Customers today face more options than ever. A simple search on Amazon will bring up dozens of lookalike products, with little to differentiate one from the next. That’s where brand comes in. You’re much more likely to buy from a company you recognize rather than a name you’ve never heard of.

Brand building is the key to increasing trust, awareness, and recognition for your company. Long term, it also helps build customer loyalty. Invest in brand building as early as possible to improve your brand perception in its market.

What Is Brand Building?

Brand building is the process of investing in, developing, and maintaining your company’s brand long term.

Often companies think of brand building as the work involved in setting out their visual identity, like its logo and color palette. But design work is just one part of building a successful, recognizable brand.

The brand-building process involves:

• Setting a clear brand identity. This identity includes your brand’s values and brand principles, visual elements – like your logo design, color palette, fonts, and icons – as well as your messaging and brand voice.
• Aligning on values internally. Shared values and culture are the foundation of your brand, and internal values alignment helps to build a brand that feels authentic to your employees and customers. Shared values are increasingly important to your customers: 5W’s consumer culture report found that 72% of consumers prefer buying from companies aligned with their values.
• Creating and sharing clear guidelines to demonstrate and document what is and isn’t on-brand. These guidelines help your employees know what your brand should look like to improve consistency. Our State of Brand Ownership report found that too much deviation from the core brand visual style means “the brand identity can quickly begin to diverge across channels and look unprofessional.”
• Engaging your whole team. If you can engage your employees with brand building, you’ll have a stronger internal brand. This will make it easier to present a consistent, aligned, customer-facing brand.

Building a strong brand is a long-term project that can’t be achieved overnight, or on your own. The sooner you start developing and defining your brand, the sooner you’ll start to experience the benefits that a consistent, recognizable brand can bring to your company.

Benefits of Brand Building and Why It's Important

In the long run, a strong brand will massively increase the value of a company – just think of Apple, Coca-Cola, or Uber. Define your brand, and you’ll be set to build brand awareness and connect more closely with your existing customers.

• Learn more: Benefits of a strong brand

Improved Brand Recognition

Brand recognition is how well your customers and target audience can identify your business and products in the wild against your competitors.

A big part of this recognition? Brand consistency. When you set clear guidelines around your brand visuals and messaging, team members can reliably present your company in the same way across your product, marketing campaigns, sales materials, and company messaging. Consistent representation of your product and messaging help your audience know when they’re interacting with your company.

Easier Customer Acquisition

A strong brand can make it easier to acquire new customers. It can drive trust in your products and help you stand out in a crowded market until you become the biggest name in your category.

As well as seeing your customer numbers increase, you’ll see the impact of brand building reflected in other ways:

• Higher advertising effectiveness – whether it’s an advert in a subway station or before a YouTube video, a strong brand means people are more likely to recognize your adverts and take action. The more effective your advertising, the more likely people are to purchase the products on display (or at least click through to learn more about them).
• Lower price sensitivity – if customers love your brand and your products, the price becomes less of a factor when they’re deciding whether or not to buy from you. Long term, you can charge more for your products – like how Apple’s 2008 iPhone 3G started at $199, while the 2021 iPhone 13 starts at $799.

Stronger Customer Loyalty

Increased brand loyalty is good for your company’s bottom line. Accenture found that 57% of customers spend more money with companies and brands to which they feel loyalty.

Many things can help build customer loyalty for your brand, including quality products and your support experience. But shared values are an often-overlooked element that builds connections between customers and brands. According to Sprout Social, 64% of consumers "want brands to connect with them," and "connection breeds loyalty."

The brand-building process involves defining your company’s values. Work with your fellow team members to define the principles that drive your business and motivate your customers.

Learn more about the benefits of brand building in this article: 7 Major Benefits of a Strong Brand

How to Build a Strong, Authentic Brand

Brand building takes time and consistent effort, so it’s not something you can achieve in a single sprint. Follow the steps below to develop and maintain an authentic brand over time.

1. Discover Your Brand Identity

It’s likely you already have an informal brand identity but have never spent the time defining it properly. To develop your brand identity:

• Assess your market position to identify your competitors, your target audience, and how they perceive you.
• Uncover your brand values by working with internal stakeholders and team members to understand the principles that are most important to your business.
• Develop your visual brand identity based on input from other team members to ensure it is an authentic representation of your brand’s values and personality.

We cover this discovery process in more detail: 6 Steps to Discover, Develop, & Document Your Company Identity

2. Assess Your Brand Maturity Stage

Companies go through different stages of brand maturity as they grow:

• Discovery – Your brand is implicit rather than something that’s defined and documented.
• Enabler – You’ve started building a brand and understand the importance of brand management.
• Co-Creation – You’ve got a formalized brand strategy, and the whole company is invested in your brand vision.
• Brand-Driven – Your brand strategy is broken down by department, and you have a centralized brand management system in place.
• Brand-Excellence – Your brand is well known and recognized, and customers perceive it as valuable and desirable.