Six Key Elements For A Solid Brand Foundation

You can have the best logo, brand colors and fonts in existence but if your customers never have any emotional experience when interacting with you, then it won’t matter. Your brand is what makes you stand out.

That said, building a truly effective brand is not easy. It’s an exercise in creativity and research. This process takes a lot of time not just on the execution stage, but on the strategizing stage as well.

What exactly goes into it?

What makes your company unique?

Let’s talk about the six major elements that make up a strong foundation of a successful brand.

1. Purpose

Briefly, your brand’s purpose is the reason why you do what you do. It's about what your organization believes in, what it stands for and what difference it can make for others. While it doesn't have to be about solving global crises, it needs to be worth pursuing.

A good place to start is to figure out your brand’s "what," "why" and "how." The answers to these simple questions will provide you with the definition of your core product or service, help you determine the reason your company exists and specify all the ways you are going to bring value to your audience.

2. Vision

Your brand vision is the guiding light that helps you stay on track when it comes to pursuing the future of your business. It's a deep understanding and appreciation of what makes a company unique and the direction it will take in the future.

In a nutshell, brand vision is what makes your business different, ensures that it resonates with customers and energizes employees and partners. Without it, your efforts will be inconsistent and ineffective, and your brand image will be subpar at best.

3. Values

Every business has a story to tell, and for your company's heritage to endure and grow, you must have core values. Brand values serve as the moral compass that guides everything you do as an organization.

Brand values are conveyed through everything, from major internal decisions to messaging and communication with customers. They shape your company culture and they are fundamental to how your brand will develop in the future.

4. Personality

Brand personality can be defined as the collection of emotional patterns that make up a company’s public image over time. It’s how you would describe your company if it was a person.

Brand personality shines through your website, social channels, marketing campaigns and so on. If there are inconsistencies across these channels, customers will have trouble understanding who you really are and what makes you special.

5. Promise

When working with a brand, customers expect a certain value and service quality that it originally guarantees. This is essentially what a brand promise is. The more you are able to deliver on that promise, the stronger the customers’ trust and confidence in your brand will be.

A brand promise is something central to your business, something that remains consistent as you grow and evolve. Yet, not all brand promises are explicit. Most of the time, it's more of an internal mantra within your team that you follow in everything you do.

6. Positioning

Brand positioning means identifying, building and maintaining a story about your brand that resonates with your target market. That’s what makes your business unique and memorable to your customers.

Good positioning will determine who you compete with within your category. This will also impact how much customers are willing to pay for your product or service, as well as shape their view on what they're buying from your business.

Conclusion

Having a brand is not a choice. It is going to be there, whether you like it or not. So rather than going with the flow, take control of how your audience perceives your business and leverage all the benefits of effective branding for continuous growth.

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