We all know that branding can be truly expensive. Talk to any marketing professionals you know and they will always tell you that it’s a resource-intensive activity. For one, branding is all over the place. You cannot just pinpoint one item that determines the brand. It’s the logo but it’s also the messages, the customer age groups, the locations, the chatbots, the investors, the product quality, the website aesthetics, and so many other things.
So to constrict a branding process into a specific, tight budget is definitely a challenge. But nowadays where modern technologies are more accessible than ever, this challenge is worth the take.
While the creation of materials will always be expensive and time-consuming, the understanding of one’s identity is always free. Hence, this is where we start.
Brand Evaluation
First, you need to lean in on the knowledge that your existence serves a purpose. Either that means helping people or earning more money, it does serve a purpose. Ask yourself why you exist. Yes, it may sound deep and profound, but unless you answer these vital questions yourself, you’ll never have a stable and satisfying brand identity.
Remember that brand identity is more than just the physical. Sure, you can beautify your flyers and email newsletters but if it’s not coherent or in line with your values, then customers will not resonate with it in the first place and in the long run.
So start asking yourself these questions:
1. What are my values?
- What is the mission of this brand?
- What is the ultimate goal of this business?
- What kind of people should the brand owners be?
- If the brand were a person, what would be its unique characteristics?
You can change the questions to suit your situation or mix and match its elements. Like, instead of saying “what are my values?” ask “what are the values of the founders of this corporation?” Or instead of asking “what is the personality of the brand?” you can say, “name the top three traits that best represent the business.”
Market Research and Customer Understanding
Once you get past these existential questions, you can then move on to questions regarding your target market. Believe it or not, more than half of all businesses operating don’t even know who they cater to. They just sell to whoever is willing to buy.
A solid definition of your target market will do wonders for your business. You can customize your products better. You can anticipate their responses, queries, and concerns. You can tailor your messaging so they can find it valuable and worthy of their attention.
Therefore, a successful branding requires up-to-date knowledge of your target market. And like the first step, where you ask yourself questions regarding values and purpose, it is also an inexpensive task to undertake.
All you need is the internet and a computer. Dive in through forums, social media, groups, communities, product reviews, comment sections, and more. Through this, you can get to the heart of your customer needs, and in turn, will provide better customer service.
Talk about a better brand identity than a brand that really delivers. If you’re a customer yourself you wouldn’t want to explain yourself all the time. Instead you want a business that understands you without having to communicate your needs to details.
Competitor Research
When you’re done with market research. You can go on and do a thorough analysis of your competitors. This doesn’t take many resources too like all the previous steps. All your competitors are online nowadays. So a single google search will lead you to their website, their copywriting techniques, their color palette, their flyers, menus, chatbots, even their location, and so many other things.
Competitor research is another inexpensive step you should consider when forming your brand identity. It helps you develop a strong identity and will foster a unique brand.
Competitor research will lend you loads of vital information such as their leading keywords, their product edges, who their customers are, their UX and UI designs, their logo designs, their brand messaging, and others.
Marketing Items
Lastly, this is the part where you focus on the aesthetics of your business. You’re done with a deeper level of branding, you now get to develop your superficial brand. Which is what people easily see. Things like logos, website colors, typography, and copywriting, images, and social media captions will bring your brand to full circle.
When you’re crafting these materials, collaterals, and items, don’t forget to revisit your answers and research on the previous steps. As these will guide you in what route to take. You see, there are a million ways to develop a logo, but with your knowledge of your vision, customer and competitor research, your logo goals become clearer.
Unlike the previous steps, this part is rather expensive. It takes money and people to create marketing items but worry no more, because a single google research will lead to inexpensive marketing tools. You don’t have to be a design expert to create professional-looking marketing materials.
There are many templates and pre-made designs available online that you can customize to fit your brand. This can save you time and money compared to creating everything from scratch.
From logo creators to a free library of typefaces, you’ll have a solid list of tools and software to create a seemingly expensive brand without requiring real expensive costs.
Customer Service
Everything we’ve talked about is just the beginning of forming your brand identity. Of course, it doesn’t end there. And it won’t probably will never end. Your brand identity changes overtime as your business develops. Say, you acquire more companies or you create more products, or you expand to other countries. Along with it is a brand identity that shifts.
But to make sure brand identity won’t get lost in the tide, you need to make sure that your customer service is top of the line. Your purpose, brand values and mission might change, as well as your markets and competitors, including your brand aesthetics, but your goal in delivering the best customer experience should never go out of style.
This part is probably the most expensive of all branding processes. But how do you manage excellent customer service without breaking the bank? First, make use of social media platforms.
They have free messaging technologies that you can leverage to your success. Another thing is email. Email is also free. By using email marketing you not only get to send customized messages, you can also communicate with your eager customers through their direct responses.
Conclusion
Take all the time you need when developing your brand identity. Remember that in the world of business, a stronger brand identity is usually the one that wins.
But as we understand now, it doesn’t have to take in too many expenses for you to win in the branding game. Researching might be effort intensive but it doesn’t require a big budget. The same goes for free materials on the internet, such as logo makers, flier makers, free-code websites, and many other sites and tools.
So what are you waiting for? Brand your business the right way.