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(Art Credit: Andrea Hernandez) There’s no way around it: building and maintaining a brand takes time and energy. It takes critical thinking and a strategic mindset, asking big questions and making tough decisions. It may require collaboration with other people for their input and approval. And it means staying flexible and open-minded as the world around your brand changes, as does your audience’s needs and interests. But there’s good news: as a freelancer, you decide for yourself how you want your brand to look, feel and act. You don’t need to attend a series of workshops, have long debates about concepts or emotions, or convince anybody what color palette makes the most sense. But just because you call all the shots doesn’t mean it’s easy! To build your own brand from scratch, let’s break it down a bit further. In this post, we’ll answer the following questions:
What is a brand?One of the reasons this topic can be so intimidating is the language involved. It’s easy to get lost in a soup of terminology related to brand building, and if you ask two people to define “brand” you will hear two different answers. In the world of freelancers and small business owners, a brand refers to:
As you can see, a brand is a lot more than a name and logo. Why build a brand?The effort of brand building is done to shape the way you are perceived by others. You could very well ignore your brand and focus only on your products and services — and many businesses take this route — but you leave yourself vulnerable to your competition, to being easily forgotten, and to others having more control over your reputation than yourself. Simply put, good branding reduces confusion about who you are. A brand creates shortcuts in the minds of consumers, as well as marketers. For a business owner, having a clear brand makes it easier to design a marketing strategy and decide what tactics to employ, as well as determine which partners and vendors to work with, and what kind of employees to hire. For consumers exposed to endless choices, brands help us make faster buying decisions. When we see a brand we recognize and have a good feeling about, it’s easier to choose that brand over one we aren’t familiar with and are less confident in. The world’s strongest brands do exactly that – they signal trust. These brands show the world what they stand for, and build emotional bonds with their audiences (know any Tesla or Apple lovers?). What makes a strong brand identity?How will you know if your brand identity is strong? Below are some of the most important attributes to consider when building a brand:
How to build a brand identity from scratchBuilding a brand is an iterative process that you’ll return to again and again as your business grows and things change. Below are the key steps of a process you may return to over time:
Depending on your situation and resources, some of these steps will seem more straightforward than others. You’re bringing something entirely new into the world, and the more love and energy you put into it, the stronger your brand will be. 1. Do some self discovery.If you don’t define yourself, others will. And that starts with looking inward and getting clear with yourself about why you’re doing whatever you’re doing in the first place. If you’ve been in business for a while, think back to your earliest days, and your dreams of starting your own business. Next, sit in the present moment and focus on why you’re here. Some good questions to consider:
Jot the answers down in a notebook or in a file somewhere because they’ll come into use later. For a huge dose of motivation and inspiration, listen to Start With Why, an 18-minute TED Talk by Simon Sinek that is widely known in the field of marketing and advertising. 2. Research your audience.This is one of our favorite parts of the process of defining a strong brand. It’s a great way to stay balanced and focused on who really matters: your customers. It’s easy to get lost in the conceptual world of who you are and why you exist, and many brands fall into this trap. Some ways to do audience research:
3. Study the competition.It’s important to know what your top 3-5 competitors are doing and saying, for a few reasons. This helps maintain relevance with customers, if there’s a certain language or terminology that’s used by other brands in your industry. But it also helps identify opportunities to stand out. You don’t want to use the same color palette as your main competitors or this will cause confusion. And you certainly can’t use the same taglines or slogans, or this could lead to bigger problems. Competitor research should include:
Tips for competitive research:
4. Narrow your focus.Now it’s time for some deeper thinking and decision making. Using all the research you’ve done up to this point, it’s time to define who you are on a single page. We can’t express how useful it is to get stuff out of your head and onto a page, even if you’re the only person who will be looking at it. Having everything on a single page may seem like an unnecessary step – or an extremely daunting one – but it’s guaranteed to make life easier in more ways than one. There are a few tools used by brands to simplify their focus. You don’t need to use all of them, and they won’t appear anywhere. This is not your tagline; it’s an internal statement of clarity for you to point to anytime you need to remember who you are, what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
5. Choose a name.This is one of the more difficult parts of the whole thing, believe it or not. You could always just use your name as your business name, coupled with a description of your services (e.g. Betsy Jacobs Marketing). However, creating a new name is a huge branding opportunity, as names can tell a whole story by themselves, when chosen well. For example, when you think about Nickelodeon, how does it make you feel? The name itself is full of character and spunk, and fun to say; perfect for a children’s entertainment network. Plus, the origin has meaning, too. The word nickelodeon was originally used to describe small movie theatres in the early 1900’s which charged a nickel per show. And, the ancient Greek term for theatre is odeion. Tips for choosing a name:
6. Design a visual identity.This is the look and feel of your brand and so it obviously plays a huge role in creating distinction. Your visual identity includes:
7. Bring your brand to life.Once you’ve defined your strategy and crafted an identity, your branding should appear in some form across every customer touchpoint, from your website through your marketing, and even how you speak to customers in chat or email.
Building a brand from scratch doesn’t need to be a massive undertaking, and you don’t need to do it all alone. Use the resources we provided in this post, and be sure to check out our other articles on the Lili blog. And if after all of this, you need tips on reducing stress while growing your business, we’ve got you covered there, too! via Freelancers Union Blog https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2022/04/08/how-to-build-a-brand-creating-a-brand-identity-from-scratch/
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AuthorI have 5+ years experience working as a medical transcriptionist. When I am not working, I enjoy sports like playing basketball or judo. I love making friends and connections. Archives
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