Unique Branding for Your Company: Dos and Don’ts to Keep in Mind

The global business environment is vast, and a key component to success in that large arena is a unique brand and a distinctive business identity.

Forging that identity takes time and concentrated effort at unique branding, with careful attention to what your target market wants from a company and how it will react to attempts to be different. Building a successful brand in a crowded marketplace is important because a customer’s first impression happens the instant they see your brand.

• DO be willing to incorporate and adapt best practices and useful components from other lines of business. Best practices emerge in response to solved problems, and even though a branding technique or business process isn’t directly related to your field, it could be translated and applied if it’s useful. As you adapt the practices, make sure to change all relevant terminology and convert processes to fit your industry needs.
• DO be prepared to change your brand identity and marketing if your customer base isn’t responding well. Conservative customers may respond better to traditional low-key branding that stresses stability and reliability and reflects the branding of similar companies. Younger and more adventurous customers might expect branding that reflects their energy and modern perspective. If your unique branding isn’t appealing to the customers you want to attract, change it to something they’ll like better. However, it is better to use a weak brand consistently, than to keep changing it. So before you change it, do plenty of research.
• DON’T use a business name or logo that’s similar to your competitors. Your company name and logo are intrinsic components of your brand, distinctive identifiers that can become inseparable from the identity of a company. A name that sounds too much like a competitor’s may confuse your customers. Using a similar name can also be seen as a deliberate swipe, a transparent attempt at imitation or an attempt to deceive the marketplace, all of which will harm your reputation.
• DON’T use your competitors’ content or their approach to business concerns and the marketplace. Using your competitors as a template means you’ll end up looking too much like them. Make sure your brand and your perspective reflects your relevance and lets customers know how you’re different from and better than companies like yours.

What else could you do to pursue unique branding and keep your brand fresh in the eyes of your customers?

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