Pencil Designs 2020-12-28

12 Steps to Build a Strong Brand Identity in Egypt.

Let us begin this article with this memorable quote for David Brier, a famous brand identity expert, who said: "If you don't give the market the story to talk about, they'll define your brand's story for you." Then, if we want to define branding, all we have to say that it is the way customers see your brand or identify it; it is just your reputation. So, branding is all about giving the real story about yourself to your customers. It is the way you use all the brand elements to espouse the right image of yourself.

Branding your business is not an option when it comes to building a strong relationship with your right audience. It gives you what you want from personality differentiating to market positioning with which it definitely will increase your sales and word of mouth referrals, and it even will push your customers to advocate your products or services against anyone strongly.

Unique Brand Building = Unique Brand Image

The secrets behind powerful brand identity are generating consistently brand awareness through marketing strategies that can be done through many channels such as, Content Marketing, SEO, Social Media Platforms, Email Marketing, Paid Advertising, and the most important out of them all your website's user experience.

Here is a step by step guide for a successful, strong brand building that Pencil Designs offers to you if you are at the beginning of the process of establishing a unique brand identity:

Time to Build a Strong Brand

Identify Your Target Audience

The most critical first step in building your brand is to know your target audience and how to reach them effortlessly, to create a sense of belonging, to relate to their thoughts and feelings. You have to meet their needs in every word and meaning, and gain their trust with every activity you do. And to deal the best with your customers, you have to study their lifestyles and behavior in a way you become them, not an outsider who talks to them.

To know and understand your buyer persona, you have to answer these following questions about them:

What is her/his age?
What is gender?
Where does he/she come from?
What is his/her level of education?
What is his/her income?
What motivates him/her?
What are his/her favorite brands?
What are his/her pain points that you have to solve?

Answer the above questions and be specific; this will help you to narrow your search and focus as all you have to do to reach your right customer who will take actual action. Pushing everybody to take action is not a wise approach; accordingly, you should analyze and focus only on your target audience.

Image result for buyer persona

2- Research Your Competition

The second step is to audit your marketplace, to identify your competitors, to know their struggles and points of strength. This step leads to a full understanding of your position in your market and what angle you should choose to leverage your business. Find the right competitors that are aiming for the same customer as yours; don't get stuck in analyzing companies that have different targets or customer segmentation. The idea of researching your competitors in your niche is to stand out from the crowd and not imitate what they do.

P.S Choose three or four competitors to benchmark against, and check the quality of their visuals, customer reviews, content, services, etc.

3- Offer Something Different

Spend some time in this step to understand your qualities, to know your brand advantages. Every unique brand has its value that no one else has, and even if you are competing with 101 competitors, for sure, you will find what differentiates from others.

Two examples of how you can stand out from the crowd with just one asset:

Better quality services or products
Better customer service

4- Set Your Brand Mission Statement

What is your brand value and purpose? What makes your customers trust you and purchase from you over your competitor? The answers to these questions are your way of setting a brand name that no one can forget. The concept and passion you built your brand for will reflect on many other things as creating your personality, tagline, logo, etc. A good mission statement can guide you through the way of reaching and succeeding in the future.

An example of a mission statement of Egyptian Steel:

Egyptian Steel Mission: Utilizing the state-of-art, eco-friendly technologies and fulfilling our employees’ highest potential of professional development to deliver organizational excellence in a safe environment and achieve sustainable growth that ensures long-life customer relationships as well as optimizing the return to our community and stakeholders.

If you checked Egyptian Steel’s logo, messages, voice, and all of their branding activities, you would find that the purpose and goals of their business are visible in all of them.

If you want to build a clearly stated mission statement to your brand, then your statement has to answer these following questions:

What do you do?
How do you do it?
Why do you do it?

5- Craft Your Brand Logo

Image result for Brand guidelines

The essential step a brand can take is to build a logo that has to represent its identity correctly, as the logo is the only visual that will appear on everything. It is supposed to stick with the name of the brand forever, so you need to take your time and spend it wisely. In the step of creating a perfect branding design in Egypt, you may need the help of one of the branding agencies in Egypt in execution, and Pencil designs will be more than happy to assist you in fulfilling this mission, to build your brand identity design. You can create a unique logo with the help of Pencil Designs professionals in no time. You can also create your brand guidelines with support from Pencil's professionals that includes many things such as the brand logotype and size, color palette, web elements, etc.

6- Find Your Brand Voice and Create Your Tagline

We mentioned before earlier in this article that your brand voice is going to be defined after determining your market, target audience, and values. If you are asking about the meaning of the brand voice, then the best way we can define it to you that it is the way the brand communicates with everyone. A great brand voice should cut through the noise and reach your target audience by a lasting impression. When you have one specified brand voice on all of your channels, you will connect faster and easier with your customers.

Here is an example of an exceptional brand voice:

Dove, a self-care and beauty products company, is known for its empowering and uplifting brand voice.

Image result for dove motivational campaigns

Create also your tagline to summarize the passion and concept of your brand; loosen things up a bit and be the most creative.

7- Connect With Your Customers Smartly

This step is connected to all the previous ones; it is the step where you have to let your brand personality to be shown. And your brand personality should derive from the character and needs of your customers that we talked about before. To establish a strong brand identity in Egypt, you have to develop a bright brand personality with great visuals including creative branding designs in Egypt on all of your channels.

Image result for brand personality

Make sure that you commit to the brand identity design strategy that you are building right now and don't make a sudden left turns that can lead to estrange you from the right audience; be consistent.

8- Brand Your Business on All Channels the Same Way

Any channel you use can be the first port of call for your customer, so your brand image or brand identity design should be on display in all of the used channels. And not only you have to use the digital channels, but you have to incorporate your brand image into anything tangible from packaging and business cards to advertisements and products.

Make sure that all of your visuals, social media accounts, and any used platform are stick to your value, brand guidelines, and voice.

Here is an example of Azza Fahmy packaging style, a luxurious Egyptian jewelry brand, that incorporated luxury and elegance into their packaging by using the wordmark to build these designs out, but still it followed its brand guidelines and style:

Image result for azza fahmy packaging

9- Build Your Website Accurately

Let anyone visits your website to hear your brand screaming through all of the website's aspects. Your website is almost the first stop your customer visits or even the place he will visit to know more about your business, so exert your brand identity through it and give the right image about your brand. Absolutely in this step, you will need the help of a professional to make all of the website elements clear and in harmony. Pencil Designs, a web development company and one of the branding agencies in Egypt, will handle this step for you the way you imagined. Pencil Designs will build for you a responsive and smart website that is fast and mobile-friendly with a creative interface.

Besides, if you have an eCommerce business, branding will play an essential role in improving your business; an increasing number of customers are switching to eCommerce platforms to purchase all they want nowadays. Therefore, Pencil Designs, one of the branding agencies in Egypt and a web development company specialized in ecommerce development that you can count on, will also help you out with building your online dream store.

Don't forget to make your brand message crystal clear on your website; it is supposed to be the reason why your product or service is vital for your customer. Just summarize everything you want to say in one or two sentences to make it simple on the recipient.

This following example is a clear brand message that relates to Instabug’s customers:

Instabug is a software company that provides bug and crash reporting for mobile apps that its message is simple to be understood by its target customers.

10- Increase Awareness with SEO and Content Marketing

Most of your brand activities aim to drive traffic to your website; SEO and Content Marketing are the most important ways to generate organic traffic to your site. SEO is the ranking and positioning in Search Engine Results, as for Content Marketing, it is a type of marketing that creates a connection with your right audience and supports them in their journey with your brand.

The types of content you can use for your brand can be articles on your blog, infographics, white papers, videos, case studies, etc.

Image result for types of content marketing

11- Build a Relevant Social Media Strategy

To better connect with your right audience and deliver the right image of your brand, you have to build a strong social media strategy that attracts your customer and gain his trust to be a loyal follower or a regular purchaser.

To represent your brand identity the best on social media platforms, you have to create original content, curate relevant content, use paid advertising, and more.

12- Utilize Email Marketing

Try Email Marketing, if you want to establish a direct link with your target customers. All you have to do is to send personalized emails to them that represent your brand image and leave the rest to it.

A report made by DMA established that email marketing has a $44 ROI for every $1 incurred.

If you want to grow your subscribers, you can use opt-in forms on your website such as landing pages, pop-ups, sidebars, and more. As for email marketing types, you can try newsletters, promotional or non-promotional, and for e-commerce platforms, cart abandonment, and more.

Conclusion

Brand building is one of the omnipresent themes for all businesses. A strong brand strategy has become a necessary tool in marketing strategies for all companies, the large and small ones. It is your key to grow your audience's trust and take your business to the next level of professionalism.

Just hold onto your brand identity strategy and believe in it, and hire professionals in helping you create positioning in your industry. And be consistent and incorporate the brand strategy elements into all brand aspects.

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