Secrets for Launching a Brand that will Stand the Test of Time

It’s not a secret that tons of businesses fail pretty early after their creation. In fact, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20% of companies fail in their first two years of being opened, 45% fail in their first five years, and 65% fail within their first ten years. Only a sad 25% of new businesses survive up to fifteen years or more. 

But even though the survival rate of startups is desperately low, entrepreneurs still launched 4.3 million businesses in 2020 and 2.81 million businesses in Q1 and Q2 of 2021. 

And with such a massive number of businesses in the market, you need to build an excellent brand for your company that’d help it stand out in the market and survive the test of time.  

So, to help you do that, we’ve prepared a great step-by-step guide that’d make it easier to launch an exciting brand that’d generate great product demand, promote customer loyalty right from the start, and stand the test of time.

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

7 Critical Ways to Build a Thriving Brand for Your Business

• Know What Your Customers Love

Marketing your business is great, but regardless of how much work you put into marketing your business, what’d make your brand ageless is its customers. Every brand is guaranteed to grow as long as its client base does. 

Don’t see your customers as targets to be manipulated by your company, but as an integral part of your company’s brand identity.

And one way you can integrate your customers into your business is by giving them a say in the formulation and implementation of new policies and creating new offers that match their needs. 

But all these will only work if you have a clear idea of who your customers are, their needs, how they react to your products and services, how they view your competitor’s brand and product, what they love, hate, and desire strongly.  

And the best way to gather all this information about the preferences of your target audience is to perform a survey and study your brand’s reviews. Keep in mind that the time you invest in learning about your customers will pay off well for your company.  

Apple’s brilliant ability to anticipate the future demands of its customers has been what set the brand apart from its competition and propelled them to the top of the Tech sector.

• Build a Great Brand Identity

Your brand identity consists of what your brand says, your values, how you convey your product, and how you want people to feel when they connect with it. Essentially, your brand identity is your company’s personality as well as a promise to your audience.

Although your customers need to perceive your brand’s intrinsic values, this doesn’t mean that your brand’s intrinsic value should remain static over time. Because if any business must stay competitive, it must regularly review and modify its brand to guarantee it’s delivering the core promises of the business.

“One of the benefits of digital advertising is the ability to track, target, and test new strategies and tactics,” Raquel Baldelomar explains. “Your brand identity should not just be a mission statement on the wall and logo. Your brand is a reflection of your thinking, your character, and your values.”

But without measuring important brand performance indicators, it’d be impossible to tell if your customers understand your brand’s identity and mission statement. 

So, make sure you monitor your brand using Google Analytics, customer surveys, reviews, and social media debates to get a feel of how people talk about and engage with your brand. This will allow you to modify specific areas of your brand which might either need to be changed or strengthened.  

Don’t make the mistake of neglecting to create a distinctive brand identity using a compelling voice, tone, logo, typography, color, and images because they’ll contribute to enhancing your brand’s identity. 

Also read: The Psychology Behind Building Strong Brands

• Get the Perfect Brand Name

Getting the perfect brand name would help set your business apart by clearly communicating your brand’s identity, vision, mission, and goals. Brands like Coca-cola, Apple, Tesla, Beyond Meat, and Gucci continue to stand out because of their perfect brand name. 

Now that you’ve dedicated time to gathering critical information about your customers and building a solid brand identity, it’s time to engage your entrepreneurial imagination and come up with words that correspond to your business’s requirements.  

We know that coming up with a great brand name can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. And one way you can make brainstorming your brand’s name easier is to gather a team and tell them about your brand, its elements, tone, and naming criteria.

Encourage your team to use dictionaries and thesauruses to generate the most intriguing and compelling names they can. The objective here is to generate a list of names that’d be relevant to the needs of your company and audience.

But while looking for a list of great names, your team should seek words that are short, meaningful, memorable, and interesting. 

Now, if you don’t have a team and coming up with a captivating name sounds like an exhausting process, then don’t be afraid to use a powerful business name generator.

• Build Great Products

Your brand will only survive the test of time if it provides products and services with great value because while your brand’s marketing will announce your product to the world, the heart of a successful brand always lies in a fantastic product. 

So, make sure you devote a lot of time to designing and fine-tuning your products, continuously scanning the market for innovation possibilities, and, most importantly, focus on always offering value.

• Build a Great Online Presence and Market Your Business

The frequency and ease with which customers can find a brand or organization online greatly determine its online presence. Every entrepreneur needs to establish their brand’s online reputation, raise its recognition, and make their products or services visible when people search for related items.

Building a solid online presence takes time and work, but it will pay off in the long run by yielding your brand greater sales and immense exposure in its sector.

Every entrepreneur needs to ensure that they build a great online presence for their business because, today, your company’s presence on the internet is just as essential as its actual position in a mall.

So, build a great product, establish a great brand identity, and make your brand visible to the market. Building a solid presence online would help your business easily win the trust and loyalty of your audience long before they become your customers.

And just like marketing, make sure your brand’s influence on social media is focused on the audience demographic you want to attract to your business.  

Now, large billboards may not be the best marketing option for an e-commerce business, and an aggressive online campaign may not be the best option for a heavy construction company. So make sure your marketing efforts are geared towards contacting the people who require your product or service.

• Build Great Customer Relationship

Understanding who your clients are, engaging them regularly, and satisfying their needs is critical because your customer’s opinion of your brand is what ultimately establishes your company’s identity. Many businesses focus on their awesome products rather than on the benefit they provide their customers.

Coca-cola, Apple, McDonald’s, and countless well-known brands have survived, not because of their products, but because of how their customers perceive these products would make their life simpler, better, or more connected.

With that said, here are some great steps that can help you build a solid customer relationship:

• Performing deep customer research
• Write captivating email newsletter
• Build detailed buyer personas and relate to them accordingly 
• Deliver amazing customer service
• Build trust
• Ask for feedback
• Be consistent 
• Reward customer loyalty

Implementing these steps would boost the performance of your business by connecting you with your clients on a deeper level.

• Adapt Your Business to Market Trends

Don’t grow complacent once you’ve set up your brand strategy, built a solid brand identity, and acquired a large customer base. The needs that your brand satisfies may not always exist, so keep an eye on the market and look out for any changes you need to make to your business strategy.

Entrepreneurs who keep an eye on market trends are more aware of incoming disruptive changes and have plenty of time to alter plans, adapt their business, and stay successful. 

One look at the music industry, Kodak, Nokia, Polaroid, Blackberry, and Blockbuster, and it becomes too clear that the market can shift very quickly and dramatically such that brands that fail to ride waves get left behind.

Don’t Grow Too Fast

Now that your business is established and profitable, it’s time to invest extra effort in building a brand that’ll last the test of time. And the best way you can achieve this is not to approach this in a hurry but from scratch. 

You stand the risk of losing track of your finances, overvaluing sales, making dangerous mistakes, not hiring the right employees, not scaling your customer service, and losing your brand’s excellence if you grow your business faster than you should.

But when it’s time to grow your business, have a clear scope and focus for your business, make sure you completely understand your new product, service, and target customers, as well as you, understand your old products and its target customers. 

When an entrepreneur grows their business too quickly without devoting time to research, strategy, and planning, its failing finances might sink the entire company.

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