What Are The Elements Of Branding (Know These Essentials First)

Most businesses collapse even before they start because they fail to effectively apply the essential brand elements needed to keep a brand effectively running. You may be wondering what are the elements of branding your brand should possess to help keep it in its best shape, acquire more prospects, and skyrocket sales.

Branding is undoubtedly a very compulsory measure that every business should take if they are willing to defeat their competitors on the marketing battlefield.

You can’t fully achieve the full growth of a business without bringing branding into play, when a brand is well branded they are uniquely Identified and hard to forget. Customers will prefer your brand when and will always have a gut feeling whenever they come in contact with the tangible and intangible assets of the brand.

Before finding out what elements of branding successful brands use to increase sales and skyrocket their profit, we should briefly know what a Brand is.

What is a Brand

Quick answer- Branding isn’t your business logo, trademark, trade name, or slogan. It’s much deeper than that.

A brand is a customer’s perception of the products and services of a particular company, and the image they create in their mind after using the company’s tangible or intangible assets. They take whatever raw material you throw at them and create something out of it, and each customer has a different brand of you.

This results in each customer creating a unique reputation for your brand but mostly what is important is that the customers are corralled.

Nowadays products and services that are similar are being sold by companies with a high level of market competition, but effective branding pushes you upfront ahead of all competitors.

The perception of a brand could be triggered emotionally in a customer after having consumed the brand’s product e.g someone drinking a $200,000 diamond Jubilee by Johnnie would feel luxurious, and rich, or the refreshed feeling a coke lover gets after drinking a bottle of coke.

This is just an overview of the broad concept of ‘’branding’’ is. You can read more about Branding but first, let’s dive into the main topic of this article.

What are the elements of branding that every brand needs

Target Audience

Your audience is very important when it comes to branding because without your target audience, whatever you do is pointless.

You need to know what are the elements of branding that your brand needs to grow its awareness and also place you in an unforgettable position in the mind of your target audience.

Your target audience is the basis of why you set up your business in the first place, you should know their pain points and their aspiration if you want them to patronize you. They are the core purpose of starting the business so they can purchase whatever product or service you are offering to them.

Your brand target audience should be clearly defined. relying on an assumption of who your target audience might be is hazardous.

You should narrow down to a specific category of people you intend to market your product or service and this is done by targeting a particular group of customers known as the “Target audience”. Having a target audience precision will help nail down your branding process by only creating products that will interest those target audiences and also save you time and resources.

Importance Of Target Audience

Proper Resource Management

Having a clearly defined target audience you want your product to reach out to is more cost-effective than creating a product for the general market.

Making sure that the intended advertisement gains the required result by targeting the right people at an optimal resource level is done by creating a target audience strategy.

By being thrifty with resources (time & money), your main priority will be achieving the best result and this is done by only channeling your ads or product to only your intended audience within a certain demographic range and avoiding irrelevant ones.

Better Marketing Potential

By leveraging the power of the target audience as one of the pivotal elements of branding in your brand development, your marketing potential tends to be positively optimistic and is channeled to a particular group that value the product you are selling.

Because you are certain of the audience you are advertising to will eventually patronize you with the data you have acquired from your feasibility research, attention will be directed more to customers that key into your ideal audiences thereby bringing better marketing results.

Gives Lenders Additional Information

The target audience is one of the essential elements of branding in any business development. Every business plan needs sufficient information for a better understanding of the potential outcome of any business and also financial lenders take this to be of huge importance.

The  U.S. Small Business Administration noted this on their official website as a criterion that every business owner should have a handful of information about who their target audience is for better business growth.

How To Find Target Audience

Look At Your Competitors’ Target Audience

Taking time to ask this question “What are the elements of branding that works for me? This is also by finding out who your competitors’ targets are. They could help you get one step closer to achieving your goals in finding your ideal customers who are willing to patronize your brand.

Simply take a peep at what your competitors are doing, their brand strategy, and the channels they are using to grab their audience – is it an online or offline channel, social media, interviews, publications, magazines, etc.

They might be digging deep into the rabbit hole to get every information from their target audience so they serve them better, you can do better by digging deeper.

This is running demographic and psychographic research to know more about their personality and behavioral style of living. After studying your competitor’s strategy, you can improve on it and also apply your idea on how to further refine those strategies better.

There are several competitor analysis tools you can utilize and get insight into your competitor’s data. Pulsar and Similarweb are two data analysis tools used for fetching data from your competitors.

Start Broad

Don’t be scared to try reaching out to a broader scope of customers that has audiences that do not fall into your target audience category. Usually, before zooming into the type of target audience you desire, you have to first see the broader picture of where the populations are and then you can zoom In for a well-detailed precision on what types of audiences you intend to do business with.

But when you jump-start your targeting from a niched level, you tend to miss out on the opportunities of those who might have interest even if they aren’t the customers you had in mind to sell to.

Use Google Analytic

Google Analytics is by far one of the most accurate data analysis tools you can find on the internet.

With Google Analytics, data analysis of your target audience can be acquired to help give you a more refined and In-depth demographic trend and report of each prospect.

You can get insightful reports like audience age group, region, city, gender, language, and browser type. Leveraging this vital audience data analysis tool could help you dig into deeper corners of your target audience and fetch you information that places you ahead of your competitors.

Collect Data From Existing Customers

Every dream of a new brand is to gain as many customers as possible but don’t lose hope so quickly because your already existing customers can help you get closer to your target audience.

Regardless of how big or small your customer base is, you can double or even triple it by simply giving out questionnaires, running interviews with your already existing customers so you know their pain points, and then using the information gotten to predict your potential target audience.

Use Of Social Media Analytics

Social media is where most audiences can be found most of the time. However, Various social media platforms have their type of audiences and also certain content types that they respond to.

Facebook audiences are more of the older audience and allow posting of longer text and videos, Instagram audiences love visuals that are appealing and audiences are more likely to buy products forasmuch as it looks good, Twitter is associated with the youthful age as opinion polls and retweets are used as a way to gain thoughts from consumers.

Engaging with the audiences on any of these social media platforms by publishing content that aligns with their best interest is one sure way to figure it who your target audience could be.

Functional Benefits

Brand functional benefits are the value customers get when they purchase a product from your brand. The reason why they choose your product instead of the other competitors in the market and why it matters to them.

Knowing what are the elements of branding that every brand should possess is by taking into account the value your brand offer to customers when they get in contact with the tangible and intangible assets of the brand.

Let’s take for example you own a beauty store that sells organically made body lotion directly from natural substances and ingredients and has zero chemical content in them. Customers who are looking to buy such organic products will come and patronize you because they desire organically made lotion to help improve and give them healthy-looking skin.

When the customer sees that what you are offering them is something that has value and also meets their demand, they will be willing to trust your brand and always patronize you instead of your competitors. 

Emotional Benefits

Both the tangible and intangible assets of your brand affect the emotion of your customers whenever they get in contact with your products.

As you paddle your way through your branding journey and your brand starts developing, customers will also begin to tag varieties of emotions to your brand as well.

The customer’s emotional benefit is the feeling customers get after making use of your brand’s product or service and this is made possible as a result of rightfully setting up the various elements of branding effectively.

This creates a certain type of emotional perception that builds up the whole image and personality a customer holds towards your brand and it directly encompasses loyalty, trust, and desirability.

Let’s take for example- Putting on a Rolex or wearing a Nike Air Jordan makes you feel cool or maybe driving a Rolls Royce car makes you feel rich and people see you as rich as well. Those emotional reactions are all made up of the brand elements.

Brand Identity

Your brand identity is a pivotal element of branding, which is why it is highly recommended you demand a good graphic designer to help create a unique identity that customers will use to easily recognize your brand whenever and wherever they see it.

This is one of the essential elements of branding in marketing that is inevitable when building a brand that you want to stick long in the mind of the clients for a long time.

As time goes on, the elements you apply to your brand identity will create a unique visual identifier that will stick in the mind of the customers for a long time.

It will also be used interchangeably with all that concerns your brand and all it stands for. This way they can easily pick your brand out from the crowd of other competitors in your market.

Your brand identity is arguably one pivotal element amongst the various elements of branding that has to do with creating the perfect visual brand mark that encapsulates all that your brand stands for, its value, and its purpose into one visual mark also known as a ‘logo’. 

This is why it is advised to avoid investing in a cheap logo, creating a professionally made logo will cost you quite a little cash but it’s worth it. trust me!

Just as mentioned in our previous post – the cost of designing a logo. this article will guide you in designing a logo for your brand, go check it out.

But it doesn’t end at making your logo the only identity point your brand has. You should also make this spread to every aspect of the brand touch points. Your brand identity should also reflect on the colors, patterns, shapes, texts, and layouts of your brand.

Brand Voice

Your brand voice is the tone (just like the human voice), word choices, and written or vocal elements that your brand uses to communicate its brand purpose to the public. It’s a continuous messaging method that enables customers to identify your brand at whatever touch points. Like I said earlier, just as every human has a unique voice that doesn’t change and is used as a distinctive identifier so is your brand voice.

Brand voice is one of the elements of brand in marketing that stands uniquely different from other elements of branding because it possesses the presence of human mannerisms (voice). Humans subconsciously understand this and resonate with this element naturally.

The tone of your voice tells people the kind of persona your brand has and your brand voice determines how your customers will perceive you.

People with deep voices are perceived to be strong and bold, and they are more extroverted while people with higher-pitched voices are seen to be calm or maybe weak.

However, brand tone can also be tagged with various tones like casual, informal, rugged, and sexy.

Your brand voice also does the same to your customers when they hear you speak on that advert on tv, radio talk show, podcast, or store.

Brand Value

Every brand possesses a certain amount of value that determines the degree of its importance in the market. We can put it this way “ brand value is simply how much your brand will cost if it was to be sold, its monetary value, or its worth.

When a new brand is created, obviously it’s going to be worth little or nothing because it has no value or reputation to stand for, thereby resulting in customers not showing up to buy products or services that they sell.

But things start spinning when the brand starts applying serious branding strategies, running brand campaigns, creating awareness through advertisement, improving customer experience, understanding your customers, and using high design standards, quality products, and services.

Brand Promise

For your brand to be successful, a promise has to be made. Amongst all the elements of branding in marketing, this is a pivotal element you should pay serious attention to. You need to have a superior promise or set of promises that you have sworn to offer to your community or your audience.

Fulfilling those promises is how you arrest your customers and make them lifetime brand loyalists.

According to Nick Westergaard in his words – “In other words, a brand is a promise,”. From his definition, you can tell that brand is basically the promises you have made to your customers, and fulfilling them is pivotal, failing to fulfill them is detrimental to your brand.

The core values (emotional and physical) you are willing to give to them when they choose your product over the competitor’s product.

Brand Positioning

Brand positioning is the strategic development of a brand to sit distinctively in the mind of the targeted audience with trust, desirability, loyalty, and reliability. These various attributes stem from the brand’s association with customers thereby making them create a unique perception in their minds about the brand regardless of the products of the other competitors.

Color

Color choice is one aspect of branding that makes graphic design hard for some people. Color is one of the essential elements of branding in marketing your brand demands to fully express its value, personality, and trait.

Take a look at famous brands and see how their colors have been used simultaneously to represent the brand even when the logo or other tangible representation is absent.

When branding, you should be thoughtful with the kind of color palette you apply because the personality and traits of your brand heavily rely upon your color choice. Believe it or not. Brand owners sometimes make this common design mistake of choosing colors arbitrarily which is a bad idea.

When making color choices for your brand, always have the personality you want your brand to express to the audience, and choosing the right color is one way to do that.

This is why color psychology helps guide us on what color combinations various brand niches should and should not use in their branding.

Image

Images are also important when creating your brand. The images used on your product advertisement and packaging are is also parts and parcels of your brand, they should work holistically with other visual elements of the brand viz shapes, color, and font.

Images aren’t necessarily concrete images of human portraits, they can also be custom images like illustrations, patterns, abstract ideas, or even 3D images. However, when choosing any of these styles of imagery, they should work in harmony with other visual elements of your brand.

Think of imagery as the feeling your prospect gets on tangible assets after they see or get in touch with your brand, and this imagery is displayed all across every touchpoint of your brand. E.g website, social media, apps, billboards, posters design, and online or offline advertisements.

Images are arguably one of the very important elements of branding that contribute to 52.5% of advertisement effectiveness to its target audience.

Tagline

A tagline is a great way of summarizing a company’s mission using a short motto or phrase that is memorable for customers in identifying a brand – BMW: the ultimate driving machine, Nike: just do it, Apple: think different – but not too different(updated in 2022), SubWay: eat fresh.

Taglines are used to make your brand stand out from the millions of other competitors vying for consumers’ attention. However, simply having an awesome tagline is not enough, it should also have your company’s values and promises embedded in it.

Customers always want to have a memorable experience with a brand that helps them figure out their pain points or problems and as well solve those problems.

Choosing a tagline that does pretty well in delivering all of these objectives is bound to strive well and also create a long-lasting experience in the mind of its audience.

Shapes

Shapes also affect the overall branding strategy of your brand and they are one sure way you can use to convey your brand’s intended message to your customers.

Various shape elements can be associated with your brand but make sure you know the various shapes and meanings and how they convey specific brand value and the effects on other touchpoints of your brand.

As you apply desired shapes on your brand tangible assets viz banner, business card, social media, website, print, and so on, they should be perceptible in every area they are applied on your brand asset. This way the shapes tend to maintain continuity all across our brand assets.

Patterns

Patterns are effective elements of branding that is commonly overlooked by designer and brand owner, just as image plays an essential role in the overall graphic of your brand, so does pattern.

Patterns can be applied to various parts of your brand’s tangible assets to create recognition and prove the originality of your brand.

Patterns come in various forms – symmetrical, asymmetrical, and abstract.

Just be sure to choose a pattern that possesses the right properties to convey the message your brand intends to send out to its audience.

This element of branding can impact greatly if used effectively on all your brand touchpoints and help create stronger bonding with your audience whenever they come in contact with them.