Five mistakes you’re making while trying to grow your brand. – tbpmx featuring Keyla Montalvan!

Growing a brand is not as easy as it looks.

When it comes down to staying competitive in the current business environment, effective branding plays a significant role in determining whether your business will be successful or not.

It takes time and the right strategies to create effective branding, as well as promoting it to increase brand value and awareness. Many businesses tend to make the same mistakes when it comes down to growing their brands.

Here are the five most common mistakes businesses make, and how to avoid them:

1. Ineffective communication.

One of the principal causes of failure, regarding brand identities, is their inability to communicate effectively. Having an unclear brand message may lead to a confused potential client and may block a business from reaching its full potential. Brands live in people’s heads, it’s how people think and feel about them. A brand is not a name, trademark, logo, or product. For a concrete message to come across effectively, considering how you want your brand to be perceived is crucial while developing its identity. How does your brand look inside consumers’ heads? Does it look like happiness, such as Coca-Cola? Is it perceived as cozy and friendly, like Starbucks? Once your message is clear your brand is off to a great start.

Many brands don’t take the time to review their brand image and message, nor they choose a single and strong selling point. To find such, identifying the qualities that set the brand apart from its competition is discovering the advantages your brand can work with. Now that this valuable information is crystal clear it must be communicated thoroughly.

2. Brand inconsistency

It doesn’t matter if your brand message is evident and if your brand communication is visible if there’s no brand consistency. This is how a brand gets inside people’s heads, a consistent tagline or slogan, such as “Just do it” from Nike is essential. Short, sweet, and simple lead to sticky, exactly what a brand needs. It’s repetitiveness along with other communication assets such as a logo, color palette, appropriate typography selection, among other design assets must be consistent in all communication channels. These may include advertising design, UI interfaces, social media, etc. This brand congruity will strengthen and position a brand to the point where it’ll be unforgettable and remarkable.

3. Inappropriate Design

Design has everything to do with brand identity, positioning, and promotion. It’s important to state that this not only involves a nice logo, but it’s what dictates how the brand will look like. It’s the set of elements that the brand revolves around. As mentioned before, these may include logos, icons, a color palette, typography set, patterns, photography style, amidst others, depending on the needs of each brand. This is what we tend to call branding.

For example, a well structured and designed food delivery brand identity can give an impression of a quality brand, hence creating trust and encouraging consumers to buy from that specific company. In contrast, a poorly designed brand can tend to put customers off. Using professional services for the development of an appropriate design or branding for your business will lead to a professional look and as a consequence, a more successful brand. Being authentic when it comes down to brand identity, will only make your brand stand out.

4. Inactive in social media.

It’s 2020 and it’s almost impossible to run a business without social media presence. We’re flooded with these channels, but depending on the business type are the platforms from which these efforts are focused on. For example, if the business is about selling cooking utensils, focusing on Facebook and maybe Instagram will be more profitable than TikTok. This is because Facebook and Instagram users (Generation X, some Millennials and even Baby Boomers) will be more interested in your product than TikTok users (mostly Generation Z). Depends on your target audience, however social media platforms are a great way to acquire new customers, for brand promotion and positioning. A good way to maximize exposure is to post regularly and promote unique ads based on a consistent brand image.

5. Trying to specialize in everything.

Another major mistake is trying to specialize in everything. The best is to center your attention on what you and your company do best; and let experts focus on what your brand isn’t specialized in. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a complete promotional strategy or that you shouldn’t offer certain services. Creating partnerships and collaborating with people in the same industry or even different fields will deliver better results which means happier customers. These alliances will provide better services and will help reach a bigger audience, therefore engaging with new potential customers. Use professionals to handle technical aspects of website creation, SEO, advertising, or anything your brand is missing. We can’t be experts in everything anyway.