Brand Awareness

How can you build brand awareness?

Once your brand is established, your goal is to be seen on your customer’s radar.

Whether you’re a startup, multi-national big business, SME or sole trader you should have brand guidelines. An excellent and consistent branding will give you a great foundation to build your new business. Start to set out some basic principles of how you would like your business’s image to be seen by others. Afterwards, show your customers and your staff how you work and the quality of your product or service.

Your brand guidelines should include:

• An overview of your brand’s history, vision, personality and key values
• Brand message or business mission statement
• Logo usage – where and how to use your logo including sizes and spacing
• Color palette – showing your color palettes for print and for web
• Fonts – showing the specific font(s) that you use and how they are to be used, including the weight and versions
• Image & photography – examples of image style and photographs that best represent your brand
• Design examples – examples of how the logo, font and colors are typically used for all documents. A letterhead and business card is a good example as it uses colors, logos, fonts and spacing

If you are a startup business or rebranding, how can you achieve all of this?

You can go to a creative agency for advice or keep the cost down by using an online platform. Xara Cloud combines substantial software development experience with startup vibes. It’s an ideal tool for consistent branding. Xara have developed a simple new business web app for creating all of your company content. An appealing template based approach with a multitude of stunning visual content. What makes this app most appealing is a guaranteed consistency which in turn, will ‘safeguard’ your brand identity. Find out more.

As a startup or an established business, your brand needs to have that continuity of professional presentation.

The key component of brand awareness is consistency…
Assuring every piece of communication to customers or staff is clear and unified. Clever and consistent branding can give you a competitive edge, increase customer recognition and loyalty. You and your business are there to innovate, show your expertise and stand out in your industry crowd.

If you do this well, your customers will know you, like you and trust you.

So, when it comes to brand awareness and brand building, what should you consider?

• Firstly… how aware of your brand are you? Every business should have a marketing plan and strategy. They should be aware of their presence in the market place on or offline.
• What are people saying about your brand? If it’s something good – find out why and keep doing it. If it’s something bad – find out why, you can learn a lot from an unhappy customer.

Further considerations are:

1. Think like a customer – how easy is it for a customer to find you?
2. Show your expertise and knowledge – what can you offer a customer?
3. Give value and a unique selling point – why should they use you?
4. Listen to your customers – are you proactive and responsive?
5. Where are your competitors? Find out, go there and be seen.
6. Build your online presence, use social media platforms – word of mouth is powerful!
7. Set goals – use analytics to find out what is working for your brand.
8. Your employees represent your brand – educate them and encourage them.
9. Your website is your 24/7 sales representative.
10. Search engines love fresh content! Stay active online and help people find you.

Remember… when considering brand awareness, it’s important to promote and protect your brand.

We have only touched the surface when it comes to branding. We will return to this topic and discuss in more detail the many considerations when it comes to your brand and your business.