Great brands can be instantly recognizable. But how do they do it? Sometimes successful branding is a natural process that occurs as a business grows. In other cases, a company might go through a dedicated process to create a brand from scratch and launch with a full-scale media campaign.
No matter what resources you have to work with, you can learn how to build a brand and successfully establish a legacy for your business.
What goes into great branding?
A strong brand identity can win over customers by making a great impression. Memorable branding can help keep customers coming back for more, and allows you to remain flexible as your business scales across channels and geographic regions.
Here are steps you can take to create a brand:
- Start with audience and industry research to shape your brand strategy.
- Craft your brand personality in alignment with your business goals.
- Develop brand assets like a brand name, logo, landing pages, and marketing materials.
- Unify your brand image across all stages of the shopping journey.
- Zero in on the right messaging to leave a lasting impression and inspire repeat purchases.
- Develop a brand strategy and monitor your performance with data, tools, and audits.
- Rebrand when necessary to keep expanding your reach.
This post covers how you can put these steps into action, offering examples and providing guidance on how to build your brand with Amazon.
What is a brand?
Branding uses a unified set of assets, like a brand name and logo, to express what a business has to offer customers. Effective branding boosts awareness, making it possible for audiences to find a business and connect with its products or services.
What is brand identity?
Brand identity is the image or personality a business portrays to help an audience perceive it in a certain way. A business can use a brand identity to connect with audiences by creating a consistent aesthetic and communicating a specific message.
A brand identity can give customers a good sense of:
- Who you are
- What you do
- How you do it
- Why you do it
- Why they should care
When your branding conveys each of these five points, it can help customers understand how your business is different from other brands.
What are principles of good branding?
Effective branding often succeeds at being compelling, clear, and consistent:
- Compelling: A goal of branding is to engage an audience and show customers how a brand can improve their lives.
- Clear: A simple message and straightforward delivery can help set customer expectations and ensure customers understand what they’re getting.
- Consistent: A key focus of branding is to create a cohesive experience across channels and avoid giving customers mixed messages.
Other common branding principles include authenticity, transparency, and familiarity. Another best practice? Don’t just say it—be it. For example, if you state that your apparel line is for all age groups, reinforce the message with photos of models from different age groups wearing your brand’s clothing.
How does branding work?
Effective branding shapes the customer experience and aligns with a unified brand identity. In addition to how the shopping experience looks and sounds, think about how you want it to feel. Each stage of the customer journey can be an opportunity to create positive impressions and grow your audience. Focus on creating a clear and united perspective across websites, advertising, brick-and-mortar locations, and other touchpoints.
11 tips for how to build a brand
- Define your brand positioning
- Develop your offerings
- Conduct audience research
- Make your brand name official
- Create a brand logo
- Pick a brand slogan
- Write your brand story
- Shape your brand identity
- Promote your brand
- Strategically manage your brand
- Know when to rebrand
1. Define your brand positioning
Where does your brand stand within an industry or niche? Brand positioning can help you differentiate from similar businesses or products. Take the time to craft your mission, vision, values, and brand promise.
- Mission: Your mission statement explains the driving force behind your business. It states your purpose (what you set out to do) while also giving customers a sense of how you intend to do it.
- Vision: While your mission explains what you do now and how you’re going to do it, your vision is a forward-looking statement that illustrates the long-term impact you hope to have. It can be aspirational and details how your business intends to make the world a better place for customers.
- Values: Pick several words or phrases that express why and how you do business. Your brand values can guide how you and your teams operate, while showing customers how your goals might align with theirs.
- Brand promise: What’s your guarantee? Communicate your unique selling proposition to show customers what value they can get if they choose your brand.
Once you’ve set a solid foundation for your brand positioning with these four cornerstones, make sure they’re reflected in appropriate places in your marketing, like the About Us page for your website.
Struggling to define your position? Do some competitor research to get inspired. For example, a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) can reveal where competitor products fall short and your brand might be able to step up. It could also help you identify areas where you don’t want to compete so you can take product development in the right direction.
2. Develop your offerings
How are the products you offer different or unique? Competitor research can help you zero in on your selling points and advantages so you can center your branding on what makes your offerings stand out. Consider your product design, packaging, and how you will ship orders.
Throughout product development, be sure to make space for feedback. Working with experts, sharing prototypes with a limited audience, and gauging customer sentiment with surveys are ways you can strengthen the end results.
3. Conduct audience research
Your approach to branding might depend on who your intended customers are. Customer research can help illuminate customer needs, as well as any expectations a specific audience might have.
Consider creating customer personas. These are detailed profiles illustrating a few examples of customers who could be ideal for your brand. It’s a chance to think critically about characteristics that could influence purchasing decisions, like customer age, interests, location, and income.
The better you understand your audience, the more you can tailor your brand strategy to suit customer preferences.
4. Make your brand name official
Brand names can be tricky. They should not only be catchy and easy for people to remember, but also match your brand personality and reflect your values. Once you have a few ideas, research each one to see whether it’s already in use. Here are some ways:
- Run the name through Google search
- Search for the name in the Amazon store
- Check the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) trademark database
Avoid brand names that other businesses are already using. Then register your brand name with a government office in a specific country, like the USPTO, to get legal rights and protections.
Looking for help registering your brand name? Explore Amazon’s IP Accelerator program.
5. Create a brand logo
A logo can be one of your most valuable assets, boosting brand recognition and helping customers identify your offerings. Like your brand name, a logo should reflect your business type, as well as the unique way you do business.
A logo can be based on your brand name, a symbol, or both. Logos can be:
- Text-based (word mark)
- Letter-based (letter mark)
- Image-based (design mark)
Combination logos like an emblem or monogram can include your written brand name as well as a symbol or icon.
Work with a professional logo designer, or try a free logo generator. Whatever route you take, verify that you’ll have full rights to use the logo. Get versions in several colors so they’ll work on different backgrounds, and make sure the file sizes will scale for various use cases—from the tiny favicon that appears in online search results to packaging for large shipments.
You can register your logo or brand name with an entity like the USPTO.
6. Pick a brand slogan
A slogan can be optional. Your business might not need one, and the wrong type of slogan can work against you if it doesn’t resonate with customers. That said, a good slogan can serve as a powerful marketing mechanism for your business if it’s catchy and memorable.
You might work with a branding specialist to develop a slogan. Alternatively, slogans can sometimes be spontaneous. You could be chatting with colleagues and suddenly think of a phrase that gets to the heart of what you do. Watch for those lightbulb moments because that catchy phrase could become a valuable brand asset.
7. Write your brand story
A brand story tells customers the background of how your business started and why you created it. It can be an opportunity to show the people behind your brand and share what you do now, as well as your plans for the future.
For best results, make the customer the hero of your brand story. Explain how your work benefits the customer, and frame the story of your business as a journey you can take together.
8. Shape your brand identity
Align your brand identity with your business goals and make sure to apply it consistently across all branded materials.
- Colors: Choose a palette of several hues that work well together in various contexts. They should evoke the feelings you want customers to experience when they interact with your brand.
- Typography: Pick a few fonts and stick to them.
- Imagery: Develop guidelines for photos and graphics that illustrate the personality of your brand.
Consider creating a brand persona. What would your brand look, sound, and act like if it was a real person? Think about it from the customer’s vantage point. How could your brand exceed their expectations? A brand persona can be a useful framework to help you and your team stay “on brand.”
Consolidate your brand standards into a style guide and share it with relevant members of your team to help everyone stay on the same page as you scale. This can be especially useful as you hire or work with consultants or agencies. Part of your style guide can focus on your business communication style and illustrate your brand’s voice and tone. Include examples of ways your brand copy does and doesn’t speak to customers in different contexts, like your website and sales copy.
In tandem with your style guide, a brand kit containing assets like logo files and image options can be a helpful resource. Give team members access so your branding stays consistent across social media, marketing emails, and other channels.
9. Promote your brand
The process of building a brand doesn’t end once you’ve developed a brand identity and brought it to life on your channels. You also need to spread the word to increase awareness.
In doing so, you might find the brand continues to evolve as you begin to promote it through your social media presence, in-person events, product launches, and more.
To boost brand awareness and drive sales, you can:
- Use branded advertising campaigns and marketing strategies.
- Explore working with influencers or brand ambassadors within your niche. Check out options like Amazon Live, an online destination for social selling and collaborating with influencers.
- Work with sales associates to boost revenue.
A related option for brand promotion? Amazon’s Brand Referral Bonus can help brands earn a bonus averaging 10% of qualifying sales when they drive traffic to their branded offers in the Amazon store.
10. Strategically manage your brand
Strategic brand management can aid your efforts as you launch and grow. A brand manager or brand strategist role on your team can be key in helping you gain a foothold in the industry. Brand strategy can involve ongoing market research and other tasks like monitoring your performance with key performance indicators (KPIs). Use ecommerce tools, data, and metrics to uncover insights and make informed decisions about what steps to prioritize along the way.
Learn more in our guide to brand management
11. Know when to rebrand
Stay flexible as market conditions change, and look at rebranding as a natural part of the branding process. If new trends are reshaping your industry, or the activities of competitors are causing you to reevaluate your strategy, it could be time to rebrand.
A rebrand can be an effective way to attract a new audience, strengthen your existing customer base, or both. If possible, you might want to:
- Work with a branding specialist to reframe or redevelop your brand personality
- Test out your new branding with a limited audience
- Gather feedback and make tweaks if needed
Be sure to keep the customer at the center of the rebrand process for best results.
Examples of great branding
Honeycat Jewelry
It’s so important to stick to your core values and remember why you started your journey.
Learn more about Honeycat Jewelry
Strong Oaks Woodshop
I started making some fairly small things and then selling them online . . . And that first year, I made $10,000. It wasn’t anything amazing, but it was encouraging to me that there was somebody out there who wanted the things I could make.
Learn more about Strong Oaks Woodshop
Jambalaya Girl
I learned early on not to do it all by myself.
Learn more about Jambalaya Girl
5 steps to build your brand with Amazon
- Create a selling account
- Enroll in Amazon Brand Registry
- List products and build a storefront
- Make use of brand-building and protection tools
- Monitor your performance and scale
1. Create a selling account
To sell in the Amazon store, you’ll need to register as a seller. We recommend that brands register for a Professional selling plan so they can take advantage of a full range of tools and programs.
2. Enroll in Amazon Brand Registry
Amazon Brand Registry is a free program that can help you build and protect your brand. If you have a brand with a registered or pending trademark, you can enroll it in Brand Registry to unlock a suite of additional selling and protection benefits.
If you don’t already have a trademark, check out Amazon’s IP Accelerator to get competitive rates and establish your IP faster. This program can connect you with a network of vetted legal service providers who offer trademark support and other intellectual property services.
Intellectual property (IP): A business can register IP to gain legal rights and protections for an asset they’ve created, like a brand name, logo, image, or a literary or artistic work like a book or drawing. Trademarks, patents, and copyrights are three types of intellectual property.
3. List products and build a storefront
There are a few ways you can list products in the Amazon store. You can match an offer to an existing product detail page or create a new product listing from scratch. Learn more in our guide to listing products.
Brands enrolled in Brand Registry can use the Amazon Stores builder to easily create a branded digital storefront. Showcase products and your business with a multi-page, immersive shopping experience.
4. Make use of brand-building and protection tools
Through Brand Registry, you can activate a suite of tools to help grow awareness for your brand, increase conversion rates, build loyalty with customers, and protect your brand from bad actors. Here are some tools to consider:
- A+ Content: Bring products to life and enhance product detail pages by adding videos, shoppable product-comparison charts, and more. Share your brand’s story using the dedicated Brand Story section.
- Manage Your Experiments: Run A/B tests to find out what content drives the most sales. Then you can make data-driven decisions about product titles, images, and other types of content based on what resonates with customers.
- Customer Reviews: The Customer Reviews tool gathers reviews in one place for efficient analysis. Go over customer feedback and respond to reviews to uncover product insights and build brand loyalty.
- Report a Violation: This tool lets you search the Amazon catalog for potential violations of your active trademarks, copyrights, and patents. Should you find a suspected infringement, you can submit a report to Amazon.
- Transparency: Use unique codes to authenticate individual units, stop inaccurate and counterfeit products, improve customer engagement, and get valuable insights that can optimize your supply chain.
5. Monitor your performance and scale
Available to brands enrolled in Brand Registry, Amazon Brand Analytics helps businesses better understand customers and brand performance through aggregated search and purchase data. Explore search terms, impressions, clicks, and more metrics through multiple dashboards.
When it comes to advertising and promotions in the Amazon store, you can create coupons, offer special deals, and launch cost-per-click (CPC) ads. For example, brands enrolled in Brand Registry can run Sponsored Brands CPC ads featuring a product video or up to three products alongside a logo and headline.
For example, with Amazon’s Merch on Demand, you can use print-on-demand to create graphic tees, accessories, and more. We can handle the printing and shipping, so you can design while we deliver.
How do you know your branding is effective? If sales are on the rise, your market share is growing, and customer feedback indicates that audiences find your brand appealing, you’re likely on the right track.
Nurturing a presence both online and offline can be a creative and rewarding process. As your brand recognition grows, continue to focus on fostering connections with your audience. In the process, make the most of ecommerce tools and programs like the ones you can access through Amazon Brand Registry.
*A Professional selling plan is $39.99 a month + selling fees. Learn more
