The Compelling Steps of Brand Development You Need to Take

Branding is when you take a product or a service, and attach a message or an experience to it. A brand is essentially the identity one attaches to a particular product or service, but that identity does not come through a simple decision or a simple step. Instead, that identity is cultivated, over time and several processes. Still, there is a way to get it done in a relatively simple method that focuses on a 10-step branding process.

Before that, however, we put forward what brand development is in this context.

Presenting Branding and Brand Development

Brand development is the process you inhabit within branding that creates and strengthens that brand, both from a marketing perspective as well as what it offers. Here at LogoCorps, we help companies develop their brands, and in creating the most innovative processes to do so, we have put forward the most streamlined processes to make it happen.

The Steps towards Brand Development

The initial phase of any brand development strategy is to first set up the very strategy you are supposed to follow. That means aligning your brand development in accordance with the business objectives you need to follow. Could be that your brand is meant to expand significantly, or could be you are building a brand for a small business. These are steps that needs to be considered when you take a brand and develop it according to the business or organizational objectives.

After that, you need to ensure that all the tools you will need to develop your brand and communicate it to the respective audience are made, such as the brand logo, websites, social media aspects, and more. Once the brand is developed, it is now time to work with that brand to strengthen what you have, and ensure that you put together a brand that can both grow organically as well as consider room for improvement with additional ideas and strategies later on.

However, this can also be divided into ten, relatively easy-to-follow steps in brand development.

The Ten-Step Brand Development Strategy

By following these ten steps, you can take your brand development strategy to the next level.

Step 1: Take Your Brand Development Strategy into Consideration

A brand that has a strong foundational basis, well defined, will make it much easier for the business to grow through its brand. However, you must consider if it has already been decided what direction the brand will take, and the type of brand you want. After all, these are the organizational objectives that will define your brand strategy.

Take, for example, a brand that is set on growing organically. Of course, they will want the brand to stay long-term and will require that you consider your brand strategy in accordance with that objective. It is the place you start to develop your strategy and take your brand to new heights.

Step 2: Understand the Market You Want to Target

Who are you going to target? What market will you go after? Is it everybody you want to target or is it a specific niche? Can you adopt this niche target market into a broader one over time? Will you have to pivot or change directions significantly in doing so?

Of course, recognizing a niche is necessary. No company, no matter how much reach they have, can target everyone. Even a company as synonymous with market dominance as Google has competition, such as Bing and DuckDuckGo. In fact, the larger you want to grow, the more defined your target market should be, as history has consistently shown. However, at the same time, certain businesses with small number of users or adopters, such as the aforementioned DuckDuckGo search engine, have niche service offerings, which happens to have a very niche market.

The reason is that the more specific you keep your target audience, the easier it is to apply your organization’s services to that market. Moreover, you also understand your market better because you know exactly where to conduct your research. 

Step 3: Always Be Researching Your Target Market

Even defined audiences change some things about them. Doing systematic research is something that all organizations consider no matter their size. That is because the market is always changing.

If firms and companies research their target markets, they can understand the perspective of their users and target markets. It also makes sure that your brand message is communicated to them and it resonates with your audience. It also means you are not dealing with unprecedented market risks with your brand development strategy.

Step 4: Position Your Brand

With the target market and a strategy made, now you need to consider where your brand is and where you need it to be.

What is your unique selling point of Unique Value Proposition (UVP)? Why should someone choose to work with you over your competition? If you are matching price, for example, what are you compromising to do so?

These questions can help you develop your brand positioning and put it in a place in the market for surefire dominance. You need to consider questions and scenarios that the customer would go through in order to make the decision to do business with your brand.

Step 5: Develop Your Brand Message

Developing your brand message is crucial, because it translates all the work you put into your brand and puts it in a singular vision that you use. This vision then informs your name, logo, design, taglines, content strategies, and more.

One has to consider potential clientele when looking at target audiences, employees, points of contact, calls to action, and more that resonate with the respective demographics. The core position of the brand message should be singular for all, but with differing demographics, the point of interest will also shift. An employee will be more focused on the direction a company takes, and a client will be more focused on the product offerings and services.

Step 6: Ensure Your Name, Logo, and Tagline Are Aligned

Alignment here does not mean the design alignment of keeping things symmetrical, but rather, keeping things synonymous with the brand message and core brand focus in developing your brand.

It can hurt a luxury brand that focuses on prestige and class to have a logo that does not resonate that same brand message. Moreover, all these aspects should also suit the brand position. Everything from the color to the name has to be scrutinized and judged whether it fits in the context of the brand or not.

It is also important to know that these considerations are for the market, not the brand itself. You are telling the market what it needs to hear instead of what you want to say.

Step 7: Consider Your Content Marketing Strategy

The digital age has made content-based marketing a sprawling landscape fill with opportunity when it comes to brand development. Not only does digital marketing coincide with The Internet of Things wonderfully, it is also a valuable tool to attract real customers and clients.

Sure, you have the greatest product of all time. But unless you sell it through content and its respective marketing, no amount of product superiority is going to make up for a lack of brand awareness or recognition, not to mention a lack of visibility. In other words, content marketing is paramount in all cases and at all fronts.

Step 8: The Website Is Key in Brand Development Strategy

In brand development, the website is the first and most simple form of using and surfing the internet. One of the former multi-billion-dollar companies—Yahoo—was built on the very idea of ensuring that people knew which website to visit through keeping a database of everything the internet had to offer.

Over time, though, this has changed, along with what a website truly means. Yes, it can be a tool to conduct business and be the main hub for all operations for your business, but another critical aspect is that it ensures that people can always find you. Clients won’t likely consider your website to be critical, but will be more skeptical of doing business with you if your brand does not have a website, and especially if it is not up to date.

The website is also a valuable SEO tool, with SEO-friendly content, keyword traffic, organic traffic, and more driven. It also serves as a general hub to direct all marketing. Simply put a call to action to visit your website in a social media post, and voila!

Step 9: Develop Your Marketing Toolkit

Every little tool helps. Brochures, pitch decks, sales sheets. Understand what they are and use them as effectively as you can. If used right, they can make both conducting business and ensuring business easier, as well as provide valuable brand development. 

Step 10: Keep Track and Keep Changing

The last step in brand development is rather a formality than anything else. Learning is something you never stop doing, and the same can be said for a brand. The market is always changing, and you always need to adjust. That means you always need to implement your strategy and stay on top of it. Developing a winning strategy could work wonders today, and be stale tomorrow.

Track, change, adapt, adopt, and keep changing with the world.

Conclusion

This ten-step process in brand development outlines what you have to do to develop your brand in 2022. We at LogoCorps ensure that you have the most complicated tasks made simple with our blogs! However, if you get any sort of questions related to any blogs then feel free to share in the comments section.