Starting and running a business is an exciting adventure. Having the chance to get your product or service out into the world is both energizing and extremely humbling. But how do you make your brand stand out amongst the competition?

For most companies, the brand identity is crucial to engaging your audience. Without adequate design and branding, people will never know the value you can offer them and your audience won’t know what makes you unique.

Fortunately, there are ways to build your brand and create a look and message that put you at the top of your market. That’s why we wanted to bring you the ultimate guide to making your brand stand out.

Focus on Your Brand Voice

Your brand voice is what makes your company unique. When building your platform and trying to find an audience, you need to keep your brand’s aesthetic and tone consistent. This is vital in order to build recognition.

What Your Brand Voice Means to You

As you work on your brand strategy, it is vital that you consider both the visual and the tonal aspects. This means choosing brand colors that will make you pop and a logo that is interesting, clear, and memorable. You want design layouts that your audience can follow. They should know it’s your brand whether they are on your website, reading your newsletter, or following you on social media.

Is your style text-heavy or minimalist? Bright or earth-toned? Is your product or service something to explain or something to show?

When it comes to the writing style used in your copy, once more you have to ask questions. Is your brand casual and friendly? Do you use more formal language to boost your professionalism? Do you rely on copy or are videos a stronger means of communication for your brand?

You must consider each of these in advance, because rebranding is an expense we all want to avoid.

What Your Brand Voice Means to Your Customer

The biggest reason you want to establish your brand identity and be consistent is because of what it means to your customer.

Ultimately, how your brand communicates isn’t about you. It’s about what your audience believes you are saying. Don’t ask what story you’re telling. Ask what story your prospect is hearing.

Using your brand voice to help potential customers connect with you is an important step in marketing. They need to know what they are getting from you and if you can solve their problem. Your brand identity is a way of developing trust. It lets the customer know that they are the hero of the story, you are the guide. Instead of trying to convince them that you are worth their time, remind them that they are worth yours.

You want your client to feel safe with your brand. If they know you have a similar goal as they do, you put yourself above the competition.

Of course, this begins with identifying your target audience and knowing how to talk to them. Once you define the type of consumer you are looking for, your business can better reach them. This creates new avenues to build the trust they deserve.

With your unique, consistent voice, you can successfully grow your vision and help it resonate with the right people. Resonating with the right people will definitely make your brand stand out since most brands settle for a more generic appeal.

Instead of trying to convince them that you are worth their time, remind them that they are worth yours.

Casey Cease

Social Media Presence

Social media is by far one of the hardest places to make your brand stand out. On social media, your image needs to be different, better, and easier to find than those of your competitors. Sound like a tall order?

The success of your social media really comes down to having the right processes in place and, yet again, being consistent.

The First Look

Potential customers might not know you exist until they stumble upon a video, ad, or post on social media. Depending on whether or not your brand voice captures them that first time, they might just scroll on by. If you post with consistency, you’ll stay top-of-mind, and you can have a more effective connection with your audience.

It’s important to include the right information for the right type of content. If you are posting a blog, it should have only the most relevant information. That quality information needs to be something the customer actually wants as opposed to what you think needs to be shared. From there, you can drive traffic to your website by posting specific quotes from the blog to your social media accounts.

When posting those quotes, they should always be in an image-based format that is consistent with your brand identity. If your brand displays a minimalist, neutral-toned aesthetic, your quote should be placed atop a minimalist, neutral-toned background.

Converting Prospects

Appealing to potential customers is an important step for generating brand awareness, but the next step is to actually engage them. It’s essential to set a practice of responding to questions and comments from your audience. This ensures that the prospect will see your post again when they click to read your response. It also shows that you care enough about their business to give them your time and energy.

Relate to your clients and let them see more of your brand personality when you interact with them. For example:

• Ask thoughtful questions that are easy for your audience to answer
• Use polls for instant feedback about new potential products or current products
• Encourage reviews from customers who are satisfied with your product

Sharing reviews are especially great as will provide the all-important social proof, encouraging new customers to trust you all the more. This is a great way to improve your online marketing in general.

When your brand starts a new social media campaign, be prepared for whatever questions may arise and check conversion rates often. This is a great indicator to let you know how your social media presence is doing and what may need to change.

A Positive Website Experience

Of course, the whole point of social media marketing is to get prospects to your website and convert them to customers. With this in mind, the best way to increase conversions is to give them an easy and efficient experience on your website.

Keeping Your Audience Interested

When we don’t deliver a positive website experience, the prospect is likely to leave the page. They don’t want to waste time trying to find what they’re looking for. This is exactly why you want to make sure that your website has quick loading times. Likewise, ensure that all plug-ins are working properly, so they don’t lose interest.

Tip: Visit your website in a Private browsing window and go through it as if you were a new customer.

Maybe you have someone on your team who does web design, or maybe you have decided to outsource. Either way, look at other websites in your industry to find ideas of how to improve your own.

How can you differentiate yourself online? How can your website leave a greater impact on your audience? What can you do to inspire your prospects and gain loyal, devoted customers?

Get creative and highlight your strengths on the website to attract new customers. Once more, only give them the information they really need. Let them see what you can offer and don’t waste their time with anything more. Distractions will only crowd the page and confuse their attention.

Your Call to Action

Most importantly, your website needs to effectively feature your CTA–your call to action. It is critical that you have this at the forefront of your website, so your audience isn’t having to search for it. In the digital age, we can’t expect our audience to have patience with us.

Instead, we need to make the action clear for them. Your email subscribe form should pop up when they click your link. Your ‘Buy Now’ should draw the customer’s eyes.

Whatever your brand provides, the customer should always be able to access it easily. This strategy creates a positive customer experience and will keep them coming back for future purchases.

Don’t Miss an Opportunity to Make Your Brand Stand Out!

Whether an organization is launching or trying to scale, digital marketing can be overwhelming. There are so many opportunities to succeed, but it takes the right of effort in the right places.

These methods will help in positioning your brand as a competitor online, but there is help for businesses who need it. Using a digital marketing agency like Planify can help to strengthen your opportunities. Better yet, that will give you time to focus on other aspects of brand development.

Maybe you need help, or maybe you are eager to do it on your own. The most important approach to making your brand stand out is to offer your audience what matters to them. If you apply the strategies above, then you will be on the right track to success.