Do you want to start your own brand but don’t know where to begin? Whether you need help with research, finding a niche, or coming up with a name for yourself – we’ve got 8 simple steps that will get you started in the right direction.
Design A Logo And Tagline
One of the most important things is having a logo and a tagline that will be memorable. If you’re not super creative or artistically inclined, there are some great tools online that will help generate ideas for your logo and tagline. Try out different mockups and combinations before designing what you want, and try to keep it simple. You can also hire a graphic designer if your budget allows for it!
Keep in mind that whatever logo and tagline you come up with will need to go on the product packaging. Companies that do box, glass, wood as well as bottle screen printing will tell you that it’s easier to get a design approved if you’re using vector graphics. So, make sure you get your logo right before sending it off to them because you want it to be perfect!
Do The Research
You can’t start building something if you don’t know what it is. So before anything else, sit down and do some research on different brands in your specific market segment. What are they doing well? What kind of audience do they have? How many followers/likes/etc do they have on social media? All of this information is valuable when it comes to deciding how best to promote yourself as an individual brand.
Furthermore, find out how you could go above and beyond those standards. Maybe they have great customer service but their website is lacking, so focus on making sure your site is of high quality and that your presence on social media is noticed.
Find A Niche
Is there a specific topic that you like or want to learn more about? Do you have a hobby that you’d like to turn into something business-related? Maybe the problem isn’t finding a niche, but narrowing it down! Once you’ve started doing your research and figuring out what kind of brand to create (a blog, an Etsy store, etc), try and narrow it down as much as possible. You’ll make things less confusing for yourself in the long run.
Being the best in one narrow niche is easier than being the best at two or three. You also seem more professional if you have a specific topic in mind rather than just something generic.
Create A Name For Yourself
This is definitely one of the more difficult aspects of creating your own brand – but luckily there are some great tools online that can help out with this part. Sites like Name Generator and Dotomator make it easy to get creative with the content you enter in, and try out different combinations until you find something that looks good! You can also ask friends/family for opinions on what they think will resonate the most with your desired audience.
Be careful when it comes to using a name that has been trademarked. Most of the time, this is fine and there won’t be any problems – you just need to make sure you’re not infringing on their trademark!
Find Your Audience
All brands need some kind of target market – this is important to keep in mind while creating a name and logo/tagline for yourself. It’s simple enough just to assume that everyone will want to follow what you’re doing, but this isn’t true. Think about what your specific niche is, and who would be interested in buying from someone within that field?
Your strategy shouldn’t be the same if you’re targeting a young audience as opposed to an older one, for example. Also, you should look into what kind of worldviews they have, what triggers them to purchase things, and even just their general interests. Once you’ve done that you can start creating marketing strategies to target these consumer groups.
Build Your Site And Social Media Profiles
You don’t have to have a huge following or site that does thousands of visitors before you brand yourself – but it will help! There are lots of different sites/apps you can use like Shopify, Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest (Pinterest especially), and Facebook to get your brand started. It’s very simple to set up an account on all of these sites and they’ll allow you to start sharing content with followers right away. Again, have in mind what audience you are attracting and focus your activity on the same social media platforms that they will be on.
Come Up With A Plan For Marketing Yourself
This is an area where many people struggle – coming up with a good way to market themselves in such a saturated market can be difficult. But there are some basic things that everyone should do like getting the word out through social media, and you can even ask the other brands you follow on social media how they’ve been able to generate so much traffic/interest/sales/etc. to get further insight. Other than that, just stay consistent with whatever content you’re sharing because the audience will come to you if they see value in what you have to say!
Promoting yourself is the hardest part since it isn’t really something you can teach. If you’re not getting many visitors to your site or social media profiles, try out different things until you find something that sticks. You can always ask friends/family for feedback or join communities online where people might be interested in what you have to say.
The design of your logo is not an area where you want to cut corners. It should be engaging, resonate with the target audience and convey a sense of professionalism. This blog post has outlined some things that you can do in order to make sure that your branding efforts are successful – so consider these seven steps when starting your next project! Also always keep in mind that you want to convey a specific message that is going to be unique and high quality so make sure to hire someone who is professional and talented to help you out!