A good image is incredibly valuable for a company of whatever size, but if you’re just starting, you should take the opportunity you have to construct one yourself. The importance of branding has been recognized more and more over the past few decades, so you might have an advantage over a competitor that does not have as strong a brand.
Here are some ways to stand out and capture attention when creating a new image:
Know your archetypes and message
You should read a list of the many brand archetypes and try to find one that you identify with. Even better, you should identify your key customers and see what they identify with, which is what top-notch companies like Unilever dowhen they’re creating a new brand.
Once you have an idea of your target market’s demographic and personality, you should make the personality of your brand similar to them while still seeming organic. You want customers to relate to your brand and consider it perfectly suited to them. The personality you choose for your brand must be completely consistent across design, service and staff, any inconsistencies suggest to the customer that this personality is not genuine and can put people off your business.
Now you have a personality, you should align your key messages with your audiences. These messages should be easily taken away by anybody that interacts with your brand and should incorporate how unique your business is, as well as the value that you are offering your customers. Take your time developing the message as you won’t want to change it too often.
Solidify this image
Once you have a clear idea about what sort of personality you’d like your brand to have, you should solidify your image. This is where you should get in PR and website management, but if you can’t afford to hire specialists, you can do this yourselfif you’re willing to put in the hours. With the use of PR, you can spread distilled indications of your brand image across different media to let the public know who you are and what you represent. Your website should also be designed to convey this well.
Take the website of Tradefix Direct. Just seeing their landing page conveys that their brand image is about no-nonsense value to the customer, which is signalled by their clear strong logo, TrustSpot review score and product slideshow. You should try and convey a similar aspect of your brand image with your website, and this should extend to the content you feature as well as your SEO strategy (make sure keywords that represent you are featured more often on your site, which impacts your SEO keyword rankings).
Once you’ve selected your image, developed it, and then started solidifying it, you may be tempted to call it a day. You shouldn’t—your business image is as much work to maintain as it is to create (if not more), and you should remember that it’s a constant process. This is the stage where you might want to get more people involved, as your day-to-day management may be affected by the time consumption of maintaining your brand image.
