How to design a good brand for your company? Creating a brand for your company is important. It is the label and name of your company and it will stick in the minds of your contacts, consumers and also for yourself.
Select a Brand Name
1. Start first by researching a fitting brand name.
.2 Have an idea what’s the business about. Find elements you think the customer/user really finds important. Say for example: entertainment, fun, seriousness, easy of use, quality, things you want to convey. List them, select them. First develop a full list, list all the features, then select the top 5 they think are most important.
3. Positioning in the mind. Are you the first, the best, the fasted, the smartest, the most organic, the most fun, the most serious in your product category or business? Think about your Unique Selling Points, what makes you different.
4. Find your mission. Have a mission and know what stories and image you need to convey. This helps.
5. After finding a concept for your brand name (which is hard in itself), find a list of internet addresses (urls) that you can claim. You can work with an hosting agency to get the urls for you. These addresses will become your online presence elements.
6. Go find a symbol for your name (animals), are you an eagle, a penguin, a deer, a lion, a bull? All images and symbols have messaging and meaning attached to it. What might be of help is also finding a few car brands you find fitting for your brand (say trust-volvo, performance – bmw, status – mercedes, etc. etc.).
Have a tagline what differentiate your from the others.
The Design Process
7, Find a fitting color scheme for your business, are you an active brand, a performance brand, a b2b brand (trust/professionality), read about color and messaging (say blue is for business, and orange for a more creative feel, and green for sustainability or bluegreen for healthcare)
8.Download a set of logos and brands you find fitting for you. This already gives you an idea what you like.
9 Hire a professional visual designer to design your brand. They have the skills and the feel for this. Reserve budget for this, this is a brand asset.
10. Design fonts/logotypes etc.
11. Find imagery. use free stockfoto sites at first, then move on later for self made photos or professional photography.
Select the logo / design in a few iterations.
Improve your brand and stick to it
12. Register your brand internationally for legal rights
13. Check on which stories you want to write. are you all about chicken farming, cosmetics, and find what your customers or reader group finds important. Pick the highlights and make stories of this.
14. Pains/vitamins. What are the troubles for your customers and what are the vitamins for your customer. Offer them. Maybe its ease of doing business, or a low price, or very good guided service. Find it out and offer it.
15. Keep track of the brand documents in a file folder or even a DMP (where all documents reside)
16. Watch and monitor the brand activities, like posts do they fit the brand etc.
17. Have a brand document and brand guideline for future referencing and communicating this throughout the organization.
18. After a while your brand becomes more fixed, and together with stories, posts, images, logos icons they become your brand.
19. Budget your marketing effort into 50% brand building (awareness, long term preference, quality styling) and 50% activation (promotions, action driven)
Good luck!
Download a brand checklist here and start build branding
