibility and reputation.
Building a recognizable brand with positive associations is crucial in shaping customer decisions.
In fact, 71% of consumers claim that it is important that they recognize a brand before making a purchase.
Help your brand stay the course by:
- Reinforcing brand values: Continuously promote your values and goals through messaging across all communication channels and customer interactions.
- Revisiting brand guidelines: Regularly refer to and refine your brand strategy and guidelines to ensure they remain aligned with your business goals and market trends.
- Using employer branding: Foster a culture of brand stewardship within your organization, where every employee understands and embodies the essence of your brand.
Grow Your Brand With Digital Silk
Branding tips are a useful way to guide your brand strategy, from your brand foundation to growth and management.
But to build a strong brand that drives recognition, loyalty and revenues, there is more to consider than high-level branding tips from industry experts.
At Digital Silk, we have a team of experienced branding specialists on hand to manage every aspect of your brand strategy and deliver measurable results for your business.
As a full-service branding and web design company, we offer end-to-end solutions such as:
- Brand foundation
- Brand strategy
- Brand messaging
- Brand design
- Digital branding
- Custom web design and development
- Digital marketing
For every project, we make sure to:
- Take project ownership
- Give total transparency
- Achieve measurable results
Contact our team, call us at (800) 206-9413 or fill the Request a Quote form below to schedule a free, custom consultation for your branding project.
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