Are you looking for a way to build a business that thrives and grows? Of course you are... This article will cover how to build a brand, why branding is important and the elements you should consider if you're serious about building a thriving business.
We'll also talk about what a brand is and how you can use branding to grow your business. The reason branding is something you want to establish, is because that it's the basis for name recognition and being known for what you're doing to help your audience.
Why is Branding Important
According to Investopedia, a brand is a business and marketing concept that helps people identify a particular company, product, or individual. Brands are intangible, but powerful in that they help shape people's perceptions of companies, their products, or individuals.
They provide enormous value to the company or individual, giving them a competitive edge over others in the same industry. As such, many companies seek legal protection for their brands by obtaining trademarks.
Create a brand board that captures all your branding elements in one place.
While your brand is intangible, it comprises several subtle elements that can send an unspoken message to your audience, helping (or hurting) your business in it's ability to stand out and stay top of mind when it comes to the products and services your company provides.
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Brand Colors, Logos and Fonts
The logo, colors and font combinations you choose to represent your business will convey a message to your audience. The elements you choose for your brand will be incorporated into the theme you choose (in your eCommerce shop, on your blog, website, YouTube channel or podcast) it creates an environment, a look and feel that speaks to your audience on your behalf.
Think about popular brands and what they do for the businesses they are associated with. Brands like Starbucks, Coke, McDonald's, Walmart, Amazon have used branding to represent their business.
The best thing a brand does for your business is that is helps create a feeling when customers and potential customers see the symbols, colors and elements you choose.
For example, when you think of the companies you do businesses with, you think about certain attributes like quality, signature flavors, value based goods, convenience and quick delivery.
Building Your Brand
When building your brand, it's important to think about your current branding status and what you want to be known for. Then look at your marketing assets and determine whether your branding is sending the message you desire.
Your sales and marketing goals should support your income goals. And your social media strategy should support your sales and marketing goals so that it all works together to help you reach your goals faster.
Social media helps to build your brand on a daily basis as you post on various platforms. Having a clear focus on your goals means you can incorporate content that helps you reach and attract an audience of engaged users, leads and customers.
What do you want your audience to think about when they see your logo? How do you want them to feel when they land on your site, or when they see your marketing materials. What actions do you want them to take when they run across your content online.
How to Build a Brand for Your Creative Business
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Brand Building Step by Step
If you haven't payed much attention to your brand, and you want to give it a boost, here are a few tips that will help:
Create a Logo
You should always have marketing materials on hand that you can use to promote your business in print and online. The items below are available here on our site. Click the image to learn more.
Choose Brand Colors and Fonts
The colors you choose are important. Take a look at Canva's color tools that will help you understand the best looking color combinations, color meanings and ideas you can use to give your business a clear, consistent look and feel.
When you sign up for Canva's pro plan, you can choose up to 100 color palettes and upload your logo to be used in business projects like presentations, social media, videos, print products, marketing, and office documents.
Believe it or not, colors have meaning and they send a message to potential customers. When you think of the look, feel and overall message you want your customers to receive, consider the meanings of the colors you select. Canva has a page that shows you various color meanings.
For example, in color psychology, amber is thought to symbolize and promote vitality, confidence and safety.
Font Combinations
The fonts you choose for your business also speak to your audience. Are they easy to read? Do they work to convey your sense of style or do they work against it. The combination of colors and fonts can send a powerful message.
Fonts can also convey a message to the reader. Also known as typography, fonts can add to the mood of any marketing piece.
Fonts are visual elements used to pass information or display a message to the reader. Font choices can impact your unique brand, empower (or limit) the user experience, influence people through emotion, and direct attention.
There are several resources you can use to get ideas about fonts you can use in your marketing materials and web collateral.
Google Fonts has a library of 1,442 open source font families that can be used for branding, whether you're building a brand for your blog, podcast, email, social media accounts or any materials you create online.
Fonts influence how readers perceive the text, a product, or even an entire website.
Therefore, proper font choices fuel your site’s user experience and ultimately affect the design side of your conversion rate optimization.
Icons can be used to further set the tone for your brand. The Google font library also has delightful and beautifully crafted icons for common actions and items. Download these fonts to use in your digital products for Android, iOS, and web.
Create Templates That Make Staying on Brand Easier
Templates that incorporate your brand elements whether you're on your website, social media, podcast, email and other places on or offline will make branding easier.
Starting with a preformatted template provides consistency throughout your business and eliminates the need to hunt for the needed elements to bring a cohesive brand together.
When you have the same color scheme, fonts and elements in all the places you appear on and offline, your audience will come to expect your symbols, (logos, fonts, colors and icons) in the combination you've assembled for your brand.
Order Print and Digital Marketing Materials
Once you've assembled your brand elements, it's now time to order print and digital marketing materials.
You should always have marketing materials on hand that you can use to promote your business in print and online. The items below are available here on our site. Click the image to learn more.
Business Cards
Marketing Kit
Print and Digital Marketing
Stationery Kit
Table Tents
Business Cards
Business Cards & Logo
Digital Marketing
Invitations
Social Posting
Letterhead and Envelope
Square Designs
Brand Kit
Posters
Digital Format
Brand Board
eBooks and Guides
Thank You Cards
Your Company's Mission and Vision
According to Investopedia, a mission statement is used by a company to explain, in simple and concise terms, its purpose(s) for being. The statement is generally short, either a single sentence or a short paragraph. The statement reveals what the company does, how it does it, and why it does it.
A company's brand is shaped by its mission statement.
Mission statements serve a dual purpose by helping employees remain focused on the tasks at hand, and encouraging them to find innovative ways of moving toward increasing their productivity with the eye to achieving company goals.
A vision statement outlines what the company needs to do to remain the way it has presented itself to be. So in essence, a company’s mission is its identity, and the vision is its journey to accomplishing its mission.
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Square Designs
Creative, Fun Fonts and Icons
There are also creative fonts that can be used when creating physical products that can be sold online. Click the image on the left for a huge font pack with a variety of fonts for every occasion. Our font combo Pinterest board has lots of fun fonts that you can use for creative projects like wall art, signs, home decor an more. Learn more about fonts and typography here.
Boost Your Logo
Use Canva Pro to quickly create a new logo or give an uplift to an existing logo. Check out our video that walks you through creating a brand logo that includes your brand colors.
Depending on how much you create images, videos, mockups and other visual elements for your business, a Canva free account can be a great solution.
However, if you're finding that you use a lot of different graphic design tools, why not consider using Canva Pro (or signing up for a free trial) to see if it offers the tools you are already using for one low price. Check out the free versus pro comparison below, and realize that Canva is continually adding new features.
Compare Canva Free vs. Pro Features
| Description | ||
| Price per month | $0 | $12.99/monthly, $119/year ($9.99/month, paid annually) |
| Templates | 250,000+ | 610,000+ (new designs daily) |
| Graphic Elements: stock photos, videos*, audio* and graphics | 1,000,000+ (videos and audio not included) | 100 million |
| Fonts | 1700 | 3000, plus the ability to upload your own |
| Animation | Access to six animation effects | Create a full range of animations in both GIF & MP4 format |
| One-click design magic resize | No | Yes |
| Brand Kits | ||
| Background remover tool | No | Yes |
| Brand Kits (logos, color palettes, and fonts) | No | Create up to 100 brand kits |
| Folders | Two folders | Unlimited folders |
| Content Scheduler | No | Yes (on up to 8 platforms) |
| Canva Teams | Yes | Yes |
| Storage | 5GB | 1 TB |
| Customize download quality | No | Yes |
| SVG Downloads | No | Yes |
| Support | Self-serve using guides and FAQ's | 24/7 direct support |
Choose a Web Theme That Works with Your Brand
Your blog or website theme sets the overall look and feel for your web content. So it's important that you choose a theme that gives you full control of your brand. Your theme should give you the functionality to create content that supports your mission, vision and goals.
We use Thrive Suite (we used it to build this site) that includes Thrive Architect, the drag and drop visual editor that comes with an entire suite of tools you can use to build a sales and marketing system for your business.
We've given you several tools and resources we've used and feel strongly about. Use them or research tools on your own, but make sure you take time to build an amazing brand for your business. If you check out our tools, we would love to know how they work. Enter a comment below to let us know how they work for you.
Using Social Media to Build Your Brand
Posting on social media can be a great way to build your brand and attract an audience. Once the steps above have been completed and your brand is established, you can use it to create name recognition and reinforce your unique selling position.
By posting out messages that will introduce your company to your target audience, showing and telling them what you do will start the process of creating awareness about your company.
Providing a look at your company's day to day activities including announcements, the roll out of new products, flash sales, courses, events, training, free content, etc. can be posted on social media.
Giving your followers a consistent look into your business through social media can attract an audience and open the door to new leads, sales and even testimonials and referrals. For more information on using social media to grow your business check out our course, 30 Days of Social Media.
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