Key Steps for Building a Better Brand for Your Business

Whether you’ve invested a lot of time and effort into the process of brand building for your business, now is the perfect time to begin. In fact, depending on how long you’ve been operating your business, you may even be a little bit behind the curve.

Not to worry if you haven’t yet. Even major corporations have elected to rebrand with varying degrees of success in the past. For instance, The Huffington Post rebranded in 2016 to HuffPost with great success.

Other businesses that have also enjoyed great success with rebranding efforts over the decades include FedEx, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and UPS.

On the other side of the coin are a few epic failures when it comes to rebranding. In fact, one was so bad the company walked it back.

In case you’ve forgotten, IHOP (the International House of Pancakes) once came out with a massive campaign to rebrand as IHOB (the International House of Burgers). It wasn’t long before IHOP reverted to its original name and the rest is rebranding history.

The bottom line is that branding is important for businesses of all shapes and sizes. It doesn’t matter if your business is online, offline, or both. Building your brand is essential for long-term growth and trust with consumers.

These tips will help you build your brand with success in mind and avoid some of the costly failures other businesses have experienced when branding and rebranding.

Tip #1. Define Your Identity

The identity of your business is a major component of effective branding. It is also the first step to consider when building a brand, choosing a logo, etc. You can’t really introduce your business to the world if you don’t have a concrete concept of its identity.

The last thing you want to do is invest time, money, effort, and energy into building a brand only to have an identity crisis one or two years into the process and have to begin again. That is why defining your identity must be the first step when building your brand.

Tip #2. Build Your Brand Online and Offline

Regardless of where you operate your business, your branding efforts need to exist in both spaces to gain real traction in society today.

This includes a robust social media presence on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even LinkedIn and should not diminish the importance of a website that is easy to find, simple to navigate, and attractive or a blog that provides frequent infusions of new content about your business.

Offline efforts need to include radio, television, billboards, and newspaper ads to reach out to your local audience.

Additionally, invest in a range of promotional products to give out at local events, trade shows, and to VIP customers and employees alike so they can promote your business every time they use your gifts in the presence of others.

Tip #3. Use Promotional Items to Solidify Your Brand

Even internet audiences love getting freebies with their orders. Promotional products make excellent freebies in some cases. There are a few rules to consider when choosing promotional items that represent your business to your customers.

These tips will help you choose from the many promotional products available to get the ones that will matter most to your target audience.

• Choose items that are useful to your customers or people you hope will become your customers.
• Pick tasteful items people will want to use.
• Make your logo and branding easy to see and recognize.
• Select items that are good for more than one-time use.

In other words, disposable water bottles to give out with your branding and logo may be useful, but they are thrown away after one use.

A refillable water bottle or stainless-steel travel mug, on the other hand, is one people will use over and over again, returning a much greater return on your investment.

Tip #4. Start a Company Blog

Once again, this is essential for brick-and-mortar businesses that do not make online transactions at all as well as businesses that operate solely on the World Wide Web.

A blog is one of your most important assets for effective Search Engine Optimization which is how new people discover your business.

In fact, dollar for dollar, blogs are even more effective than the average ad campaign, especially when done well, because they continue delivering results long after an ad campaign would end.

Blogs create organic traffic, build trust with your audience, and position your business as a thought leader or expert resource in your industry.

It is a winner on every level as long you provide a steady stream of accurate information that appeals to your audience and the search engines.

Building a better brand isn’t rocket science. However, it requires defining your identity, understanding your target audience, and getting your message in front of people online and in the real world.