When you focus on building an impactful brand alongside building a business, you create the foundations to success. Building your brand is not an overnight process, but rather a continuous and ongoing process that requires strategy. In order to truly communicate effectively to your target audience, you've got to develop a strong brand message. If you're interested in learning the fundamentals of building and strengthening your brand, keep reading.

Key Points

1. Your brand is a combination of the visual components as well as establishing emotional connections with your target audience
2. Understanding the mind of the consumer is important to catering to their needs
3. Take the time out to give your brand direction and master your brand message
4. Develop your brand story and show up with authenticity
5. Ensure that every message you consistently put out by your brand is in alignment with it's values and promises

What is a brand?

A brand is an emotional connection that is established with an ideal audience. It's a combination of brand colors, fonts, mission and vision statements. A brand is the means of communication with a target audience on an emotional level. In order to strengthen your brand, you need to focus in on how you desire to resonate with your ideal audience and impact them every time they come in contact with your brand.

The Foundations

In order to strengthen your brand, don't shy away from returning to the core foundation which is your ideal audience in mind. As a business owner you should understand your market better than they understand themselves. Your target audience forms the center of any brand so it's important to focus in on:

• Identifying their current belief systems - tap into their current mindsets and think about how you want your brand to be the solution to their current problems and rewire their current beliefs.
• Their demographics - their geographical location, age, sex , status etc. These are essentially pieces of information that will affect how you communicate with them.
• Their Psychographics - what are their interests, values, lifestyles and attitudes? This knowledge will essentially help you to pinpoint how aware they are of solutions to their problem.

Importance of clarity when building a brand

Once you've nailed your audience, it's important to provide clarity to your brand because without vision, your brand will lack direction. Take time to think about your mission and your vision for your business and master the message you're putting out in front of your audience. Alongside establishing your messaging, your colors, names and logos that reflect your brand message are vital to forming a cohesive brand (to learn more about brand psychology check out this blog post). Your branding is essentially what attracts your audience whereas how you market your brand is how you push them to a desired outcome. Where many business owners slip-up is marketing without the brand clarity which is why they often struggle to attract their ideal audience.

How to be personal but a separate entity of your brand

In order to really facilitate authentic connections through your brand, being personal and showing up as you is important. Take the time to build out your brand story and solidify your values as these are what evoke a strong emotional response and will resonate the most with your audience whenever they are reinforced. Own your truth but most importantly the people behind the brand need to work on becoming the best version of themselves for the people they show up for. Your brand develops as you (the person behind the brand) evolve, which is why it is not an overnight job. Additionally, take the time to master your expertise and it will automatically shift the effectiveness and the strength of your brand. My blog about how to build your personal brand might help you better solidify and build a cohesive personal branding.

The importance of consistency

Finally in order to strengthen your brand, consistency is paramount. Brand consistency means that every message put out by your brand, is in alignment with your values and promises. What is the reputation that you want your brand to upkeep? Once that is solidified ensure that it remains constant across all platforms and mediums. Here's a simple guide (that I also personally use!) on how you can circulate your branded content from one platform to another while ensuring you remain consistent all throughout.

Allow yourself time to go back to the foundations with an audience-centered mindset. Dive deep into what they need and how you provide solutions for this. Focus in on your values and solidify your message in alignment with them. If you need some assistance strengthening your brand, apply for the Brand Plan Intensive.