The ultimate guide to branding: How to establish and grow a successful company brand

October 29, 2022

Your brand is an integral part of your business. It is how you introduce your company to potential customers. Your company brand is your main form of visual identification and plays a huge role. In many cases, a company’s most valuable asset consists of the name, word, design, symbol, or any other element that distinguishes one seller’s products or services.

But a good brand is not created by just making a logo and choosing a good font. It is a long, research-intensive process that considers a company’s values, competitors, key positioning, and offerings to create a brand strategy that is unique, sustainable, and consistent.

Read on to find out how you can successfully establish and grow a company brand!

What can good branding do for you?

Brand loyalty can increase a company’s revenue by 10x [1]

Emotionally connecting with a brand can increase customer lifetime value by 306% [2]

59% of consumers will wait for their favourite brands to restock rather than purchasing elsewhere [3]

A signature colour palette can increase brand recognition by 80% [4]

What goes into a good brand strategy?

At Greyscale Digital [5], we put a lot of thought and research into developing brand strategies[6] for our clients. We know how important it is to set yourself apart from competitors and stand out in an oversaturated market. That is why we adopt a meticulous, research-oriented process to bring our clients’ branding solutions that are both creative and strategic.

This is how we breakdown our process:

Define company purpose

The first thing we do is get to know your business. What drives you? What are your goals? What do you stand for? With this knowledge, we define your company’s mission and vision statements.

Both these statements should clearly outline what your company stands for and how it intends to grow in the coming years. Developing a strong brand identity is key to showing your customers what motivates your business and builds trust.

61% of customers want brands to support social causes [7]

Consumers are willing to pay 50% more to companies that have a positive societal impact [8]

Conduct audience research

The next step is establishing a target audience. Our market research process involves understanding the common pain points of customers in your niche, analysing purchasing behaviours, and then developing buyer personas.

Every buyer persona we develop has clearly defined demographics, shared interests, values, and challenges. We then use this information to establish your company’s target audience and develop our strategy around it.

Conduct competitor analysis

Identifying your key competitors will give us the bigger picture of your industry. Do your target audiences overlap with your competitors? Are there any market gaps that we can take advantage of?

Our analysis considers your competitors’ main offerings, brand voice, social media presence, and positioning. These insights are crucial to set your company apart from its competitors.

We want to create a strategy that gives your customers something new- not just contribute to the existing market.

Create a brand identity

This step involves nailing the voice of your company’s brand. Your brand personality is going to be your best sales partner. It sets the tone for your company messaging and will inform all your future content and advertising strategies. For this reason, we try to align your brand identity as closely to your target audience as possible.

Another aspect of creating a brand identity is honing the message. It should be unique enough that your customers are instantly reminded of it anytime they interact with your company.

The branding pyramid

First put forward by research company Kantar [9] in the 1990s, the brand pyramid was created as an easy way to visualise brand identity and positioning in the market.

Image source: https://brandfolder.com/resources/brand-pyramid/

It has 5 main components:

Essence (the mission and vision of a company)
Personality (words that describe a company)
Emotional Benefits (emotional impact of a company)
Rational Benefits (benefits that set a company apart)
Core Functionality (main offerings of a company)

Each component is designed to maintain brand consistency and build trust with your customers. A branding pyramid is an integral part of the brand identity process as it is ca good way to standardise your marketing campaigns and communicate your brand’s purpose to external parties.

Develop a brand guideline

Now that we have the brand identity, we work on creating the visual components of your brand. This includes designing a logo, and typography, choosing a colour palette, and creating a tagline. All these elements will work towards creating a cohesive, and memorable company brand that will stand out to your audience.

Developing a brand guideline is key to maintaining brand consistency. Only 30% of companies are reported to follow their brand guideline[10]. This results in inconsistent messaging that can confuse your customers and may harm your reputation in the long run.

A typical brand guideline designed by Greyscale Digital contains:

Logo (Full logo, shorthand logo) against transparent and colour backgrounds
Typography (Font, style, spacing)
Colour palette (Primary and secondary colours)
Collaterals (designs for stationery, mugs, letterhead, email signature)
Positioning on social media including design mock-ups

Create a content strategy

The final step of our process is designing a content strategy. The visual elements of a brand will mean nothing if it is not partnered with strong branded content. This involves optimising your website for SEO[11] and creating content that tells your brand’s story in the form of videos, and blogs.

This content will tell your customers more about the way your company operates and what you bring to the table. We add all the relevant keywords to your content to boost your search rankings on Google.

A solid content marketing strategy can boost brand engagement by 3X! [12]

So, you’ve launched your brand, what next?

After a brand has been launched, the work does not end there. To truly maintain a competitive edge, brand strategies need to be analysed and optimised at regular intervals. The ability to monitor and keep up with the changes in your industry and digital trends is what sets great brands apart from good ones.

Our team always stays ahead of the curve by keeping track of key metrics and informing our clients when certain activities need to be improved upon.

Conclusion

Creating and establishing a brand is no small feat. It requires extensive man hours and expertise to develop sustainable solutions that people will connect with. And once a brand has been launched, it will not become successful overnight. A lot of time, effort and resources must be invested into building customer loyalty and boosting brand awareness.

About us

Greyscale Digital is a boutique marketing agency headquartered in Dubai, U.A.E. Our team of experts specialise in helping growing businesses with social media management, SEO, lead generation, and paid promotion.

Read our other blogs here!