Company
4 steps for your brand foundation
By José Manuel Malbec
When you are someone who feels ready with your own ideas it is time for the launch process for a new brand.
Remember that a brand is your identity as a company and the promise you make to customers. A good phrase in this could be that branding isn’t just your Logo. It’s what makes you different than every other company out there.
The Foundation Process
There are 4 key components of a solid brand foundation. Before introducing them, we will know a little bit about what means Brand Identity, Brand Image and Brand Personality.
First of all, having a solid brand Identity as the base of everything in your company with positive images, and desirable personalities. This concept is what the company and its products stand for.
So brand identity as the base, then the brand image as the representation of the brand in consumers’ mind. This is determined by the firm’s positioning messages and partly determined by consumers experiences and by the concept called “word of mouth” too. Sharing their experience in social media and so on.
Over time, strong brands come to embody traits. For example, for a costumer who has a sporty personality, he would prefer BMW cars, while a classy costumer would choose a Mercedes.
The 4 key components mentioned will be described below. So the question is… How do you build and become a strong brand?
1. Brand Messaging
The answer will always be on the brand messaging. The key will be on working hard doing consistent messaging so prospective customers immediately understand what you’re about and why the should buy from you. Now you would like to communicate the benefits of your own product or services that make you different than the rest.
Questions that could help for this first component:
What is your mission as a company?
What is your company’s story?
What are your core values?
What is the personality of your business?
Once you have answered these questions, hone them into three or four key messages that you will weave into everything you communicate as a company.
2. To have a cohesive Visual Identity
Once you did your message for the future customers you must create a visual identity for your brand. This is called Logo, which is the visual representation of your brand.
When you are developing your brand identity, the questions could be:
Does this logo represent who we are as a company?
How does our logo look at different sizes?
Will this logo still look a good one from now to one more year or two?
3. A strong home online
In addition to your message and logo, you should build your own home base. This is a web page with all of what you are offering. This doesn’t mean a Facebook page it is a web site that describes your company including all the elements that should be on it. For example: a great design, smart navigation, social media links, etc…
4. Company integration
Once you are done with most of the steps mentioned before now the final step would be to do some team integration. What does this mean? It is the work that every company does before marketing. So all the people can feel comfortable and work in a nice working environment.
“The main goal for the company will be to live the brand every day.”