Please Note: The content and opinions expressed in this article are purely my own – I have not received any commissions or sponsorships for publishing the following content or links, nor have I used AI to write any parts of this article.
If you're about to embark on creating a new small business brand, one of the things you absolutely shouldn't skimp on is the strategy around your brand's identity.
And if possible, spending some time on this before focusing on the visual design of your brand's logo, colours and fonts is a best-practice.
Let's take a look at the first few steps I recommend clients take on their brand-building journey...
I know it can be really exciting to jump into being creative with colours, fonts and logo ideas early on after coming up with a brand idea, but, if you can resist, I'd highly recommend holding off on this until you've spent a bit of time developing your brand strategy (see the steps below).
The reason I give this warning is because I've seen a lot of clients fall into this trap, and then try to introduce strategy after we've worked on design together, and it often doesn't really work, and the design process needs to be re-started from scratch (>_<).
Okay, without further ado, let's take a look at those steps...
Branding is – on a fundamental level at least – a strategic marketing tool, so it's important to understand the marketing environment you're operating in.
Because standing out for the right reasons is such an important part of branding, we need to have a good understanding of the other options available to our customers in the marketplace, so that we can then differentiate ourselves from them strategically.
So, it may not be the most exciting or even the most pleasant step, but I always recommend that clients begin their strategy development process by creating a list of brands that are serving the audience they'd like to serve themselves, and rank them loosely in terms of effectiveness and relevance to their vision.
Branding is all about communicating your business' value whilst demonstrating how you stand out from the crowd, so the first step in actually building a brand identity is to define some Key Value Propositions for your brand. In essence, this is a list of the key benefits you promise to provide to your customers as a result of them choosing your business.
Remember to think about the unique benefits you can offer your customers that they can't quite find elsewhere – even if they are only small things, it's important in branding to always be looking to set yourself apart.
Aim for a list of about 3 or 4 value propositions as a general rule-of-thumb, then order your list from most important to your audience, to least important to your audience.
You now have a set of KVPs. Step 2 complete!
Okay, now let's start to take some baby steps towards defining how the brand will express itself creatively, by boiling down the KVPs we created in the previous step, into simpler themes and concepts that we can explore creatively in the future.
So, looking closely at the KVPs you defined in the previous step, see if you can simplify each point into a single creative theme or concept that underpins that proposition. Some examples could include "we offer a supportive, understanding, family-oriented approach" as one creative theme, or "we are powerful protectors of our clients' rights" as another, or even "we're the trusted leaders in our field" as a third example.
In essence, we're starting to create that signature feel and sense of identity, by establishing some basic themes of how you do business a little differently to other brands.
Aim for about 3 or 4 creative themes here, and list them in order of importance to your brand's identity. Great job, step 2 complete!
You've now made a really solid start on building a strategic brand identity for your new business idea, so that's really super!
By taking the time to properly research similar brands in your marketplace, and then carefully defining your unique promises of value, and then translating those promises into creative themes/concepts, we've begun the process of moving from initial vision to creative expression – but we're still early in the process.
Many times misalignments occur in brands because their creators don't connect these dots – they fail to properly align their brand's purpose with their brand's creative expression, and this leads to brands that are inauthentic and inconsistent.
However, if you've read this far, I'm betting you're not about to let that happen, and that's a really positive mindset to have.
Thanks for reading, and if you have any thoughts about this article, or would like to learn more about the next steps, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
(P.S. I'll probably be introducing more of these brand-building steps in future blog posts, so stay tuned!)
