What the hell is a brand? I know it's confusing.
In this detailed guide I will show you how you can design a unique brand for your small business without any formal design knowledge or marketing experience.
When you finish reading this article you will have a decent idea of what a brand is and how to create one.
What the hell is a brand?
Simply put, brand is how your business is perceived by your customers. Imagine your business is a person. What would your customers think of that person?
Okay, think of a friend of yours.
Let’s call your mate, “Scotty”. Scotty always dresses in designer clothes. He’s loud, passionate and great to be around. He’s the life of the party. He uses language very freely. Yes, he tends to swear a lot but hey, he's as Aussie as Aussie can get.
Just like Scotty has a unique personality, your business also has a personality. This is your “brand”. Your brand consists of your business name, logo, how you write your copy, how you service your customers. It’s everything about your business that is experienced by your customers, partners, contractors and employees.
Yes, it's bloody everything!
Anatomy of a brand
All right now we know what a brand is. Let’s start creating a brand for your business. Before that, let’s understand what are the building blocks of a brand. Below is a list of things you never heard of. Lol. No fear, let me guide you through each one.
- Your unique selling proposition (USP)
- Your mission, vision and values
- Target audience
- Brand identity
- Brand foundation
- Visual guide
- Brand voice/communication guide
- User experience guide
Unique selling proposition
Oh god, another marketing term! Yes, but this is not as hard as it sounds. This simply means how you are differentiating yourself from your competitors. What's unique about your business? If you are having a hard time trying to think what’s different about your business. Don’t worry. You are not the first one.
Let’s look at some unique Aussie brands and their USPs.
Vegemite
Vegemite offers a uniquely Australian flavour that has become a staple in households across the nation.
UGG
UGG provides premium sheepskin boots that embody the relaxed and comfortable Australian way of life.
Who Gives A Crap
Eco-friendly toilet paper that builds toilets. Transforming everyday essentials into impactful social change.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
Vegemite has a unique flavour. So they are focusing on their flavour as their USP. UGG, on the other hand, uses “premium” sheepskin to facilitate comfort and relaxation in cold weather. “Who gives a crap” sells toilet paper that looks exactly like other toilet paper but they are focusing on social change.
As you can see, it's not “just” what you sell as a product or service. It can be anything your business can relate to as long as it's unique to you.
If you are still having a hard time thinking of a unique angle for your business, use below starter questions to help you.
- Are you offering a product or service that is unique to you?
- Is there something unique about your background story?
- Is there something special about your process, material or technique?
- What do your happiest customers say about you?
- Do you have a specific vision or a challenge you are trying to solve?
Hopefully now you must have some sort of understanding what your unique selling proposition is? Also don’t get too fixated on this. You don’t have to be “super unique” or amazing to have a great USP. Just a bit of clarification so we know what to build our brand on.
Let’s talk about our next brand element “Mission, vision and values”
Your mission, vision and values
Mission
Your mission is the reason your business exists right now. It’s simple, practical and action focused. It simply explains what you do, who you do it for and how.
Think of what you do in business everyday. Then think of your USP we discussed in the previous section.
Below are two mission statements for coffee shops but each focused on different USPs.
Sustainability focused coffee shop
“To brew delicious coffee with a conscience—sourcing ethically, minimising waste, and supporting local growers.”
Creativity and artists focused coffee shop
“To fuel creativity, connection, and conversation through carefully brewed coffee and community energy.”
Vision
Vision is your dream for the future. It's super aspirational and portrays a world that you are trying to create through your work. You may never get there but that’s where you are heading so think big for this one.
Patagonia’s vision - “We’re in business to save our home planet.”
Values
Your values are the core beliefs and principles that guide how you do business. They tell your customers what matters to you.
Again, don’t worry about what others are thinking about these. It has to be aligned with you. If you are a small business then, these will be mostly your personal values.
What are things you never compromise on? Even someone is prepared to pay you a big lump of money for it?
Below is a table of values that you can use to pick your most important values. Just pick your top 3. Once again, don’t overthink. There is no right or wrong answer for this.
Nice. Now we have a mission, vision and our values picked. Let’s move on to the next building block of your brand which is your target audience.
Target Audience
At this point, we have a basic idea of your unique offering plus how you are planning to do that. Amazing!
Now we are up to the second most important component of your brand which is the target audience.
Who is going to pay for your products and services?
Anyone with money? No!
If you are already in business, then you have a good idea what your customers are? You may have basic understanding of their;
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Job/Income level
But real power comes in when you understand your customers' psychographics.
- What do they care about?
- What frustrates them?
- What kind of lifestyle do they want?
- What do they believe in?
- What kind of brands do they already love?
If you already have some customers, then without you realising it, your core values and their values somewhat already align. People buy with emotions. NOT with logic!
If you are a startup or new to business then, a good starting point is your USP and values. You already have a set of beliefs and principles. You will attract like minded people who want to do business with you.
Usually at this point, it's beneficial to look at what your competitors are doing. Since they are already attracting the type of people you want to do business with, you will learn a ton from them.
Use the below action plan, if you are starting from scratch.
- Google or ask ChatGPT, and find out your top competitors.
- Check their website, copy, social media and specifically comments.
- Check reviews
- Find out other brands their users like, and do the same as above.
At this point you must have some data. Again, don’t worry if you don’t have everything. Sometimes you may even serve the wrong target audience all together and over time you will learn.
Marketing people call this “product market fit”. Even big companies don’t nail this at first go. This is an ongoing process and when you are new, you just need a basic understanding. That’s all.
Brand Identity
Okay now we are up to fun stuff.
Brand identity includes everything people who interact with your business experience. Such as below.
- Brand foundation - USP, Mission, Target audience etc
- Visual elements - Logo, colours, fonts etc
- Brand tone - How you sound like in your marketing material
- User experience guide - In person or digital experience
Let’s dive into each one and expand them.
Brand foundation
You know what? We already did most of the brand foundation work! So pat yourself on the back. 🙂
If you hire a brand designer or an agency to do this work, they would typically create a brand guideline for you, which is a detailed guide, with information on your USP, Mission values etc. If you are reading this, you are probably looking to do all this yourself so, at this stage just create a simple Google doc, so you can refer to this later on.
Let’s revisit brand foundation
- USP (Unique selling proposition)
- Mission, vision and values
- Target audience
Note down your findings on the same Google doc above.
Let’s go to the next section.
Visual elements
These are the elements you can see. Things like your business logo, colours, photography etc. Most people would start here without a good understanding of brand foundation.
Not you! You already have a solid brand foundation. Let’s look at creating your visual identity now.
Logo
Logo is your most prominent visual element. However it is also the most misunderstood. There are a million online tools you can use to create a logo. AI tools like ChatGPT or whatever the hot tool currently trending, will be able to help you come up with some concepts.
I usually Google for ideas or get ChatGPT to regenerate some ideas. I use a basic prompt like below.
“Create 3 simple logo concepts for my business [business name]. My USP is [Your USP]. My mission is [Your mission statement] and my values are [Your values].
This should generate you some ideas to begin with.
However as a designer with more than 20 years of experience I can tell you, there are common mistakes to avoid.
- Keep it simple
- You don’t need to have a secret meaning in your logo
- There is always a better logo than yours
- Avoid gradient effect (one colour fading into another colour), 3D or shadows.
And lastly,
You are not your target audience!
Let me repeat. You are not your bloody target audience! (99% of the time)
So, show your concepts for a few people in your target audience to get their feedback.
Once you have some concepts you (and your potential customers) like, you can get a designer to create a “vector” version of your concept. Don’t worry they would know what this means.
Colours
Allright let’s talk about colours.
Nope! Not your favourite colours. Colours that fit the personality of your brand. We have a basic idea of your business’s personality, thanks to the work we did in the brand foundation above. Now we need to translate this to colours.
Each colour has a certain emotion associated with it. To be honest, this is a massive subject and it can take decades to master colour theory. Below is a basic guide on colours and moods they evoke.
Usually, I would match your brand colours with your core values also looking at your close competitors. If you are in the restaurant business next to another restaurant with bright red, maybe it's a good idea to avoid bright red as your primary colour.
Consider following when picking colours
- Your target audience should resonate with your brand colours. NOT you!
- Keep one primary colour and one secondary colour
- Look at what colours your competitors using
Fonts
If you used Canva or even Google docs, there are millions of font styles available to use. Just like colours, font styles have certain moods and emotions. Again, you can do a phd in typography if you want but let’s leave that for type lunatics.
ChatGTP is a great tool to help you decide which type of font to use. As a general rule of thumb, pick one font as your primary font. You can use this for headlines. And another font for body text.
One thing you need to remember is that fonts are NOT FREE! You need commercial rights to use fonts for your business purposes.
But don’t stress. There are plenty of free fonts available.
All fonts in Google docs are free. There are more free Google fonts in https://fonts.google.com
You can also filter fonts by the “feeling” which is also a handy feature to use, if you are in doubt.
Use below guidelines when picking fonts
- Avoid fancy fonts or heavily decorative fonts. They look cool but hard to read.
- Simple boring fonts are a good choice.
- Pick a font that works on both digital and print.
Brand tone
Don’t worry we are almost done. Brand tone simply refers to how you sound like in your written communication (and verbal communication).
Let’s have a look at two examples.
Up bank
“The more mates you have on Up, the easier it is to split, track, and settle expenses—no stress, no dramas, just more time for the good stuff”
Commonwealth bank
“Connect with an expert Home Lending Specialist, who will help you understand the home loan process and support you every step of the way.”
Both banks have two different tones.
Up bank has a young, friendly and almost rebellious attitude. And the commonwealth bank, well it does sound like a bank.
So how do you decide your brand tone? Just like we did before, we will refer to our brand foundation, our USP and values. Then we will look at our target market.
The lesson here is that you don’t “have” to sound professional. Unless your business’s personality is super professional and your customers won’t even look at you if you are not “professional”. To be honest, the world is moving away from classic old school professionalism and celebrating individualism. These days people prefer a much more open down to earth approach.
So be free. Follow your heart.
Below are some questions to help you shape your brand tone.
- If your brand was a person, how would they talk?
- Are you funny, formal, casual, rebellious, or calm?
- What would your customers expect (or love) to hear from you?
- What kind of language do you not want to use?
User experience
The final piece of the brand identity is the user experience. In a way, all the elements we talked about so far, is a part of user experience.
In here we will discuss specific user experience interacting with your brand in person and digital.
Think of Apple for example, their products have a slick design, modern and functional. So do their stores. The first time you walk into an Apple store, you feel like you are in some sort of alien ship.
They have this experience meticulously crafted from their website, physical store to packaging. Everything looks and feels premium, well thought out.
Apples’s USP is “Seamless, premium technology that just works — beautifully.”
Now you can see, they do live up to their USP. They also bloody have millions of dollars of funding to do this.
You don’t!
So how do we craft a user experience that aligns with our brand?
Just start with simple stuff.
If you are a medical practice that wants to prioritise service over expertise, then make sure you are on time for your appointments. (Well that would be a different world to live in, wouldn’t lol)
If you are a B2B service and “empathy” is one of your core values, then you can incorporate that into your way of doing business and copy it in your website.
Generally, if you get your USP and values nutted out, and have a decent looking brand, your customers will eventually receive the experience you are trying to create. Just like other steps, don’t overthink how to create a specific user experience.
People will remember you and value you for who you are.
Summary
That is almost 3000 words. Congratulations! You did it.
I just want to leave the technical bits out and give you a final piece of advice as we wrap up.
One of the best ways to create a brand is being consistent. You won’t be able to be consistent if it’s NOT true to you or to your business. So take some time to think of your USP (Unique selling proposition). Don’t just pick one or create one to sound cool. Dig deep and find what brings you the most meaning and joy.
If you are reading this, you might be starting a new venture or thinking about going to the next level. Whatever it is, keep in mind that brand is “everything”. Visual stuff like logos and colours are the least important things.
Identifying the true value you bring to the market is what makes you unique therefore attracts your best customers.
Good luck with everything mate. If you need a hand let me know.
