How to Create a Brand
You may have been thinking of a business idea for some time now and don’t quite know how to get it off the ground. Well, this guide on how to create a brand from scratch is here to help you, and we will cover multiple topics that you can follow in order to start your brand. We will detail the basics that you need to figure out and then you can put it all together in the end and hopefully come up with a brand that you’re happy with.
Building a successful brand can be challenging, so starting from the ground up and carefully planning each element is vital for its success. After you come up with a solid idea and plan for your brand, you can then learn how to build a brand strategy and execute it effectively.
There are many steps in the brand building process, but with some patience and good consideration and analyzation, you could create a brand that resonates with its target audience and produces positive results for you.
How to Create a Brand Identity
Before you can start a brand, you need to identify a few key factors and decide on certain aspects that you want it to have. You would surely have a few ideas in mind already, but these could easily change as you start to analyze everything and realize what better options there may be. Let’s start by identifying the first aspect of your brand.
Your Customers
These are the people who will actually buy your products or services and keep you in business. So, it’s probably no surprise that your branding should be geared towards them.
First, you need to identify who your typical customer would be. This, of course, would depend on what you sell.
Your typical customer would be made up of certain personality traits and characteristics. These can include things such as hobbies, interests, employment, education, age, gender, marital status, location, language, wealth, etc.
They could be single professionals aged 30 – 45 who value their appearance.
This type of demographic could be interested in high-end products as they have more disposable income.
You don’t need to profile every single trait and characteristic possible, but your ideal customer will have ones that are commonly shared.
Once you can identify what the most common traits are, you should be able to come up with a style that these people would like.
So going back to before with the single professionals who could be interested in high-end products; your branding would need to convey a look and feel of luxury mixed with sleek and a contemporary style.
Mercedes does this style very well across their branding.
Color Psychology
The colors that you can see play on your subconscious and tell your brain how to think and associate with what you’re seeing. This is known as Color Psychology.
Colors play a big part in your perception of things and this strategy is used by many major global brands.
Your branding strategy should make use of this technique too, and you should identify a color scheme that relates to your business and its vision.
With this color scheme, you should use it to maintain consistency across all of your branding.
Let’s say you have chosen green and grey as your two predominant colors for example.
Those colors would then need to feature in the same fashion for everything your brand encompasses such as your website, social media profiles, letterheads, emails, newsletters, business cards, stickers, content marketing material, and your products and packaging if possible.
In fact, some large multi-national corporations have made their color schemes so identifiable that they were able to trademark their color!
All trademarked colors for certain use.
You can try using Adobe Color to come up with a nice color palette for your branding.
Your Brands Look
Successful brands have particular looks and styles that are the common theme for everything that features their branding. The style could be anything from minimalist, to tech, nautical, contemporary, abstract, monotone, and much more.
Every aspect of the branding will somehow be related to the chosen theme, whether it be a minor or significant detail.
Take a look around the websites of some major brands you can think of and analyze what you think their theme is.
Mercedes – Luxury Cars
Subway – Sandwiches/Subs
Coca-Cola – Beverages
Apple – Marketing
You will notice that not only do they have a certain look to their website, but they have also used color psychology and have a consistent color scheme used throughout the site.
Typography
So what style of font are you going to use for your branding?
Using multiple fonts is fine, but what you use them for should be consistent across the board.
You could use one style of font for your headings while using another style for your content.
You could even then use a different style for your product descriptions.
There’s no need to complicate though or go overboard for that matter.
Take a look at Font Squirrel and see if you can find something you like. They offer fonts which are 100% free for commercial use and you can just download them to your computer and unpackage the file which can be used in editing software such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP.
Imagery
What type and style of images are you going to use?
Are all of your pictures going to have filters, Instagram style?
Let’s hope not.
Perhaps you would stick to a modern theme, or black and white, sleek, rough, abstract, minimal; the choice is yours, so long as it’s consistent.
Source: Jennifer Torosian
The same goes for your product photos.
Having them on a completely white background is always the safest way to go, and many will say then it’s the best too. Or you could go for a soft grey color as well and perhaps even display your products a little differently.
Source: 6pm
Let’s take a look at an Instagram account:
Source: @jacobsantiago
Notice a common theme and style with these pictures?
Every single picture that this person posts has been carefully thought out in order to maintain brand consistency.
And not only this, every single image above has consistency right through it as well.
You can use platforms such as Clipping Magic to edit your product photos. This can remove the background behind your product pictures so you’re left with just the product and a blank background.
Setting The Tone
Have you ever had contact with a company numerous times and realized that every representative has a similar style of communicating with you
Yes, that style could be good or bad, depending on the company. Having a specific tone for your communications to convey is also very important to your branding
It can enable the public perception to think and act in a certain way because of the reputation your company has built with its tone.
Casual
This style is designed to help humanize the company and be more relatable to the consumer. This can break down the wall and get both parties more relaxed while still doing business. It’s basically communicating with people as if they’re your friends.
Speak With One Voice
This style ensures that every representative from the company uses the same idiosyncrasies across the board. It effectively means that anyone you communicate with will have the exact same way of speaking with you, which the company has specifically chosen and trained their staff to do.
Strictly Business
Always professional and not an ounce of personality.
This style is all about getting the job done and doing what’s good for business. It can give off a robotic element and cold feeling to the consumer but still may result in a satisfied customer.
Your tone doesn’t need to just be limited to your communications either, and it could be conveyed in your logo and websites color scheme as well. So if you want to be known as the edgy company that’s bold and exciting you can use red for your main color and have your logo related to your chosen brand name.
How to Create a Brand Name
Figuring out how to create a brand name for your business can be tough. Then, once you come up with a few brand name ideas, you may find that choosing a brand name can be even harder.
If you’ve already tried to no avail, you probably noticed a lot of the good ones are taken.
There are many ways that you can think of brand name ideas, and it doesn’t always have to be so linear either.
Examples:
Short and Simple
Having a short and catchy name is great for various reasons. It’s easy to remember, pronounce, and will easily fit at the top of your store’s main web page.
Dove
Combine Words
Take two words and combine them.
QuickSprout – Facebook
Use Initials
Have you heard of Hennes & Mauritz?
How about the fashion retail giant H&M?
Use Existing Words
These can be hard to find, especially when it comes to the domain name being available.
Nevertheless, there could still be a few words out there ripe for the taking.
Apple
Make Up A Word
Who said that your brand name has to be a real word?
These guys didn’t care:
Skype, Twitter, Instagram
Describe it Literally
How about just describing what you do?
The Shoe Company
Be Original
Do some market research to find out the names of your direct competitors, and then invent something completely different.
The difficulty lies in finding a name that reflects well your niche and the type of product you are selling, without your name being too similar to that of a competitor.
For example, if you are selling electronic and technological products, you will probably have competitors who use terms like “electronics,” “technology,” and “future” in their names. Do not use words like that. Think in an original way, and differentiate yourself.
Search For It
Go to Google and see if the names you have been created or not. Could you potentially get to the top of the first page? If you choose a generic name, it is likely that you will not place very well in the results.
If it’s a made-up word, chances are there’s little to no results.
This can be good because you have a clean slate to work with.
Does your chosen name mean something in another language that probably wouldn’t be good for business?
Google can tell you this.
Is your chosen name taken on social media platforms?
Check all of them, because you want to create social media profiles with the best names possible.
You can use this free brand name generator for some ideas.
Registering a Domain
Registering a domain name is easy.
Once you have chosen a brand name that you like, you should check if the domain name is available to register.
Domain Name Availability Checker
If it comes up as available, go ahead and purchase it if you like it.
If you’re using WordPress and WooCommerce, you will also need to buy a web hosting package to make your domain live on the internet. If that’s the case, it might be a good idea to do that here as you can get a web hosting package with a free domain name.
If you’re using Shopify, you can purchase your domain name through the domain name availability checker above and then point it towards your Shopify store by following this guide.
Your Brands Slogan
You don’t have to have a slogan if you don’t want to.
But they have proven to be very effective at people recognizing and remembering the brand because of it.
How many times have you heard the joke when someone says “Maybe it’s (something)”, and then
someone responds with “Maybe it’s Maybelline”?
The best slogans are the ones that entrench themselves into our culture and get used in everyday situations.
Nike is a perfect example of this.
Just do it.
Your Brands Logo
How many logos can you recognize?
Probably a lot more than you can think of, and it could easily number in the hundreds.
The logo is the ultimate form of branding and can be used for so many different forms of marketing to draw attention to your business. It can be placed on virtually every type of material that your business will produce.
Do not underestimate how important a logo is.
Sometimes, the logo doesn’t even have to have the companies name on it for it to be recognized.
If you want to make your own logo then you can look for some resources that you can use as a template.
You can search on Google Images for keywords such as these:
free fashion vector icons
free fashion logo templates
You can then edit the image files using software such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP.
There’s obviously a bit of a learning curve if you’ve never done this before, but you could also create a rough draft of what you want and submit it to a professional designer to turn it into what you imagine in your head.
You can use places such as LogoJoy and 99Designs if you want to hire a designer to do your logo for you.
You can try using a slogan maker tool if you’re struggling with ideas.
Your Brands Website
If you didn’t register a domain name and get web hosting before you’re going to have to so you can get a website.
For building an eCommerce website, you can choose between Shopify and WooCommerce depending on your preferences.
Shopify is the fastest option and you can have a store up and running within a day if you have everything ready to go.
WooCommerce runs on the WordPress platform and you will need to know how to use it in order to build a website with it. This will take longer but it offers more customization options and may work out cheaper as well in the long run.
These are the two best platforms for eCommerce in our opinion and are both fantastic choices regardless of which one you choose to go with.
Promoting Your Brand
Once you have created your brand and your website is up and running you can start to create a Branding Strategy Guide. This will take time and a lot of work, but it can be incredibly worth it if done right. That guide details a lot of steps to build your branding strategy from the ground up and then different promotional methods to execute it with.