No matter what the size of your business, the importance of a clear and consistent brand identity applies to you. Without a brand strategy, you risk selling products and services to a market that has no clear vision of who you are. This can eventually weaken your brand’s audience connection.  Studies say that brands with strong reputations have 31% higher shareholder returns. Such organizations also have a more engaged workforce which can help a brand grow by three to four times faster than its competitors. Seeing just how worthwhile branding is, let us look at some crucial branding mistakes to avoid:

1) Not having brand guidelines

With well-established brand guidelines, you can properly organize your content on your website, social pages, and other properties. A cohesive brand styling guide helps create consistent messaging across all channels. With a brand guide, customers are likely to be confused about what your business stands for. It could also undermine the trustworthiness of your brand. Keep in mind the tone, voice, and writing style of your brand while creating a guideline. Fonts, color schemes, and proper logo placement are other visual elements that strengthen your brand identity.

2) Overspending on product development

While product and marketing departments are different business units, product departments are often more trusted by stakeholders compared to the marketing units. This leads to higher budgets allotted to them, while marketing teams are required to prove positive ROIs for every activation they run. In cases where marketing teams request additional spends, they rarely get approval. They are also the first to be hit by company-wide budget cuts. Together, these factors lead to companies disproportionately spending on product development with budgets for communication activities lagging behind.  A strong brand reminds your customer why they should buy your product. Without this support, brands tend to experience a decline in customer loyalty and retention.

3) Targeting everyone or anyone

Any brand that thinks ‘everyone’ is their target audience is set to make a huge mistake. Focusing on everyone or the wrong audience means your brand has generic messaging. This further translates to low engagement and no sales.  Make sure to pick the right target audience for your brand. Ask yourself some of the following questions to define your target audience:

• How old is your audience?
• What are their interests?
• What are their needs?
• What is their income?
• What are they located?

Now that you know what to avoid to build a strong brand, here are some practices to strengthen your brand:

1. Focus on one brand at a time. Generate brand awareness and don’t launch other brands till one brand is well into the brand advocacy stage.
2. Spend time to make your brand popular. It is vital to have a good product, but never assume it will reach your audience on its own. By cutting your marketing budget you are actually reducing your business size in the long run.
3. Create and maintain a wide range of branding assets and apply them where possible.

Creating and maintaining an effective brand isn’t something that can happen overnight as it involves consistency and dedication. We hope you’ll use the tips from this post and get one step closer to making sure your brand identity and messaging are on point.