Before we discuss the 7  Painless Steps to Building a Brand, let’s highlight the importance of this article and what you should focus on first, when building a brand – Goals! We have to focus on the goals.

Everything else is just a tool that helps us accomplish these goals, and these goals are the core fundamentals of building a successful brand.

First, let’s understand what a brand is not. A brand is not just a name.

Brands use names to distinguish their products and services. When people go to the market and they want to buy a product they need to know who made the product and what the quality of the product is.

When they buy the product and return home, they try it (experience). If they like that experience. it becomes their default purchasing choice and the next time when they go back to the market, they will just buy that product.

A brand is not a logo or a business card. Logos and business cards are components of the visual identity of a brand. Visual identity is only a part of branding. A set of tools such as logo, colour, style, and photos.

Brands will use it to describe and communicate their messages to their audience visually. A brand is not a social media page. Social media is a digital marketing tool to interact with, entertain, inform, and educate the brand audience.

Building a brand: What is a brand?

A brand is an idea of a person or corporation which is perceived by the customer’s trust and experience. For a brand to succeed, it must represent its true real value and keep and deliver what it promises to its audience.

Let’s imagine that you have a great idea for a great brand. Now you take this idea and you look for your friends. They are the closest people to you. They might listen to you. We want to call your friends.

Our target audience, your friends will start to listen to you. Listen to your ideas and analyze them. They probably will give it a shot. While they are experiencing it if they like it. If delivered as we promised and they gain benefits from it, then they might buy it, love it, and become loyal to our idea, if we don’t deliver as we promised.

But if they dislike our product or dislike our service they will turn their back, get angry and might not give us a second chance. 

In summary, we need to understand that we need to have a unique and honest idea. We need to communicate it clearly, and we must deliver as we promised.

Goals Required in Building an Outstanding Brand

1. Emotions

That’s right, understanding your customer’s emotions and wants is essential for building a brand, fulfilling our audience’s emotions will allow us to bridge the gap between them and us, it sends the message that you care. Ask yourself, what type of emotion am I trying to establish with my audience?

• Is it about love? Do I want them to love me? 
• or is it about joy?
• Do I want them to feel happy when they see me?

2. Desires

For us to attract our audience to our brand, we must design it to fulfil or satisfy a human desire, think of all the great brands around you, they all work in the business of human desires. Ask yourself, what type of desire are we trying to satisfy? Is it;

• Happiness?
• Food?
• Sensual desire?
• Power?
• Or security?

3. Differentiation

For you the success we have to innovate. Innovation does not mean that we have to create new products. We may have an old product but represent it in a new way to a new segment of people.

Ask yourself, how can I differentiate and stand out from the competition?

4. Trust

Without trust, no one is going to deal with you. We may have the best product in the market with the lowest price ever. But if no one is aware of our good quality or if we cheat once, then we ruin it all.

Ask yourself, how can we establish a solid, trustworthy relationship with our audience?

• Is this through customer service?
• Is it through a great product?

5. Value

We must deliver a valuable product. People are always eager to trade their money and time for a high-value product. As long as it improves the quality and efficiency of their lives. 

Ask yourself this simple question;

How can we use the least amount of materials and content to simplify and deliver valuable and meaningful content?

6. Connection

We need to build a brand that allows your audience to be connected to you and other people as well. In the end, it’s not about you. It’s all about how strongly we’re connected with the outside world. Always ask yourself;

How can we connect and share our customer’s emotions throughout our brand experience?

7. Belongingness

When building a brand, your brand should be at the centre of our audience universe. Our brand experience should allow different types of people who share the same habits, goals, and beliefs to be safely together and feel included. Ask yourself, 

How can you support your audience’s personality and beliefs?

Now that you have these seven goals in mind, we will reference them in subsequent articles on branding. Let’s highlight the steps required to accomplish these seven goals.

Steps Necessary in Building a Brand

1. Your idea

You need to have a specific idea and your idea cannot be vague. This idea must be valuable for people, and it needs to have a mission, vision and purpose. To properly evaluate your idea, ask yourself;

• Why do you have this idea?
• What are you planning to do with this idea?

2. Idea positioning. 

The positioning has to do with the environment and unique selling proposition. 

• What are you offering your audience and why should they pay for it?
• What does differentiate you from the competition?

3. Idea personality and attitude.

What type of person do you want to be perceived? Are you a;

• powerful person?
• funny person?
• caring person?

We will dedicate an entire article to better explain this topic. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive notifications on new articles.

4. Attractiveness

Idea attractiveness has to do with the outlook and feel of your idea and how people perceive it. It has to do with the visual identity like colours, typeface, design elements and concepts.

It also means paying attention to small details. Highly detailed products are perceived as high-value products, While poorly detailed products are perceived as low-value products.

5. Connection and Communication.

This involves your process of connecting and communicating your ideas with others. What type of communication channel are we trying to use to connect with our audience? Is it;

•  social media? 
• commercial? 
• printed ads?
• local event? 

Also, it has to do with the brand overall experience you are trying to create.

How do you want people to share and connect on a deeper level with your brand experience? And what kind of platform are they going to use to share your brand experience with the rest of the world?

Use these seven easy goals and steps as a guideline throughout your process of building a brand. Share this article if you find it useful and don’t forget to ask questions in the comment session.