3 crucial considerations in building your brand

Bad branding is a disaster for any business. Good branding is OK, but it will only take you so far. Great branding? That sets up your business for ongoing and enduring success – whatever your competition. Here’s how to do it.

What is branding?

The answer is more complex than most people expect (hint: no, it’s not just a pretty logo).

Over the last three decades, we’ve worked on hundreds of branding projects. Each has their own nuances and complexities, but our experience has shown that – broadly speaking – there are three crucial elements that go into any successful brand:

• Brand identity
• Brand consistency
• Brand repetition

Brand identity is the base of any future success

Think of building a brand as a similar task to building a house. Your brand identity is equivalent to the foundations. It is the absolutely critical part of your business’s marketing activity. Without a brand identity, you have nothing to stand on.

It’s essential you take time to understand how brand identity is more than simply a logo. Done well, your brand identity is one of your company’s most valuable assets. It includes everything from your logo, fonts, colours, tone of voice, imagery styles and even your company values.

Your brand identity helps people to develop certain thoughts, feelings or responses whenever they see or hear about your company.

A strong brand identity will enable you to answer both of these questions positively:

• Do consumers recognise my brand?
• Are we a consumer’s first thought when they need our product/service?

Brand consistency is crucial for making progress

Having laid your brand’s foundations with a well thought through brand identity, you’re now able to start building the walls and the rest of the structure.

Every time your brand is seen – whether by consumers, prospects or your day-to-day business partners – you must reinforce your brand identity. That means consistency is essential.

Think again of our house analogy. Every moment your brand interacts with someone is another brick in the wall of your house. Do you want consistency in the shape, size and colour of your house’s bricks? Or would a house made from an assortment of different sizes, shapes and colour be a better bet? We know which one we’d invest in for you!

Have a look at the landscape in which you operate. Are your competitors doing better than you? If so, try to think about how their brand is helping them do that. Do they have a consistency that you haven’t yet reached?

Consistency builds trust and trust, in turn, helps to increase your brand’s value. With that trust in place, you’ll attract more customers and retain them for longer. Perhaps that’s why 77% of B2B marketing leaders say branding is critical to growth (Circle Research, B2B Marketing Leaders Report).

Brand repetition is the finishing touch

Finally, it’s time to hammer home your brand originality with strategic and well-executed positioning and repetition.

This is equivalent to the roof on your house as the finishing touch. With repetition and positioning, you create a safe environment in which you know your business has maximised its chance of success.