If you’re looking to build a brand online, there are a couple of steps you need to take first. Not only do you need to be building brand trust, but you also have to show off your brand’s personality.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at the 10 steps you need to take to build a strong online brand.
1. Analyse The Competition
One of the first steps you need to take to build a strong online brand is to analyse the competition.
The competition can often give you deep insight into what’s working well from a branding point of view, and what isn’t.
Take a look at the competitors brand elements such as their:
- Logo
- Website
- Social Media
Note: write a couple of things that you like and what went well. Plus, note down a couple of things you want to avoid, for example, inconsistencies or too many colours. Use them as inspiration, but don’t be too similar.
This will make it much easier, once you start building your brand elements.
2. What’s Your Target Audience?
Your brand’s target audience should be in mind before.
Who will your brand serve? Who will identify with your brand?
Knowing this will help your future actions be inlined, as you’ll always know who you are targeting. Think about the general demographics of them, as well as their interests. This will help you determine how you need to build your online brand to win their trust.
3. Understand your target persona
After you have answered the previous step, it’s now time to dig much deeper into your target audience and their personal characteristics.
What type of language do they use? Their interests? What do they do? Lifestyle?
In marketing, personas are profiles of buyers that would be your ideal customers.
All of these things play an important role and are something you should dig into. From there, you can always be sure that your brand elements are inlined with what your audience identifies with.
4. Visualise Your Perfect Brand Image
Another key step in the process of building an online brand is visualising your perfect image.
This would include elements such as the website or logo, alongside the feeling that your brand should give to your audience. And, what makes you different from everyone else already out there?
Once you know exactly what you want your brand to look like, and the feelings you want to give your audience, it’s much easier to build that strong brand.
5. Be Authentic
The next step is to be authentic.
People want to follow your brand, for being that brand, not someone else’s. So, don’t try to be exactly like someone else.
Let your brand be what it is, and stick to the perfect brand image that you visualised in the previous step. By doing this, you are setting yourself up for success.
When building your personal brand, the key point is that you should have a set of 10 to 20 influencers that you are targeting in order to extend the reach of your content and personal brand.
Amanda Maksymiw (@AmandaMaks), Content Marketing Institute
6. Humanise Your Brand
The next step is essential too. Nobody likes brands that look and feel like robots. People love people.
So, you must give your brand a human touch. This can be done through various methods. One of them would be through adding a page called “About“, “Team” or “History”. This can work well for businesses of all sizes.
You can also consider adding author profiles on your blog if you have one, using mascots, or putting out other types of content where you can see humans. This will often attract people to like your brand, and can also help you become more memorable.
7. Establish a Mission
Your brand also needs a mission that it aims to accomplish, or helps people accomplish.
For example, Facebook’s mission is to help people connect with their friends. Google’s mission is to help everyone find what they need on the web.
Your mission doesn’t have to be complicated. For example, if you’re building a clothing brand, it may be to make people feel good about themselves. Or something along those lines.
8. Outline Key Qualities
Every brand needs some key qualities that it works around. These could be personality traits and anything similar that your brand represents. Later down the line, this is also something that you should use for hiring people, as you want people to with those qualities.
But, it’s not just about that, it should also be the qualities and personality traits of your brand.
Some examples of key qualities would be:
- Customer-centric
- Loyalty
- Partnership
- Positive
- Friendly
- Helpful
Think of around 6 key qualities that you want your brand to represent. This will help you with your overall branding, tone, and various other elements, as you’ll always know how to keep yourself inlined with the qualities.
9 Be consistent
Humans naturally try to be consistent. So, they are more likely to identify with consistent brands.
Additionally, if a brand isn’t consistent, it often makes them seem like they don’t believe in themselves. This is why you must stay consistent in your branding.
Your overall message should always stay the same. Think of Nike’s “Just do it”, or Kit Kat’s “Take a break” the message never changed.
Try to stay consistent in as many aspects as possible, as this will help your target audience recognise you as a strong online brand.
10. Analyse your own brand.
This tip is for later down the line, but it’s also of great importance.
Your brand also needs to innovate and often you might need to make minor tweaks later on. This is where you need to analyse to see what can be changed to make your brand more modern. The tweaks could be in aspects such as the colour of your logo, or it may even be a slight change in the shape of the logo.
But often, you’ll need to make these minor tweaks, if your old brand elements are getting old. This isn’t to be confused with not staying consistent, but instead, it is part of innovating your brand.
Some good examples of companies who stayed consistent in their branding, but still made minor tweaks to their logo are:
- Gmail
- and obviously Softdata 😉
They changed their logo and website slightly but still stayed the same company.
Final Words
As you have seen throughout this article, building a strong online brand isn’t an overnight process. However, if you follow the steps covered closely, you’ll be able to build a brand that gains the trust of your audience.
If you would like to get your brand in the limelight, schedule a free 15 minute digital consultation today with Softdata.
Digital Marketing Agency in Gloucester and Cheltenham
Softdata is a leading digital agency and AI Services provider based in Gloucester and Cheltenham.About us: Softdata is a premier digital software agency and digital marketing provider, based in Gloucester and Cheltenham. We offer a range of digital services including web design, bespoke software development, SEO, Paid advertising, conversion rate optimisation, web hosting, and AI consultancy services. Our team is dedicated to providing the best solutions tailored to the unique needs of our clients.
If you would like to discuss your needs with a Digital Specialist, we offer a Free Initial Consultation without cost or commitment. Meetings can be held at our offices, via video conference, or by telephone. Our telephone number is 01452 502 508.
Softdata is located at: Softdata Internet Limited, 80 Westgate Street, Gloucester, GL1 2NZ.