In a nutshell, a brand is the supporting images and ideas such as the name, logo, slogan, design 

scheme, as well as the intangible assets related to a business which symbolise all the information 

connected to a company, product or service. A good brand will confirm the credibility of the com- 

pany, connect the target market’s prospects emotionally, motivate the buyer and concrete the users’ 

loyalty. Branding is not about getting your target to choose you over the competition, but to get the 

target to see you as the preferred solution to their needs. 

Here are our five must do’s when it comes to branding: 

 

1) Define your company/product/service 

The brand represents what the company is, so identifying some key points about the company will 

enable the brand to represent exactly what is intended. A few useful questions to ask are, what 

services are being offered? What is the company mission statement and aims? What does the 

company specialise in and what is the target audience? 

2) What do you want your brand to do for your company? 

Answering this question will help decide how to go about achieving the brand’s objectives. It may 

be a small business who want to gain more clients, or an international company who want to be- 

come the leader in their line of work. Knowing the underlying aims of the brand will help to shape 

the brand campaign and market strategy, however large or small. 

3) Know your target market: 

This is probably one of the most important things to consider when defining the brand. The best 

way to start is to conduct an informal market analysis, looking into the location of the business, 

what the target market knows about the current brand, how the brand is to be perceived, what at- 

tracts the target market to the brand and who are the competitors in the market. If the brand is 

wrong for your target market, your customers will soon let you know! 

4) Know what your competitors are doing…and then be different. 

There will be many things to face when designing a brand with the most important being the com- 

petition as well as issues such as location, financing, persuading clients etc. The best way to 

counter the competition is to spend time researching into them, finding out how they operate, what 

they do differently to you, how you would improve on what they do and what they do better. Once 

these questions have been answered, you are a lot clearer on what you need to do to get ahead of 

the game. Keeping up to date with the current market will also be a great advantage and this can 

easily be done online by registering for internet updates, trade publications, news alerts and elec- 

tronic newsletters as well as applying for their brochures and browsing on their websites. Differen- 

tiation is the key to competing in today’s marketplace and will therefore contribute to the brand’s 

longevity. 

5) Branding isn’t just about creating a logo… 

To view branding as naming, design or advertising is too myopic and will shorten the brand’s life 

expectancy. Consideration of all the other aspects linked to business such as quality, efficient pro- 

duction, high service levels, effective selling, strong supply chain etc will contribute to the effective- 

ness of the brand and appeal to consumers more. Markets are also dynamic, not static, so 

branding strategy needs to be flexible in order to adapt to external factors placed upon it such as 

consumer response.