Think about your favorite brands. What draws you in and keeps you coming back to them?
Is it the consistent quality of their products or the funny videos they post on social media? Does their customer service team always go the extra mile? Do they champion sustainability or other values that resonate with you?
Chances are, it’s a combination of factors, and branding influences all of them.
Why Businesses Need Branding
Branding helps you communicate what your business does, who it is for, and why it matters.
Strong branding differentiates your business in a crowded market. It fosters recognition, customer loyalty, and trust.
For example, Liquid Death’s product is simple—canned water. On the surface, it’s nothing special—and yet, it last reported over $263 million in sales. Its edgy, sustainable branding attracts loyal customers and stands out from industry titans like Coca-Cola and Nestle.
Successful businesses like Liquid Death, Netflix, and Apple have devoted fanbases because they carefully crafted their brands early on.
As the co-founder of Magic Design, I’ve been part of the branding process for many companies—from creating logos to full brand identities. If you’re wondering how to build the perfect brand for your business, I’ll share six steps anyone can follow.
1. Know Your Target Audience
Who are you trying to reach? Before thinking about a logo or even a business name, you need to understand your target audience.
Your audience informs every part of your business, from product development and pricing to marketing and design.
When doing audience research, go beyond basic demographics like age, gender, and location. Answer questions like:
- What do they care about?
- What problems do they face?
- How does your business solve them?
- Which factors influence their buying decision?
To get to know your audience, start with data you already have including customer reviews, Google Analytics, or CRM data.
If you don’t have customers, you can form an initial picture through industry trends and market research.
Use tools like Exploding Topics and search for your product keywords. It will show how many people are searching for it and a general description of that audience. For example, athletes and fitness enthusiasts are most likely to search for “cold plunge tub”.
2. Analyze Competitors
By analyzing your competitors, you learn their strengths and weaknesses. Weaknesses are opportunities. What are your competitors missing? How can you fill that need in the market?
Asking these questions helps you position your brand.
Most bottled water brands have plain packaging made from harmful plastics. Liquid Death capitalized on these weaknesses. Its #DeathtoPlastic campaign focused on aluminum cans over plastic.
To conduct competitor analysis, mine online reviews of your competitors and organize them into a table with strengths and weaknesses.
| Company | Review | Strength | Weakness |
You’ll use this data for the next step—brand messaging.
3. Develop Brand Messaging
Brand messaging is the overarching way you communicate your business to your audience, partners, and investors. It encompasses many elements, and it is easy to get bogged down in the jargon.
Think of your brand like a person. Brand messaging helps you share your company’s personality and story.
Below, I break down common brand messaging elements with examples.
| Brand messaging | What it is | Example |
| Brand purpose | The reason you started your business—beyond making money | Patagonia: Build the best products, cause no unnecessary harm, and support solutions to the environmental crisis. |
| Mission | The brand mission is a roadmap for your business to achieve its purpose or long-term impact. | Oatly includes a detailed to-do list to support its food sustainability mission. |
| Unique value proposition (UVP) | A clear statement that shows how your business is valuable and better than existing options.
Look at your competitor’s weaknesses to form a UVP. |
Airbnb: Unique, personalized travel experiences with local hosts. |
| Voice | Voice is like the personality of your brand. What do you want to sound like?
It’s usually three to five adjectives with examples of language to use and avoid. |
Webflow’s voice is knowledgeable, down-to-earth, and bold.
Duolingo’s voice is expressive, playful, embracing, and worldly. |
These steps inform your brand design later on. Since Duolingo is playful and expressive, it uses bright colors and an owl mascot called Duo. On the other hand, Apple is serious and sleek. Its minimal neutral colors and design reflect that.
4. Brainstorm Names
You can use business name generators like Namelix to get initial ideas. Input keywords that best describe your product or service, and it will generate ideas. It will also check if the domain name is available.
Another option is to brainstorm using the methods below.
| Method | Example |
| Alternate spelling | Lyft: Lift |
| Mythological reference | Nike: Greek goddess of victory |
| Word combinations | Pinterest: Pin + Interest
Netflix: Internet + Flicks |
| Short, descriptive phrase | Dollar Shave Club |
| Acronym | IKEA |
Look for a name that will resonate with your audience long-term. It should have these qualities.
- Meaningful: It relates to your core values and evokes emotion.
- Clear: It’s easy to remember and type into a browser.
- Relevant: It reflects what your company does.
- Unique: It stands out from current competitors.
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Develop a Brand Identity
The previous steps prepare you for the design-heavy part—the brand identity. It’s all the visual elements that create the look and feel of your business.
Unless you have a design background, I recommend partnering with a designer or using a service like Magic Design.
Typically, a brand identity includes:
- Logo Design: You should have logo variations for your packaging, website, and social media.
- Color palette: Your brand colors should evoke emotions. For example, green is often associated with health or financial well-being. Blue with calm and trust.
- Font: Keep fonts simple and easy to read. Most brands stick to two to three fonts at most.
- Other design assets such as icons and illustrations.
Your designer may also package this into brand guidelines that include audience personas, tone and voice, mission, and values.
For inspiration, I recommend searching “Brand you like + brand guidelines”, and viewing examples. It will give you a sense of what to expect when working with a designer.
Here are some examples of companies that include messaging and visual elements in their brand guidelines:
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Be Consistent, but Open to Growth
When companies stay true to their brand guidelines, they build customer trust and reputation.
But, like people, brands evolve and grow. View your brand as your foundation. It helps you make better and more consistent marketing and product decisions.
Over time, you may need to adapt and tweak it as your business grows and you gain new audiences.
For instance, the footwear brand Crocs started as boat shoes. However, because the shoes were comfortable and breathable they gained a foothold in the healthcare space. You’ve probably seen many nurses and doctors sporting Crocs at work.
Crocs leaned into this by releasing new products and adding to their audience personas. They stayed faithful to their brand foundations—comfortable, quirky shoes—but made slight adjustments for a growing customer segment.
Successful companies stand out from competitors and acquire loyal customers because they have strong branding. Whether you’re building a brand from scratch or revamping it, I hope these steps help you craft a brand that people remember and trust.
Contributed to EO by Maximilian Fleitmann, an EO Berlin member who is co-founder of Magic Design and a partner at Wizard Ventures. He has helped startups and businesses that have raised US$1 billion+ to build stand-out brand designs that have a clear business ROI.
For more insights and inspiration from today’s leading entrepreneurs, check out EO on Inc. and more articles from the EO blog.
