9 Key Tips to Creating an Excellent Corporate Branding Strategy

Within one year of opening their doors, 20% of small businesses fail. As someone trying to get your business off its feet, this is a statistic that likely makes you incredibly anxious. That’s a sensible reaction, but what if we told you that you have nearly complete control over whether or not you become a part of that statistic? What if we told you that there was concrete action you could take to put yourself on the path to success?

Well, it’s true. If you use the right corporate branding strategies on multiple levels, your business is much more likely to succeed than it otherwise would be. In order to do this, you’ll need to come up with a strong corporate message, use up-to-date technology to design your brand, and advertise appropriately to those most likely to use your services. All of these are aspects of branding your business, and all are equally important.

Still, there are a lot of factors that go into each of these things that you need to do. Here, we’re going to give you the top ten tips that you need to follow in order to achieve these goals. Read on to learn the most crucial steps you can take to ensure that your startup is as successful as it can be.

A Strong Message

Before you can begin to build your brand, you need to identify what exactly you want your brand to be. This means having a name and a mission as well as knowing where you want to stand within the industry you’re operating within. Read on to get some pointers on doing all these things as well as figure out how to come up with a plan for branding success!

1. Have the Right Name

If you’re an incredibly new startup, you may not even have a name for your company yet. While it’s tempting to just slap our last name on a sign and call that your brand name, consider: would that mean something to you if you were a consumer? Would it be a compelling name that got you through the doors?

While the answer may be yes if you have an incredibly unique name, people by and large will be looking for something a little different. You’re going to want to think of a catchy brand name that draws people in. Consider other people in your area that operate within your industry and think about what makes their names appealing. Then, you can use the same ideologies to come up with a unique and interesting name for your own brand.

Some ideas to try for brand names are puns, positive language, phrases that tie in with your logo (if you decide on a logo first), or names that include the area that you operate in (to get more local traffic online.) Have fun experimenting until you find something that sticks!

2. What’s Your Mission?

In order for your brand to be efficient, you’ll want to think about a mission statement. You likely can’t think of the mission statement of many brands you use regularly, but the people who founded the companies in the beginning definitely had them. In fact, you can read some of them here and use them as a template for creating your own!

In order to create a compelling mission statement, you’ll need to think about what you want your company to do. What defines success to you in terms of this business? How will you quantify how well you’re doing and how can you represent that within your goals? You’re going to want to be specific when thinking these questions through.

In the end, your mission statement should only be a sentence or two, but it should take these questions into consideration. Make sure you also use strong verbs within the statement that inspire you to go get ’em.

3. Check Out the Competition

When considering how brand building for your company should work, look into the things your competitors have done. Determine the things about their branding strategies that have worked for them and determine those that haven’t. To investigate this, check out the companies in your industry that are succeeding vs those that aren’t doing very well. What are they doing differently from one another?

Once you have an answer to this question, sit down and list the ways that you can build your brand to be similar to your successful competitors. Consider ways that you can rise above these businesses as well- after all, you will be competing against them. Put a unique spin on any successful branding strategies you identify and succeed on your own terms.

4. Come Up With a Plan

Checking out the competition should have given you some ideas as to how you should brand build, but you’re going to want to sit down and come up with a concrete plan with quantifiable steps to ensure success. It can be helpful to have another person there while you do this- think about asking someone who you’d like to be involved with the company to come and listen to your ideas over a cup of coffee.

You can also discuss how to come up with a good strategy with knowledgeable professionals. Pros that know branding will have insight into ideas that you may not even have thought of yet. Schedule a consultation with those who know what they’re doing and begin to grow your brand.

Visual Branding

Once you know what you’re brand it, it’s time to make it visually appealing to consumers. After all, 65% of the general population classify themselves as visual learners! People remember logos and web design and associate them strongly with your brand. This means that you’re going to need to ensure that your logo, website, and ads are all stunning, eye-catching, and unique. Read on for some tips on how to do this.

5. Design an Awesome Logo

Designing an awesome logo is a crucial first step to getting the word about your brand out there. You’ve come up with ideas for your brand, which is awesome. Now, it’s finally happening- you’re putting one of the most crucial symbols of your brand out there into the world.

Your logo is quite possibly the most important thing to consider when building a brand. Think of all the major companies that you use on a day-to-day basis. The first thing that likely comes to mind when you think about them is their logo- it’s a concrete symbol that represents everything that your brand stands for.

Logos are also easily recognizable to the consumer. The bitten-apple logo that Mac uses is such common knowledge that they no longer even put their name on some stores- only the logo! Clearly, this is a successful example. 

Minimalism is a great strategy to keep in mind when designing your logo. Use simple, easy-to-remember shapes and only one or two colors. The Apple logo is minimalist, which likely accounts for a lot of its success, as are other iconic logos like the McDonald’s arches and the Nike checkmark. Make sure that the logo is easy on the eyes and a good symbol for what your company is all about.

6. Keep Your Website Trendy

In order to get clicks on your website, you’ll need to follow the biggest web design trends of 2020. No one wants to click through a wall of text, after all, and customers are likely to back out of your page before they even know what it’s about if the site isn’t visually appealing.

Make sure that you use a lot of graphics and images. Using both of these things on one webpage (and mixing and matching them) is one of the hippest web design trends right now. Another good visual to incorporate is video. If you have a video of a person talking on your home page, consumers that click on it will be more likely to feel as though they’re part of a human-to-human interaction and stay on your web site.

A good color palette is necessary to make your site easy for your audience to look at. You don’t want anything to clash and give people a headache. Lots of sites are switching to have something called ‘dark mode,’ which is compromised of a black background with white text. This has been proven to be easier on many people’s eyes, meaning that they’re more likely to read your entire home page.

7. Have Up-to-Date Ads

Ads are how you’re going to get word of your brand out to people (which we’ll discuss at greater length in the next section!) For this reason, it’s critical that your ads be just as visually appealing as your website. Don’t think that they matter less because many people won’t even see them- chances are, more people will see your ads than click on your page. 

If your ad is just a chunk of text, no one is going to take the time and read it. If it’s shoddy looking, people may even think that it’s a virus and avoid it like the plague!

You’re going to need to design fun, interactive ads that people enjoy looking at. Consider designing a joke in the form of an infographic or including a funny image that you tie back to your business with a caption. Some companies have even designed their ads to be simple playable games that take consumers to their website when they win! This is a surefire way to put people in a good mood before showing them your services.

Online Marketing

Once your brand is established with visuals, it’s time to get the word about your company out there. You want to ensure that your target audience hears what you have to say, meaning that you’ll need to identify them and show them the ads that you’ve created above other people. Read on for some pointers on how to market your brand.

8. Find Your Target Audience

When getting the awesome ads you’ve made out there, the first thing you’ll want to do is identify your target audience. This means considering who you think will be purchasing your product the most. You’re going to want to tailor your ads to be appealing to this audience. For example, you may want to include masculine, sporty colors and deep voices in an advertisement for fishing equipment. On the other hand, young children may be the best people to include images of in an ad for your Tamagotchi-esque toy.

If you’re unsure of who your target audience is (or you just want to measure it in a quantifiable way), you can use Google Ads to track their demographics. Not only will you be able to see the age, gender, and location of the people who click your page most, but you’ll also have the option to target people who have certain keywords in their Google search history.

9. Use Market Trends

When deciding where to advertise, you’re also going to want to track trends in your industry. This means looking into how much certain items or services are selling. You’re going to want to bring those services (if you offer them) to the forefront of your advertisements and make them known to the consumer. This will reel in business and direct people to your most popular services first and foremost.

You can also see where people click on the most advertisements for services like yours. Is it at the top of related pages? In the Google sidebar? On a specific social media site? Remember to do your research and take your findings seriously when deciding on ad placement location.

More Corporate Branding Tips

While a scary amount of small businesses fail, there are concrete measures you can take to ensure that you fall as far from this statistic as the US is to China.

Now that you know the best ways to build an effective corporate branding strategy, it’s time to get some more tips to ensure that your business is successful. Click the ‘marketing’ tab at the top of our home page for some ideas on how to get your brand out there to those who most need to see it. Here, you’ll find more ways to build your online marketing strategy beyond even just targeting the right audience and using the trends within your niche market.

Good luck!