If you want to achieve entrepreneurial or social media influencer success, you need to brand yourself. Your brand has to resonate with your target audience. The Kardashians are a great example of a global powerhouse brand being one of the most powerful household names the world has ever known, and only seem to gain momentum with every passing year. What an empire! Here’s how to create your own brand in 5 easy steps.
Monday Motivation: How to Create Your Own Brand in 5 Easy Steps
1. Figure out Your Target Audience.
Who are you marketing to? Get as specific as possible, down to behaviors, lifestyles, and ages to be able to segment your marketing. For example, avid social media and beauty-industry-consuming millennials between the ages of 18 and 30 who live in the greater Los Angeles County area and work at least 20 hours per week.
Your target audience can’t be everyone, and the more niche your audience is, the more on point you will be able to tailor your messaging.
2. Research Brands You Want to Emulate
Find a list of 5-10 brands that are killing it in your desired field and let yourself obsess over them. Find out everything you can about them – from what they’re doing well on social media, to what they could improve on, to where their headquarters are located to what their income was in the past year. Track all of your findings in a spreadsheet and see what conclusions you can draw. Put together a presentation for yourself of your competitors and make recommendations on how your brand can stand out amongst your competition. What would make potential customers purchase your product over theirs?
3. Develop a Brand Logo and Tagline.
You will probably find this to be the most exciting part of the process, and it’s a critical piece, so you may want to bring in a branding expert to help you iron out the logistics. You want your logo (eventually) to be so recognizable that it can stand on its own and people instantly know what it represents. That is the mark of a powerful logo and an iconic brand. Work with a designer to create brand guidelines around your logo that will specify when, where, why, and how your logo can be used. Having brand guidelines is critical in today’s increasingly digital world and you need to make sure the integrity of your brand is upheld at all times.
4. Create Your Unique Brand Voice.
Each brand has a unique way that they speak to their customers. Depending on how you want to position your company and what type of audience you are targeting is how you will tailor your brand voice. Ultimately, your brand voice should always be respectful of your audience and resonate with them, or they will not align with your brand. Brand voice is key in disseminating messages, so be sure to do some A/B testing to make sure you have the strongest chance of connecting with your desired audience right out of the gate.
5. Integrate Your Brand Seamlessly Across Your Business.
Once you have your brand established, it should be evident across every business touchpoint that you own. You want every piece of marketing to feel part of a seamless experience, from the business cards to the landing pages to the website to the pens to the mugs in the breakroom to the PR mailers to your social media channels, and everything in between.
What was the best part of launching your brand? Tweet me @lorenridinger.
