Key Pillars for Building a Successful Brand

Branding activities let you develop a solid position among the target audience, helping you improve your sales. When done properly, good branding campaigns can give your business a whole new meaning.

The experts at Identify Digital agree that the key pillars of successful branding are awareness, trust, engagement, customer relationships, innovation and employee satisfaction. But these are the results of certain actions that brands need to perform over a certain period.

So, let’s take a look at the actions that you can take today to achieve these results.

A unique brand voice

To be real, you need something that makes you special while you are standing out in the noise and clutter of the web. Your brand voice can help you achieve that.

One way to describe brand voice is that it is the combination of your social media’s consistency, how you communicate on your website, and even how you speak at conferences and events.

If your brand is not unique, you can’t establish trust among your audience.

Remember that creating a unique brand voice means identifying who you really are. Do you know what your unique trait is or why people should care about you? If you answered no, then it’s time to start doing some thinking!

Distinguished value and values

A successful brand commands trust. It deals ethically, stands behind its products or services, and is emotionally compelling.

Branding isn’t just about creating a logo, a tagline, or a colour scheme for your company. It is much more difficult than that. It actually starts with you as a person and how you apply the values you believe in every day to your business.

When you have your values in place, it helps you narrow down your value proposition – a blend of your vision, mission, and principles – to a single line.

For instance, Nike’s short tagline of “Just do it” is an example of a distinguished value proposition. The implication behind the statement is that the product will help you succeed no matter what challenges you have set for yourself. And that’s what you need to do for your brand.

A purpose bigger than making money

Successful entrepreneurs understand that they have a higher purpose than just making money – they want to make a difference. They have the passion, dedication, and desire to leave their mark on the world.

To build a successful brand, you have to come up with a purpose that inspires you and makes you get out of bed every day. And it must align with your brand and motivate you to achieve your goals and change your industry.

Don’t believe us? Read about any failed venture or VC that refused to fund a business because their sole objective was to get rich. If your brand’s purpose isn’t to solve a problem, the chance of it succeeding would be slim to none.

Consistent visibility

Your product is great. Your services are exemplary. Your team is top-notch. And you have a website that welcomes people and educates them about your offerings. But you are still not getting the sales you should be getting.

If that sounds like something you are struggling with, you need to shift your focus on improving your brand visibility to generate more traffic and drive more customers.

People are fickle and easily distracted. They get bored easily and move on to search for the next best product to buy or the next best place to go. But if you can find a way to maintain a (positive) presence in front of them, you will never lose your prospective customers to the competition.

A well-defined customer segment

When you define your customers, you need to have a picture in your head of who they are and what their preferences are.

If you are selling to businesses, for example, then knowing your customers could mean knowing the type of office they run and the problems they experience on a daily basis.

When you know your segment, you can figure out their pain points and customise your communication to address their exact needs.

This will help you establish a stronger connection with your prospective customers and make sure they come to you every time they need a product or service like yours.

Authenticity

Have you noticed how every other brand operating in the beauty industry today is claiming to be ‘cruelty-free?’

Going cruelty-free means making a lot of expensive decisions – from altering the ingredient list to changing your vendors. So, it can be extremely difficult for brands to position themselves as cruelty-free.

But a quick Google search will tell you that the industry has modified the definition of cruelty-free from ‘not using products derived from animals’ to ‘not testing on animals.’

By that definition, your cruelty-free lipstick might have shark squalene – something that greatly contributes to the endangerment of sharks.

So, as a consumer, you could still be harming animals by buying cruelty-free beauty products. And it would all be because a brand chose to be inauthentic. Needless to say, this will definitely alter its image in your mind forever.

As a brand, you can’t ‘fake it till you make it’ – that only works until people take a closer look at the fine print. And then, you are set for a lifetime of image correction.

All things considered, being authentic from the beginning is a good way to ensure your brand succeeds in the market.

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter if you are a solopreneur or a Fortune 500 company, building a successful brand is no easy feat. It requires you to be consistent across all of your marketing channels. And it takes years of hard work because marketing isn’t an overnight success. That’s why you need to build it on strong pillars that can’t be shaken.

As a digital marketing agency that has worked with countless businesses, Identify Digital knows the variables that make and break a brand. So, if you would like to benefit from professional insights and an expert set of eyes, drop us a line to have a word.