4 Keys to building a strong brand in 2024

When you think of a brand, what comes to mind?

Is it the logo or colors that represent your business?

Or is it the overall experience and feeling that customers have when they interact with your company?

In this blog post, we will explore four keys to building a strong brand. I hope this article provides some insight into how to better shape your business!

1. Define your brand

Your brand communicates with your audience in many ways, some of them visual and others more conceptual. But all that communication is shaped by design, voice, and customer experience. Branding is not as straightforward as it initially appears. It can be tricky to take the time and invest in comprehensive branding strategies for your business but defining your brand through your values, what you stand for, and how you want to impact your customers is going to already give you a strong start.

Purposeful, intentional, and influential. I believe that every business should be purpose-driven to have an impact on the community around them– from their team members in a small way all through marketing or growth strategies for startups trying to reach millions of people with one product launch.

2. Design that represents your business values and goals

Effective branding should translate well on any platform, in both print and digital.

Your logo design is the most foundational element of your brand identity; make sure that it’s simple enough for customers or potential clients who may not understand what you do so they can easily identify with/remember.

But do remember: A logo is NOT a brand.

There are many tangible design elements of branding that I would highly recommend looking at. Things like colors, typography size, and placement as well as a website architecture can all be used to reinforce your brand identity but also provide consistency in the experience.

Every one of us develops a connection with our favorite brands, which results in customer loyalty. Every business owner desires to maintain a loyal following, and branding is one way of achieving that success.

3. Establish the identity on different platforms

When you grab all of the above: your brand strategy where you defined your brand and foundation for how you want your brand to run, what it stands for, plus of course how it looks through the design then it’s time to establish it through external outlets like your website and social media to establish your authority and credibility.

The first step is to make sure you have an online presence that reflects your brand and message, but also provides information about what the business does as well as links through social media accounts so people can follow along with any updates or news on products/services.

Get ready to make your mark. You have to be willing to put yourself and your brand out there, whether you have 10 people in your audience or 1 million, this is about staying consistent and cohesive with your message.

4. Customer experience and promotion

A strong brand is impactful, your people will align to your brand if it resonates with them, and by that same token, those who are not your ideal clients will not join in your journey.

Once they are engaged with your brand you want to consider the experience they get. Customer experience is paramount. Helpful tips: do great work that can stand the test of time and stay true to your brand voice while paying attention to the little details. And remember that when you’re marketing and promoting, you are also giving them an experience, so make sure you are aligning your marketing with your core values and message.

Take a careful look into where you put your promotional efforts. You want to go deep to really let your brand have an impact. If you try to be on every social channel and cast a wide net to “get more” then you will find that your brand is less strong and gets lost fast. Put your time and energy into where you can make the biggest impact, create a strong presence there to attract like-minded individuals.

So really, putting all of this together on one channel makes marketing easier because you know your clients are there and. you can focus on actually connecting with them and giving them the best experience, rather than trying to constantly “find them”.

One thing that I will always recommend for a strong brand: Grow your email list. That is not a social channel, that is a very curated list of people who are in your close circle of marketing.

In conclusion

There are really four key areas where you need to focus to really create a strong brand: your brand definition/strategy, design, the identity voice and tone of content created for your business (aka your copy), and your customer experience on every possible touchpoint including marketing and promotional channels.

Sometimes you can get really good at one of the points above, like having a great looking brand but maybe it’s not that well defined in the messaging, or maybe you are amazing at creating marketing content, but the customer connection and experience is lacking. My advice is to continually self-assess to make sure you are giving your best to your audience and customers to keep growing your business in the best way possible.

Your voice should be consistent too — whether through the design of content like blog posts with similar aesthetics on social media platforms or even having specific “words” you use constantly in your copy to allow people to start recognizing your brand.

There are so many things, and it can feel scary to try and do it alone, and that’s why I’m here if you need expert support to really take your brand to the next level.