Budding entrepreneurs don’t create a business with the intent of failure but this is often the unfortunate result without an effective branding strategy.
Consumers appreciate vulnerability, principles, and trusting relationships with the organizations they patronize rather than “business-hopping” solely based on a great deal, high-value coupons, or flashy advertisements.
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How Does The Branding Design Process Create An Effective Brand?
Who are you? What does your business stand for? What are your goals and objectives? How will you go above and beyond to help your customers solve their problems? These questions just scratch the surface when creating a brand identity for your firm.
Self-labeling your company as “customer-oriented” or “socially responsible” isn’t enough to attract and retain clientele – you must progress through the brand design process steps in order to come out on top with a solid brand identity that speaks to your target audience.
If you’re committed to enhancing your business performance, growing your bottom line and profit margins, and developing longstanding business connections with your customer base, align with these 5 steps in the proven branding design process.
What Is A Branding Design Process?
The brand design process includes the blueprint of operative steps that when fully completed consecutively, create a substantial and functional brand identity for institutions in a wide variety of industries. It’s designed to add value to business goals and improve communication and marketing efforts which is crucial for a brand to thrive.
The traditional branding design process consists of five primary steps that lead with the accumulation of market knowledge, the development and iteration of branding messaging, graphics, logos, and other identity-focused tools, and the final public launch of the new and improved brand.
5 Steps In The Branding Process
Depending on which brand expert you ask, the brand design steps may look a little different but the overarching requirements are the same to build a brand that’s effective and aligns with your progression goals.
1. Market Research
Any effective brand requires extensive research on and understanding of the target market. Through the identification of a buyer persona, this stage of the brand design process offers a very specific direction on brand creation.
Identify and collect data on demographics and psychographics to capture a clear picture of the ideal customer. Demographics include characteristics of the potential customer that cannot be changed (or changed easily) including age, gender, physical location, family unit, income, and ethnicity.
Psychographics consist of things that rely on beliefs, attitudes, values, and interests. Some of these subjective elements can be swayed but others may be steadfast parts of buyer persona upbringing and personal core opinions.
2. Brand Strategy Modeling
Once the target market is researched, identified, and truly understood, it’s time to move forward in the brand design process steps. Answer questions defining how your company will help consumers solve their problems with your product or service, and how it will resonate with the world.
Develop a language or message for your brand and how it will affect the company as it progresses forward. Every person working on these branding designs steps must be attuned to the brand language.
Devise a framework for identifying what works and what doesn’t, how to iterate effectively, and how to advance in creating an effective brand.
3. Ideation, Design Efforts, and Refinements
A model or framework devised in the previous step lends itself to the progression of ideation, the actual operation of designing, and refining the ideas as they are tested and researched. Brainstorm and conceptualize branding ideas into graphics and test each thoroughly.
The color palette, font choices, and logo artistry are a part of this branding design process but the first iteration may not be the most effective one. Allow your imagination and emotion to guide this step in the branding design process and revise as needed until the buyer persona connection with the brand is inevitable.
4. Creating Corporate Style and Brand Identity Guidelines
It’s crucial to identify the brand’s corporate style and what it means for consumers. Will it be luxurious, straight-lined professional, more carefree and upbeat, or solemn and serious?
Consider imagery and graphics to nail down your brand identity and create guidelines to ensure all elements fall in line with the objectives of the brand.
5. Launch
The end goal is to achieve an instantly-recognizable brand that resonates with every potential customer who is exposed to it. When launching, be strategic and launch it in every digital and physical location where your organization takes space.
For those wanting the big reveal with a larger existing audience, consider building anticipation for the new branding launch with the release of teaser content on social media, website, and blog content across the industry.
How Long Should The Branding Process Take?
The branding design process steps may take as little as a month or as much as 6 months (or in some cases, even longer). However, rushing through the branding design steps will never offer the preferred or optimal result. Take the time to perform each step thoroughly and develop a brand that lasts a lifetime.
Benefits Of Implementing A Branding Process
While the advantages of conducting rigorous research and masterful implementation of the branding design process steps are almost endless, there are a few benefits that are important and cannot be disregarded.
- Instant customer recognition
- Brand loyalty
- The ability to charge higher rates
- Industry credibility
- Consistency within the market
Taking stock of these benefits and following the process can boost your position in the industry with effective brand development.
Conclusion
The development of a solid branding strategy has taken companies from newbie to new-found success in a much shorter time period than historic examples. When Apple, Inc. rebranded, it became more competitive with its Microsoft counterpart and skyrocketed in profit. They can contribute much of their success to marketing and a killer branding strategy.
