Being an entrepreneur and launching your brand is not an easy task. It takes time, energy and determination to get your business off the ground and succeed, while it can be easy to make small mistakes which can quickly derail a brilliant idea.
Read on for our top 5 mistakes to avoid when building your brand to make sure you do not fall victim to them:
1. Being customer-oriented
It’s obviously important to place an emphasis on the needs of your customers; however it’s also essential to be competitor-oriented as opposed to customer-oriented. You need to analyse your competitors in order to find a way to stand out from the crowd. Although you can succeed by being great, you can only win by being different.
2. Not defining your focus
Every successful brand has an area of focus that they concentrate on. For instance, after a period of rebranding, Domino’s Pizza narrowed its focus to “home delivery.” Pizza Hut’s focus is on leadership while Papa John’s brands itself with the tagline, “better ingredients, better pizza.” Although there are hundreds of pizza chains, these three dominate the market (see here for further branding lessons from Domino’s, Uber & GAP).
3. Not having a strong visual
Many powerful brands have an incredibly strong visual that is immediately recognisable without the brand’s business name being included. For instance, the Nike tick, McDonald’s large yellow ‘M,’ the Mercedes symbol and the Apple logo are all instantly recognisable, automatically reinforcing their individual marketing strategies. If you want to build a successful, powerful brand, it’s critical that you have a strong visual that stands out from the crowd and is instantly recognisable.
4. Not placing much emphasis on a name
The world’s most successful brands have a name that is easy to remember, interesting, relevant, robust and thought-provoking. Often the simplest names have the biggest impact (e.g. Nike, Swatch or Apple), as do their corresponding products (e.g. iPhone/iPod/iWatch). If you want to build a robust brand, come up with a marketing strategy first and then develop a name that reflects your marketing strategy appropriately.
5. Expanding your brand
This is something that countless businesses have fallen victim to all too quickly. For instance, Yahoo was once worth $140 billion and dominated the online search market. However, it rapidly expanded and made countless acquisitions such as Yahoo Games, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Group, and is today worth just $30 billion on the stock market. Contrast this with Google, which remained a pure search engine and is today worth a staggering $498 billion on the stock exchange (although the company has since expanded notably).
Hold on tight before making a rush decision to expand, as it could land your business in serious financial trouble.
Expanding your brand once it starts to take off is a huge mistake that can quickly land your business in trouble. Instead, focus on quality over quantity, keeping your products or services to a minimum but offering the highest quality products or services in the market.
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