What foundational practices do you implement and enforce in your business branding strategy?

Developing best practices for business branding allows you to develop highly effective processes that can streamline the work for you and your team as you create branded content. This also helps you anchor the intangible aspects of your brand (e.g. values, characteristics, etc) into concrete processes. 

By now, you should know the differences between personal and business branding and how they work together to help you achieve your branding and marketing objectives. While personal branding involves your values and how you want the public to perceive you as an individual, business branding requires creating a separate entity for your enterprise.

For your business brand to be successful, it must embody company values and attributes while educating audiences about its unique selling proposition, demonstrating why potential customers should choose that business over its competitors. 

Establishing branding practices in places can help you build brand awareness and visibility while ensuring that anyone in your marketing team or agency can accomplish the processes for creating branded content.

5 business branding best practices to implement 

We’ve shortlisted five business branding practices you can implement for your branding strategy.

1. Build your business branding on a foundation of authenticity

As your business grows and your brand evolves, it’s important to maintain a core of authenticity regardless of the changes that come your way. When you are consistent and transparent with how the company evolves, your audience will continue to trust your brand and be interested in growing alongside your business.

Your business brand needs to be centred on your values and purpose to ensure that you grow from a foundation of authenticity. This adds an emotional core to your branding initiatives, especially when promoting your brand story or business journey. 

One of the first steps you will need to take in building your business brand is creating a brand story, which is crucial for introducing your brand to the public. If your business brand is built on a foundation of authenticity, your brand story can increase brand awareness and recall. 

Your brand story also unifies your existing customers, giving them a glimpse into your business journey and allowing them to connect with your brand on a deeper level. 

When you maintain that foundation of authenticity in your brand, you spark a connection with your audience and encourage them to trust in your business.

2. Develop a clear brand personality for your business

How would you describe your brand if it were a person?

It’s important to create a strong brand personality and identity for your business. This involves assigning key human characteristics and traits to describe your business brand.  When developed effectively, your business brand personality will shine through your brand messaging, writing style, tone of voice, and overall marketing initiatives.

A brand personality allows you to achieve several things:

• It will help you attract like-minded customers that resonate with your business brand.
• It will set your business apart from competitors.
• It makes your business brand memorable.

Your brand personality needs to be consistent across all your channels to gain your audience’s trust and loyalty. If you use a different tone of voice on your website from your social media channels, this can confuse your audience and potentially turn away potential leads.

One example of a successful branding personality is CocaCola, which has always focused on nostalgia, togetherness and comfort. Its branding revolves around timeless enjoyment, unity and happiness, which is evident in the marketing campaigns they’ve launched throughout the years.

Creating and following branding guidelines is necessary for building and maintaining your brand personality.

CocaCola “Real Magic” Hug Logo

3. Use content to showcase your brand voice

According to the Content Marketing Institute, a brand voice enables your brand to be an easily identified and authoritative source in your industry or area of expertise. 

A brand voice will be inherently present in all of your content, but the key is to use it intentionally. Taking your brand voice for granted can result in inconsistent public perceptions of your brand, or mixed messages in your content.

Being strategic and intentional with your content can help you hone your brand voice and ensure that it aligns with your brand personality and goals. 

A brand voice chart is an essential tool that you and your team can easily refer to when you create new branded content for your business. This chart includes the primary characteristics of your brand voice and the basic dos and don’ts that your content creators should take note of. This enables you to stay on track with your content and maintain a consistent voice in your marketing initiatives.

4. Tell stories that resonate with your audience

The digital landscape is oversaturated with so much content, making it much more challenging for businesses to capture their target audience’s attention. This is where storytelling comes in.

Storytelling allows you to reach and engage your audience, communicate key brand messages and prompt them to action in favour of your business.

Stories can inspire and motivate your audience while reinforcing your business’s unique selling proposition at the same time. While your personal experiences and anecdotes can be a great starting point for creating brand stories, story-driven content must be relevant to your audience. Incorporating “conflicts” in a branded story that greatly reflects your ideal customer’s pain points can hook your audience, keeping them engaged in the outcome of your story.

Ensure that your stories increase brand awareness and reinforce your authority in the industry; this keeps your story-driven content from being self-indulgent and self-centred.

5. Maintain consistency with your branded content

Maintaining consistency with your branded content can be challenging if you don’t have branding guidelines and a content strategy to reinforce your key messages and themes. 

Developing your brand guide and following a clear strategy ensures that you’re consistent with the content you create. 

Here are some other tips that can help you maintain brand consistency across your platforms:

• Repurpose content across all your channels – This helps you extend the lifespan of your existing content and ensures that you’re reinforcing brand messages that you want to keep in the public eye.
• Perform brand audits – Cross-checking your website pages and social media posts with your branding guidelines can help you identify if there are any inconsistencies or areas of improvement with your brand strategy or content.
• Partner with content experts – As a business owner, it’s understandable if branding may not be your priority, which is why it’s important to hire professional content creators who can help you achieve your branding and marketing goals.

Developing best practices for your business allows you to set clear processes for creating branded content, ensuring that you and your team can continuously produce marketing initiatives that are aligned with your guiding principles.

Interested in developing your brand? Contact us.