Creating your business brand
Your brand is how you will connect with your customers. It sets the tone for how you present your business to the world.
Define your business
To develop your brand, you must be clear on:
- why your business exists
- your business values and what you stand for
- what problems your business solves
Go back to the original business plan you used when validating your business idea. Use this for inspiration and to help you focus on what you want your brand to communicate.
Understand your customer
Identify your target customer. Think about:
- who they are – their age, location and demographics
- where they are – how they will find and engage with your brand
- how they behave – what language or visual markers speak to them
This will help you to identify the style and tone you want for your brand. Is it sleek, modern, classic, simple?
Understand your competition
Understanding your competition helps you to understand what’s unique or different about your product and how you can market that to customers.
Aim to find out:
- how much competitors charge
- how competitors advertise and promote their products or services
- how competitors make or provide their products and services
- what makes your business different and where you could fit in the market
Develop your brand identity
Use what you’ve learned in research to shape your brand identity. Think about:
- your visual identity – logos, colour schemes, fonts, photography or illustrations
- your brand personality – your tone of voice, your characteristics or traits, your language and communication style
Use graphic design tools, or work with a designer, to come up with designs to test and refine.
Create brand guidelines
Once you’ve defined your brand personality and visual identity, you can formalise these in brand guidelines.
Your brand guidelines should:
- set out your business values and how the brand reinforces those
- explain how to use your logo, (and how not to use it)
- include your brand colour scheme, (including colour mode references for these)
- show how your brand can be applied to different products and in different contexts
- set the tone for your messaging, including your tone of voice, style guide and approach to creating content
Working with professional designers
If you hire a professional designer to help you with branding, ask them to include brand guidelines in their package so that your branding remains consistent after your contract with the designer ends.
If you hire a professional designer to help you with branding, ask them to include brand guidelines in their package so that your branding remains consistent after your contract with the designer ends.
