8 Key Elements of Brand Building

Your brand is one of the most valuable assets to you and your company, and building a quality brand is a lot more involved than designing a logo and printing it on your business cards.

Branding helps customers know what to expect from your company, remember your products, and distinguishes you from the competition.

If you’re a small business owner, dialing in your brand identity is essential – you’re competing against major corporations with entire marketing teams devoted to clarifying and promoting their brand image. A small business is primarily built on integrity, so consistency with your brand across your full company is essential. So, how do you start effectively building your brand? Continue reading and you can always reach out to Tower Local for help in your brand.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis helps you make well-informed business decisions by considering what’s already working, what can be improved upon, and what’s harming your brand and needs to be discarded or mitigated if possible. A SWOT analysis is similar to an old-fashioned pro and con list.

Still, it allows you to consider internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) and external factors (opportunities and threats) that will determine your more significant business decisions, such as creating or changing your brand identity. Consider the following when making a SWOT analysis for your brand:

Strengths

• What does my business already do well?
• What advantages do I have over competitors?
• How is my brand already well-aligned with the direction I want my company to go?
• Does my brand have a unique or compelling narrative, product, or service?
• What aspects of my brand already resonate with my target audience?

Weaknesses

• Where does my business struggle?
• What disadvantages do I have compared to my competitors?
• What elements of my brand are inconsistent, unfocused, or inauthentic?
• What aspects of my brand aren’t connecting with my target audience?
• What aspects of my brand don’t align with the direction I’d like my company to grow?

Opportunities

• What business contacts do I have that may help my brand?
• Do I have a substantial online presence, including a business presence on various social media accounts?
• Are there opportunities for new product development?
• Is there an underserved niche in my business area?
• Are there current trends that my business can naturally connect with?
• Am I connected with influencers in my target audience?

Threats

• What competitors offer similar products or services at a lower cost or higher quality?
• Are there current trends or cultural shifts that could hurt my business?
• Is my business connected to any organization that my key audience may view negatively?
• Are there cultural shifts or current events that could cause my brand to be perceived negatively? (consider a brand logo that may be seen as cultural appropriation, a business name that used to be considered neutral but took on negative associations such as Isis, etc.)

A SWOT analysis can be performed for free in just a few hours and provides a comprehensive overview of your company’s identity and your brand that you can use to inform your decisions in the future. Remember, a SWOT is only going to be helpful if it’s honest. Present your company as it is in your SWOT analysis, not as you wish it were.

Vision Statement

A vision statement is a concise, clear statement that outlines the philosophy and goals of your business. Vision statements are not the same as mission statements. Mission statements are grounded in reality and should include your company’s key objectives and the steps you’re taking to fulfill those objectives. Vision statements can be loftier – consider what impact you want your company to have on the world or the people it serves.

Vision statements are short and must be thoughtfully considered, as you need to sum up your brand’s ethos succinctly. Consider looking at the vision statements of both direct competitors and successful corporations. You don’t want to copy them, but this can give you a starting point to consider how your company’s core philosophy is similar and different from what already exists and what kind of visions resonate with a wide swath of the public.

Consider Nike’s vision statement: Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world {*if you have a body, you’re an athlete]. Nike’s vision statement directs its brand identity. Nike wants to be seen as an inspiring and innovative company.

That may have influenced their decision to incorporate progressive political culture into their ad campaigns -their ads have invited discourse about racial justice, disability, AIDS activism, and sexism in sports. They’re intentionally marketing their product to younger, more culturally progressive customers that are more open to new, innovative products (Nike’s target audience is 15-40). At the same time, Nike keeps their definition of “athlete” incredibly broad, which contributes to their brand’s success with a wide variety of young people, not just those who run marathons or play sports.

Mission Statement

Your mission statement should take the idealism of your vision statement and bring it down to Earth. Your mission statement needs to address what your company wants to do, why your company wants to do it, and the concrete steps your company is taking to achieve your stated objective.

Like your vision statement, your mission statement needs to be clear and concise, but it can provide practical information about how your business can serve your target audience. Your vision statement describes the ideal that you’d like to achieve someday. Your mission statement needs to tell your key audience what you actively do every day to keep your company in line with your vision.

Key Audience

You need to know who your key audience is to know if your brand is resonating. Your key audience will be determined by who your business serves – if you run a makeup company, you probably don’t want branding that primarily appeals to men over 55. If you have existing customers, be sure to examine analytics associated with your internet presence. Who is engaging with your brand? Are these the same people who are served by your product?

You don’t want to cast a wide net and see which customers you manage to reel in. Targeting your branding to your key audience makes your customers feel seen and understood and increases their engagement with your business, which translates to more revenue.

Suppose you’re utterly clueless about who your product serves. In that case, you may want to consider market research to help you dial in on your key audience’s demographics and psychographics so that you can adjust your brand accordingly. If you feel that your brand is on point but it’s not reaching your key audience, you need to consider where you’re focusing your marketing efforts.

For example, TikTok probably isn’t the best place to focus money and energy on marketing a product aimed at new grandparents. Where does your key audience get their information? Where do they have an online presence? Are there influencers already engaged with the key audience that you can partner with?

Brand Positioning Statement

Your brand positioning statement establishes your niche in the market and is the guideline for all advertising and marketing decisions. Brand positioning statements address several key points:

• Who you serve (key audience)
• What your brand is
• What your product is
• What makes you different than your competitors (point of difference)
• What benefit your product provides to your key audience (end benefit)
• Why your key audience should trust your brand (reason to believe)

When crafting your brand positioning statement, consider that it needs to be:

• clear
• memorable
• written with your key audience in mind
• honest (don’t make promises to your key audience that you can’t deliver)
• unique (you’re looking to establish a niche in the market)

When considering new marketing campaigns, reference your brand positioning statement to see if it aligns with your stated brand statement.

Does your new marketing campaign strengthen your brand identity or dilute it? Does it serve your key audience? Does it help you deliver what you’ve promised in your brand positioning statement and encourage trust in your brand?

If you’re having difficulty creating your brand positioning statement, eCornell has a brand positioning statement generator which can be a helpful starting point.

Business Goals

When creating or changing your brand, you need to consider how your brand identity helps or hinders your business goals and how you can achieve your goals while remaining authentic to your brand. What is your business plan for becoming and staying profitable, and how can you achieve that in a way that aligns with your core values and brand positioning statement?

When considering your business goals, consider everything through the lens of your brand identity. What are your company’s long-term financial expectations, what are the short-term goals that will keep you on track to meet those expectations, and what actionable items that align with your brand can you take to meet your short-term goals?

If you’ve built your brand around eco-consciousness, cutting costs in production by choosing a cheap but environmentally unfriendly supplier could kill trust in your business, so you may need to consider a price increase or a marketing campaign that can increase traffic if you’re not meeting your goals. Conversely, if you’ve built your brand around being cost-saving, you’ll want to explore every avenue for cutting costs internally before you raise your prices.

Brand Personality

Your brand’s personality is human characteristics that allow your brand to connect with your key audience emotionally. Consider the personality you’d like your brand to have – is your brand adventurous? Luxurious? Youthful? Spiritual? Almost any descriptor you can apply to a person can be used for a brand.

Your brand personality should have a consistent set of traits that help you connect and communicate with your key audience. Customers engage with brands with a personality that they enjoy – either one similar to their own or that they admire.

If you’re just starting to engage with the concept of creating a personality for your brand, consider reading Dimensions of Brand Personality by Jennifer L. Aaker, which provides a framework for how brands express their character through 5 key dimensions – competence, sincerity, excitement, sophistication, and ruggedness.

Resist the temptation to try to be everything to everyone. Not having enough personality traits can make your brand seem sterile and dull, but trying to incorporate every personality trait waters down your identity until it’s meaningless. Focus on your engagement with your key audience and your niche.

Key Messaging

Key messages are the core of your business communication and should be used everywhere you communicate with your audience. Key messages are not taglines. They don’t need to be catchy or word-for-word memorizable, but they do need to be carefully planned so that your main points are understood and remembered.

Key messages communicate succinctly what your business does, how you’re different from your competition, and what value your company has for people engaged with your brand. You need to consider your key audience when crafting key messages – what is their conversational style like? What do they find motivating? If you have multiple key audiences, you will need to tailor your key messaging to each group.

Your key messaging will need to be simple, honest, and positive. You want to avoid any technical or business jargon that consumers might not understand. You’ll need to be able to support your key messaging with evidence and supporting statements, so don’t promise anything that you can’t deliver or make claims that aren’t true – overembellishment can make your business seem untrustworthy.

Keep your key messaging upbeat and positive – you want to convey precise information and create a positive emotional association between your business and your key audience.

Creating a comprehensive and consistent brand identity has many components and takes a lot of work but can have huge payoffs in increasing customer loyalty, engagement, and business recognition. A quality brand helps your business stand out from the competition and compete with larger companies.

Such an essential part of your business should be carefully planned and managed – neglecting your brand means that you’re handing over control of how your company is perceived to the court of public opinion, which rarely plays out in your favor.

Take the time to create a brand that aligns with your vision and actively engages your key audience. You can begin to attract more business (and have more control in attracting the kind of business you want!) and take pride in running a business that appears professional, reliable, and high-quality.