Common Mistakes When Branding a Business

Branding a business can be a lot of fun. There’s a color palette to think about, a logo to design, quirky slogans to come up with, and plenty more tasks that all serve to craft your company identity. While each component might just seem like a minor detail, they are all cogs in the broader branding machine. Every component essentially comes together to create your identity as a business, which affects everything from customer perception and retention to brand recognition. Like the Casinos.com guide to the best casinos has positioned the site as a trusted source for top casino recommendations, having a signature element will allow you to establish a real presence in your field.

But let’s face it—branding is also complicated. It’s not as simple as using blue because lots of people like it. And that’s where businesses fall short, as they tend to fall into these traps and not understand their implications. Rebranding or starting your own business and want to avoid making any mistakes? Then read on!

1. Having an Unclear Identity

The key to producing a crystal-clear brand identity is to allocate a lot of time to the research and planning process before you even solidify so much as your company name. No matter how incredible the graphic designer you hired is or how brilliant your product is, a lack of identity will drive customers away. If a brand feels inherently confusing, customers will likely feel that same way. 

So, what exactly encompasses brand identity? Other than visual elements, it’s also about tone of voice, mission, vision, how you interact with your audience, and the decisions you make. A brand that values minimalism and muted colors isn’t suddenly going to produce flashy, neon-colored products. To craft a clear identity, you’ll want to define just about everything—across all platforms and touchpoints.

2. Forgetting About Your Target Audience

The people who keep your business going? Your audience. They’re the ones who will (hopefully) develop an affinity and loyalty to your brand, continue buying from you, and potentially get others to hop on board too. Everything you do within your business should have the target customer in mind, whom you should identity along with all the other elements of branding. 

There are lots of tactics you can use to define your audience, including conducting market research and creating customer personas. While research is relatively straightforward to understand, a persona gives you a semi-fictional idea of the attributes of an ideal customer. If you sell luxury skincare, your ideal customer might be those interested in anti-aging products in their 40s who lead a high-end lifestyle. This understanding should be woven into every single touchpoint.

3. Having a Complicated Brand Message

It can be tempting to overcomplicate your brand message. After all, with everything hinging on it, you might want to cram in just about every feature and benefit you can think of. But just like with most things in life, simple is best. Your message should focus on what matters most to the audience you identified in the research and development phase. 

Perhaps there’s a specific pain point that your audience struggles with or a particular value they hold dear. A brand message that recognizes this off the bat and conveys this will be golden in their eyes. Again, that’s why a well-established brand is so important. It’ll make creating something like a brand message that much easier, leaving no room for confusion. You’ll know your audience, what they need, and how you can deliver. 

4. Staying Stagnant

Although you want to always stay true to your values and branding, trends change, meaning your company’s offerings can change too. That’s why you see so many companies revamping their logos or adopting different fonts. 

We can look at some of the biggest brands in the world as examples, including Apple. Apple has gone through a few logo changes in the past, from a craft beer-esque logo image of Isaac Newton sitting under a tree to the multi-colored striped apple and finally to the sleek and simple apple-with-a-bite-missing logo we have today. Apple effectively evolved with the times, landing on a logo that matched both the market’s demands for simplicity and their brand’s innovative and minimalist essence. 

In a similar fashion, Coca-Cola went from black-and-white script font logos to busy, red-dominated logos of the ‘90s and 2000s and finally settled on a simple red script that reads “Coca-Cola.”

5. Not Having a Unique Selling Proposition

You might think you have the most creative, never-been-done-before product on the market, but chances are, you’ve got competitors. A unique selling proposition (USP) is what sets you apart from them, which is why, without one, you might as well be telling your rivals to take your customers right out of your hands. 

Dollar Shave Club (DSC) is one brand that did the USP right. Traditional razor brands were charging customers excessive prices to purchase a much-needed everyday item, so the brand offered a subscription to high-quality razors delivered right to customers’ doors. Captivated by the preferred subscription model and humor that was used to market the product, customers looked to DSC as the solution. It disrupted the razor market so much that brands like Flamingo and Harry’s followed suit. While the low prices are certainly a huge draw, it’s the way the company turned a boring product into a fun experience that engaged its customer base.