Building a 2021 brand

Recently our Director, Steph Essex was asked to give a presentation on ‘building a memorable brand’. We thought we’d pick out the top tips for those looking to launch their own business or take their brand to the next level. At Flyhawk Studios we have a wealth of experience building brands in the events, sportswear and FMCG industries. Here are our key pointers.

Your brand purpose. For us your brand is the personality of your business. A good place to start is to discover the purpose behind your brand. Why do you exist? What problem do you solve? Why should people care? Studies show that 50% of consumers worldwide now buy based on a company’s brand value and impact. Always remember that people don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it.

Research your competitor brands. One of the biggest brand building goals is to differentiate from competition and convince a customer to purchase from you over them. You can only differentiate from competition if you have a good knowledge of them and their weak spots.

Determine your brand’s target audience. The key is to get specific – you can’t be all things to all people. Find your niche and nail it. This allows you to understand your brand buyer persona including age, location, gender, income, motivation, goals and also where is their attention? All brands try to increase their target demographics to boost sales, but the most successful ones have a definite group that is their priority and which receives the largest share of their attention.

Establish your brand mission statement. This is YOUR why and the reason you get up everyday. It doesn’t need to be stiff, starchy or corporate. A brand mission is the heart and soul of your company, and sticking to it is very important to creating and maintaining a loyal following.

Create your unique brand voice and personality. This is how you communicate with your customers and how they respond to you. Think about your brand as if it were a person – what character traits would it have? Customers are looking for an experience tailored to their needs backed by genuine human interaction. This can be as simple as sharing behind the scenes content, telling stories about real experiences and being truthful.

Reputation. Reputation is one of the critical elements to building a memorable brand. A good reputation will spread via worth of mouth but sometimes reviews help too. Don’t only publish the glowing reviews, customers will see through it. People want to read honest reviews and dealing with them correctly can do more for your reputation than you think. 68% of customers trust reviews more when they see good and bad ones.

Inspire brand loyalty. A loyal customer base can’t be overstated and is one of the most important building blocks of any successful brand. TOUGH MUDDER did a great take on a loyalty programme by offering different coloured headbands the more mudders you completed. Instead of getting perks like most loyalty programs, what you actually get is more challenge – access to parts of the course only available to people who have crossed the finish line a certain number of times.

Create your brand logo and visual identity. When you think about building your brand, visuals probably come to mind first. We haven’t even talked about these until this deep in the brand building process. You might want to create your brand guidelines at this point which includes things like logo size and placement, colour palette, fonts and imagery style.

Integrate your brand into every aspect of your business. The brand building process never stops. Your brand should be reflected in everything that your customer can see, read and hear. Once you establish your brand voice, use it for every piece of content you create.