Regardless of how big or small your business is, branding is a significant part of it. Developing one essentially sets the tone of your brand and should be designed to communicate your business’ message and promote your goals. It also helps your audience differentiate your business from its competitors.
How Do You Make One?
After accomplishing the groundwork of competitors analysis and setting your target audience, coming up with a business name, and developing a business plan – it’s time to work on your branding. Here are 3 simple steps you can start off with.
Step 1: Choose the channel you want to focus on
There are different marketing channels you can build and implement your brand identity in. From advertising, email marketing, and websites, to the most common ones, such as influencer marketing and social media marketing. Social media marketing is a great way to deliver your business’ message. Building a brand identity through and with your social media strategy provides your business with a bigger reach. However, the social platforms are heavily shared by different brands – and most likely your competitors too! – so it’s best to consider other channels on top of it, such as influencer marketing.
Through influencer marketing, you can partner with professional content creators who already have a community who trust them and swear by their recommendations. Turning influencers into your brand ambassadors is something that you might want to consider as it has a high return on investment at an affordable price for your business. You can collaborate with nano influencers for brand awareness, engagement, or consideration campaigns. It’s an affordable yet effective way to get your brand known without breaking the bank. Regardless of what you chose, consider what is best for your business, and always remember that it is nearly impossible to work on all of the different channels all at once. Choose one and work your way up.
Step 2: Create your brand look
Once you have set your business’ values and vision, it is now time to create the look and feel of your brand. This is where you invest time and energy in finalizing the style, color, and visual elements that you want to be associated with. If you have little to no design experience, it’s best to hire someone to do the branding for you. If you choose to save money and try your hand at designing your brand assets, you can do so as well with much research and trial and error.
Step 3: Implement then monitor
After building a brand book and design guidelines, it is now time to implement your brand identity through your chosen channels. Building your brand is a continuous process; as you continue to develop and implement, you also monitor its performance and use data to figure out points of improvement that would generate better results. Analyzing and refining your brand identity is one way to remain competitive and deliver what your business stands for.
Developing a brand identity is not an easy task but it is an integral part of your business development. That’s why a lot of research goes into it. Although there are essential step-by-step on how to develop one, there are still lessons you learn along the way.
SMEs With Great Branding And What You Can Learn From Them
Curlssential
Curlssential offers a variety of hair products and accessories for curly hairs, by curly hairs. Zahraa and Zainab built the brand to educate people on how to take care of their natural hair and to provide curly hair essentials in the Filipino market. All of their products are carefully curated and ergonomically designed with all curlies in mind.
When implementing your brand identity, it is important to stay consistent amongst all channels. We’ve mentioned choosing one to focus on in the early stages, but of course, branching out into different channels is also a way to increase your business awareness. When looking at the Curlssential website and Instagram account, we can see that they are consistent in the branding assets they built during their brand identity development. Brown, black, and white—earthy, minimalistic colors—can be seen in all of their chosen channels. This consistency in branding helps their customers differentiate Curlssential from competition but also identify the brand from any of the channels they come across to.
Tapies
Tapies is an inclusive, practical, and seamless nipple cover by Rei Germar. They value women’s empowerment and inclusivity and cater to all colors and sizes. All these can be seen on their Instagram, their chosen channel. They were able to put their values into visual elements by creating content with different influencers. Partnering with women of different sizes and colors is an integral part of their brand to show their authenticity and through this, they were able to deliver their brand’s message and purpose. It also shows how passionate they are when it comes to women empowerment and inclusivity—creating a brand that is really for all women.
GRWM Cosmetics
Get Ready With Me (GRWM) Cosmetics is a makeup brand by one of the top beauty influencers in the Philippines, Mae Layug. At the start of her YouTube journey, Mae often does makeup reviews and get-ready with me videos that might have urged her to create a makeup brand. The production and development of GRWM Cosmetics took over 2 years because Mae made sure that it was vegan and cruelty-free. It goes to show that the owner’s own values are applied to the brand. This is something you might learn as well. Your own values shouldn’t be in jeopardy just for the brand you’re building and vice versa.
GRWM Cosmetics also caters to every shape, color, ethnicity, and gender—everyone. If you look at their Instagram account, they used different models with their products. Like Tapies, they were able to partner with the right influencers to deliver their message.
Conclusion
Building brand identity is not only an integral part of developing your business but also an essential part of building a good relationship with customers as it helps build loyalty and trust. A good identity shows your values and your business’ values in visual elements. It sets the tone of your brand and should be designed to communicate with your target audience. From the steps above and the different brands presented, being able to analyze their values through their branding is one step to investing time and effort into building your own.
Visit www.pop-star.me or email our Account Group Head at jamie.garcia@pop-star.me for more information on how PopStar Philippines can help you start your Influencer Marketing strategy today.