Branding is one of the major foundations of a business. This makes your identity, means this is how your customers know you. Also, it determines how you stand aside from the rest of your competitors.
Related: Most Powerful Brand Words
Great branding is not easy unless you know the basics of branding.
In this article, we will learn what is branding cycle and discuss the 6 Ps and 9 stages of the branding cycle.
Let’s start!
What is The Branding Cycle?
The branding cycle is a continuous process where businesses go through development, maintenance, and overhaul their brand. It gives your business a foundation to present your brand most acceptably.
A correctly implemented branding cycle can be a prominent reason for your great brand story and a successful business. However, you also need to know a few essential ingredients that will help each stage of the branding cycle effectively.
These are the 6 Ps when combined can help you meet your business objectives and goals.
6 Ps of Branding
Here are the 6 Ps of branding that is critical to branding and has the power to make a great brand story:
1 – Purpose: The way you want to help your customer.
2 – Promise: Commitments towards your customers.
3 – Personality: The way you want to present yourself.
4 – Positioning: Your target customers’ source location.
5 – Proof: The reasons customers believe you.
6 – Perception Analysis: The way the brand is being perceived.
Now, let’s understand every P in detail.
Purpose
While marketing or branding, your purpose must incorporate the social impact of your product. Your goal determines the social and environmental impact on your customers. It also exhibits that your business cares for the communities you operate in and rely upon.
Related: Best Social Media Agencies in India
In short, the purpose should be beyond being financially an industry leader. The intention should be taking the responsibility of our society and environment, making the world a better place to live.
It has been observed that a brand with a social purpose is more likely to outperform than those having no such purpose.
Promise
When an organisation promises and fulfils, it determines the integrity of a brand. There is a famous phrase called “brand is a promise”. Indeed, it is true as when a brand is presented, it demonstrates what they can do and in what ways they are different from their competitors.
This raises the bar of customer’s expectations for the deliverable by the company. This, in turn, defines a company in the marketplace. So, when a brand makes a promise, it has to be fulfilled because successful branding is not just about making promises, but also about keeping them.
Personality
It is a bit uncommon, but the brand also has a personality. It can be understood as the way a brand looks, sounds, and behaves. Every brand has a specific tone or manner of communication, which is called “brand voice”.
Your brand voice must be articulated in a way that it clearly conveys your brand’s personality. So that people can easily classify the brand, just like humans have personalities such as sober, aggressive, intellectual, gentle, etc.
You can create a specific personality in various ways, such as colours, typography, and images, other than the language for communication.
Now, why is it necessary for a brand? Well, because it reflects your purpose. Take an example of a brand that has the purpose of saving the earth. It will use colours, images, and the words for its products that talk about its purpose.
Positioning
Positioning can be defined as a significant part of a core brand strategy. It is about setting a brand aside from the rest in the competition. It tells about the industry category you play in, the target customers, the emotional and rational aim of the brand, and reasons the customers believe you. This is more like creating an impression in the customer’s mind to distinguish yourself from the crowd.
Related: Best Survey Examples For Conducting Surveys Like A Pro
Positioning becomes highly essential for any brand. This is because there are thousands of service providers, who are not much different from you, and positioning helps your customers find you.
Proof
Here, proof means the evidence you are providing for what you say and offer to the customers. This way, you prove that what your brand promises are delivered successfully. It gives them the reason to believe you.
Simply, providing proof from the brand itself doesn’t work. The brand has to demonstrate the evidence they provide. You can provide testimonials from the clients or customers. Videos, research data, reputable third-party validation, etc. could be enough proof for your brands.
Related: Best WordPress Plugins For Testimonials
The primary benefit of providing proof to your clients is that you are establishing your brand’s authenticity and integrity. It becomes easier for customers to choose you from many others, offering more attractive deals than you but are unable to provide proof.
Perception Analysis
When a brand is presented, every possible measure is taken to create a specific impression. It is mostly done in the personality building of the brand. However, the customers do not always perceive the brand the way it is presented.
What people think of your brand matters as it directly impacts your sale. Therefore, it becomes a necessity to know and analyse the customers’ perception of the brand.
There are various ways of consumer research. Out of them, the internal feedback based on factual data and observation of actual consumer behaviour is prevalent.
For such studies and understanding, the usual standard market research tools also used, such as structured questionnaire, shop observation, and usage observation.
Related: Best Digital Marketing Tools For Small Businesses
Stages of Branding Cycle
The 6 Ps explained above are thoroughly incorporated in the branding cycle.
It takes nine stages to complete the cycle.
The different stages of the branding cycle are:
1 – Strength recognition: Understanding the brand’s strength.
2 – Identifying target customer: Knowing target customer, like who/where/how to find them
3 – Researching competitors: Knowing the competitors within your industry.
4 – Focusing on the brand mission: Conveying the company’s reason for existence.
5 – Choosing the selling point: Finding the key benefits of the brand.
6 – Choosing the brand voice: The tone of conveying a message.
7 – Create the brand story: Explaining the brand, its mission, and more.
8 – Build brand logo & tagline: Relevant to the brand’s purpose.
9 – Consistency in brand personality: Reflect your brand everywhere.
A brand when emerges with clarity, it ensures success. This is because, when a brand is clear about its existence, it generates interest, pulls attention, and invites customers to calls for action.
Following a proper branding cycle, religiously will help you build a great brand.
Let us understand the stages of the branding cycle in more detail.
Strength Recognition
The strength of your brand is the purpose. This is what makes your company exist in the market and encourages you to go a little extra mile to satisfy your customers.
You can define your purpose with three simple questions – why, how and what. When you ask yourself:
- Why am I here?
- What differentiates me from others?
- How can I solve others’ problems?
Your reasons should be more social or environment-oriented than financial. It means your intention should be helping others rather than just doing business.
An essential part of understanding here is, the customers do not choose you because of what you do, they choose because of why you do. Therefore, if your purpose is something that concerns everyone, you will win their trust and loyalty.
Now, why is it essential to know the purpose of your brand?
People are more attracted to brands with values and impact. The purpose will give you an idea to create the foundation of your branding through slogans, taglines, messaging, stories, voice, visuals, etc.
Identifying Target Customer
The category of the audience you want to target matters when you are focusing on building the brand foundation. Your product or services are definitely not for everyone.
So, figure out the customers you want to reach by focusing on the features of your product. For example, if there is an app for students, it would cover a vast audience. You can narrow it down by making students of primary school. Similarly, instead of all men, it could be men of a particular age group.
Narrowing down the target audience certainly has a competitive edge while branding. Moreover, when you articulate your mission or message accordingly, it makes your brand more reachable. Overall, the idea is to make your content, ads, and emails reachable to the right people.
Researching Competitors
Unless you know who you will be competing with, it is hard to outperform. So, you must be aware of what established brands are doing, where they are succeeding, and where they are failing.
Related: SEMrush Review: Best Tool For Competitors Research
During the process of branding, this is essential to make your brand stand out of what is already existing. Detailed and in-depth research of the successful brands will give you an opportunity to find what is missing and include them in your marketing strategy.
Related: Biggest B2B Marketing Challenges
But, first, find out the best competitors in your industry. There could be hundreds of them, but you need to choose just 2-4 who matches more closely with your business model. The selection could be based on the company’s geographical location, product’s quality, and target audience.
Once you have your competitor, create a comparison chart and jot down everything related to branding. It might include product or services, marketing, brand message, visual identity, customer reviews, etc.
Related: How to Fix a Bad Google Review?
Focusing On The Brand Mission
The brand mission comes out of the purpose discussed earlier. When you are clear about your brand purpose, you get your band mission too. It means you are aware of the value your brand will be providing to its customers.
The reason to have a brand mission is to keep you, and your customer reminds about why you exist. Also, it acts as a foundation for brand building strategy. Every strategy created is based on the chosen mission.
Starting from logo to your message, tagline, voice, and personality, all of them should reflect the mission. This is a very crucial stage as the mission chosen will be your commitment as long as the business exists.
Choosing The Selling Point
Every brand offers some benefits, features, or qualities that make them unique and give customers reasons to choose them. So, the uniqueness of a brand lies in what different they have to offer.
Related: Ecommerce Growth Strategies That Fire Up Sales
Find that unique quality of your brand, which becomes an opportunity to grab customers.
Here, the value of a brand should not be confused with product features. It is the quality that is intended to improve the customer’s ultimate experience, be it personal or professional.
It could be the key qualities such as things you promise or have exceptional expertise in. For example:
- Faster service
- Ease of use
- More reliable support
- Increase productivity
- More cost-effective
Make sure your value reflects in every product or service you offer.
Choosing The Brand Voice
As discussed in the topic “Personality” in 6 Ps, it is already clear that your brand voice creates your personality.
But the important question is, what should be the type of voice for your brand?
It entirely depends on the brand mission, target audience, the industry, and the platform to raise the voice. The tone is another vital factor that dramatically impacts the brand voice.
Tone refines the voice of a brand by adding an emotional touch. There are also other elements of voice – character/persona, language, and purpose. The pattern of communication or messaging could be:
| Tone | Character/Persona | Language | Purpose |
| Personal | Friendly | Complex | Engaging |
| Humble | Playful | Simple | Entertaining |
| Clinical | Warm | Savvy | Educate |
| Honest | Inspiring | Jargon-filled | Delight |
| Direct | Authoritative | Insider | Inform |
| Scientific | Professorial | Fun | Sell |
Selecting the type of voice is essential in every aspect, whether it is the webpage, social media posts, or blogs. Also, you need to maintain consistency throughout the branding journey.
It gives recognition to your brand, in terms that the audience will begin to know you for a specific voice type and expect the same everywhere they find you.
Create The Brand Story
A powerful brand story makes a brand memorable and lasting, even when the audiences are not watching ads. This is the major advantage you get when creating a brand story, and you must put effort to create the best one possible.
Your aim should be to go for storytelling that is done masterfully and authentically. Here are a few steps you can follow:
Step 1 – Start from the beginning and make a note:
Firstly, start with making a note of the brand journey since it started. It should include everything, from the founder to the reason to start the business. It should sound like a pure story with interesting facts. Add authenticity to your story by including reports and testimonials.
Related: What is Copywriting? Complete Guide
Step 2 – Develop the brand statement
The brand statement is the deeper purpose of your existence. Narrate this with creativity because it matters for both customers and stakeholders. Think beyond finance or monetary benefits and set a statement that would make your existence for the betterment of the society or environment.
Step 3 – Pen the story based on the statement
Now, when you have the company history and the value, write a story around these two. Include everything from where you started to where you are heading. It must be interesting so that the reader enjoys the reading.
Storytelling is compelling when the narrator shares his heart and makes the audience believe in their story.
Build brand logo & tagline
Creating a brand logo and tagline is a technical and creative part, which has to be handled by professionals. But even then, it needs your deep involvement.
Related: PosterMyWall: Easy Design Tool
Remember, the logo is highly crucial for branding because it represents your company and your business. It is a visual identity that appears everywhere that relates to your business. Therefore, it has to be exceptional.
It is not just the visual part of your brand that needs attention but also the texts used in the tagline. Taglines have fewer words but are impactful that tell about your mission and purpose.
Consistency in brand personality
After you have covered most of the branding stages, it is time to keep your personality intact all through your business journey.
It means you need to flash your brand wherever possible. Your brand should be the first thing customers see when they connect with you. Stick to the brand image you created.
Whether it is the store, business cards, product, or packaging, there has to be your company logo. If you are promoting your business on different platforms like blogging sites, social media, forums, etc. your personality or values must be noticeable through your logo, colour, and your brand voice.
Related: Top Benefits of Blogging
Take Away
Branding cycle is highly valuable to build a great brand. The purpose of the article is to guide you in understanding how a brand is built and taken to heights. Branding is an ongoing process that continues throughout the business.
We have many examples of successful brands that have followed the branding cycle properly and reached an unexpected level. Not only that, but they have managed to carry their image till date and growing even bigger despites of several highly-competitive newbies.
A brand is not built overnight. It takes a considerable effort, time, belief, and of course, the branding cycle. It is a guide that shows you the way to proceed and craft your business image. The deeper you understand the stages, the better you perform.
