How to pinpoint your brand’s strengths & uniqueness like a boss for success

Brand strategyAll

9 Nov

How small businesses use their uniqueness to create strong branding

As a brand design studio in Torquay, South Devon, designing standout branding for businesses in the homes, gardens and interiors space across the UK, our blog is geared around helping small business brands. We want to help you maximise the impact of your branding and this blog is all about discovering and showcasing what’s unique about your brand.

In order to move forward with your business it’s crucial that you take stock of your strengths and weaknesses, looking at the traits that are unique to your brand.

It’s part of quite an involved process - here are the elements that go into creating a brand that has soul and makes the right kind of impact - it’s more than just a logo!

Profile your customers
Craft your vision
Find your character
Focus your brand tone and voice, verbal branding
Design your brand logo and sub-marks, colour and font pairings
Curate your visual branding through photography, illustrations and patterns
Create your brand touch points - print and online
Cultivate your social media / content creation / storytelling
Engineer your user experience / physical spaces
Engage your audience, relationships and brand ambassadors

In this article by Rachael, we’re going to unpack how you can start to strengthen your brand by exploring the unique characteristics of your business.

When you’ve done this, you can really start to shine, as you have the insights in place that help you differentiate yourself from other brands or competitors in your market or sector.

Find the strengths of your brand with a SWOT analysis

“People fall into two camps: one group will over-estimate their strengths, stating things they can’t back up with evidence or struggling to find any weaknesses. The other group will struggle to see positive strengths and over-emphasise their weaknesses.”

You may have come across SWOT in corporate circles, but don’t be put off. It stands for ‘Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats’.

If you want a bit of background reading, we recommend reading SWOT Analysis: Understanding Your Business, Informing Your Strategy by MindTools.

It’s a very useful little tool which helps you explore your business brand both internally (strengths & weaknesses) and externally (opportunities & threats). It can uncover key insights if you have limited time, so doesn’t need to be a massive undertaking.

My experience is that people fall into two camps:

One group will over-estimate their strengths, stating things they can’t back up with evidence or struggling to find any weaknesses
The other group will struggle to see positive strengths and over-emphasise their weaknesses.

I’d really encourage you to work with others who can give you honest feedback and to be realistic in these areas.

Don’t forget when doing a SWOT on your brand

Before your do the SWOT, there are a few warm up questions:

Ask yourself what are your unique qualities and focus on what makes you special and unique
Think about the work you enjoy and want more of

Within the SWOT:

Remember that strengths & weakness are internal - what you are good at and is going well (and vice versa)
Opportunities & threats are external - events and trends that are favourable (and vice versa)
Be real with yourself about what you excel in and where you need to grow
Ask for feedback from others - others on your team, your clients or customers and get clear on what they think about you
Try to have a realistic view of yourself - it’s hard, but important

Questions to ask about your brand

What were the top factors for my brand?
What are my top three in each area?

These SWOT areas are a great way to draw out a realistic picture of your business brand and thinking ahead to your actual branding (or brand identity).

It ensures that you are successful in building on your strengths, overcoming the weaknesses, making the most of the opportunities and mitigating the threats.

Aiming for your top three in each area should highlight the key points to be aware of. If you get stuck, move on; you’ve probably uncovered enough for the moment.
What functional and emotional benefits does your brand offer?
What functional and emotional benefits do you offer your customers?

As we explained in our last post, people make decisions with their hearts rather than their heads.

Their head will tell them why they need your product or service rationally, but if you can emotionally hook them through the benefits then they will come back to you.

Think of it like a ladder: functional benefits (does it do what I want?) are straightforward and sit at the bottom.
Emotional benefits sit above and are more powerful (will it make me feel better?).
Who is your brand’s target audience?
As I’ve said before, your business (however life-altering and perfect) will never appeal to everyone.

It’s key that you understand who your customer is.

It can be a good idea to break it down by category:
1. Is it lovers of the countryside or fell runners?
2. Coffee drinkers or vegan artisan coffee drinkers?
3. Do you have multiple audiences?
4. Maybe it’s a charity that needs to appeal to volunteers, recipients, and donors.
Create personas of your ideal customers or clients for your brand
Can you use these details to create personas of your ideal customers or clients?

When you are clear on your customer base you can start to create personas together.

Start with one individual - look at their demographics, their behaviour, wants, and needs.

All these things will help you build a picture of how best to communicate with that customer.
Avoid making your brand all about you
Am I making this about me?

It’s really key to remember that your brand is being created for the customer, not you, not the business director or the CEO.

Sometimes your personal design preferences may overlap, but not always.

Always serve the needs, interests and desires of your customers first.
Who are my brand’s competitors?
Everyone says this in business, but the key is understanding what you can learn from them.

Start by understanding what your competitors are offering, what they are good at doing, where they are successful and what their messaging says.

Learn from this - what can you improve on; what can you avoid; what inspires you; what can you build on?

You can avoid many pitfalls this way, but also start to think about how you can carve your unique place in the market.