Episode #14: How to Grow Your Business With Branding (7 Principles For Success)

One of the most important parts of my role as a designer, marketer, and brand strategist is to analyze and determine the reasons why some businesses easily rise above the competition, and why so many other businesses are constantly struggling to keep their head above water.

Throughout my 2 decades of research, I have recognized and isolated 7 brand principles that will guarantee the future success and growth of their business.

Here is a brief overview of these 7 brand principles that your business must define, develop, and implement to attract more customers, beat the competition, build a loyal community of advocates, and become a beloved brand.

Brand Principle Number 1. Definitive Motivation

This is the foundation of your brand. It is who you are, why you do what you do, and what problem your business solves.

It is your brand’s purpose, vision, mission, and your values. Your brand heart is the reason why you exist, and how you plan to make the world a better place.

Brand Principle Number 2: Targeted Audience

This is when you define your audience, and discover who your ideal customer is.

By clarifying who your audience is, you will learn their beliefs, what’s important to them, and what drives their purchasing decisions.

You will also gain clarity about their goals, their pain points, and what might make them hesitant to use your product or service.

Brand Principle Number 3: Competitive Awareness

This is how you beat your competition. You must discover who your competition is, how you are different from them, how you are the same, what makes them better than you, what makes you better than them, and what you are able to do that they cannot.

By determining their strengths and their weaknesses, you can then capitalize on those weaknesses by differentiating your brand from theirs.

Brand Principle Number 4: Strategic Messaging

This is how you speak to your customers and where you should strategically communicate to your audience to create positive engagement.

Your messaging should allow your audience to easily understand what you do, what are your values, what is your promise, and the benefits that your products or services offer.

Your brand’s message includes your name, your tagline, your voice, your personality, and your value proposition.

Brand Principle Number 5: Engaging Identity

You must design impactful and engaging Visual Identity. Your visual identity includes your logo, your brand’s color palette, the typography you use in your designs, and how you coordinate illustration, photography, icons, web design, and motion graphics to create a consistent look and feel, so your customers can easily recognize your brand.

Brand Principle Number 6: Consistent Implementation

This is the process of implementing and coordinating your brand messaging and visual identity consistently across all of your consumer touchpoints.

You will take all the hard work, commitment, and time you have put into developing your brand, and strategically releasing it into the world for everyone to see.

Brand Principle Number 7: Asset Management

You must create guidelines for your team to use as they develop your marketing campaigns, advertisements, and all your brand touchpoints.

Proper management, enforcement, and systematic audits of your brand assets will not only maintain consistency, but also reveal where your brand may be failing so you can make the necessary adjustments.

So there you have it. That is a brief overview of the 7 brand principles that your business must define, develop, and implement if you intend to not only survive the highly competitive market, but also thrive and become the preferred choice of the consumer.