8 Common Branding Mistakes to Avoid

Creating a brand for your business is a marketing strategy that is very crucial. A brand doesn’t just mean having a fancy logo or sophisticated website. Of course, they are an integral part of it, but branding goes much beyond logos and online presence.

Thanks to free and low-costing tools these days, even small business establishments are able to create brands of their own. But brand marketing is a demanding job. Especially for new business houses, branding may seem like an uphill struggle; because apart from creating a brand that can be an identifier, new players also have to avoid looking naive with their branding skills.

1. Not having a brand strategy

Most people who are new to brand marketing tend to think that a brand is nothing but a good logo. That is the first big mistake a business can make. Before starting a brand for your business, it is important to have a clearly defined strategy in place. The brand is going to be an identifier for your business. It will, in the future, speak for the products or services you offer. So, you should be clear about what you plan to offer under this brand.

A brand strategy should clearly define your objectives so that once the brand is launched, customers and users can relate the brand to the essence of your product or service. Once the brand strategy is set straight, you can now move forward with a vivid vision.

2. Changing too often

This happens when you don’t have a clear idea of the statement you are trying to make with your brand. This is also sometimes a result of starting with a cheap brand identity and later realizing that it isn’t working. In the first case, the branding strategy that we mentioned above should be useful to give you a clear vision of the purpose of your brand so that you can create a brand identity in adherence to your objectives, once and for all.

In the second case, it is usually the small businesses that fall prey to cheap branding. In order to lower costs, they tend to consult cheap logo services or use online tools instead. The problem with this is that you are compromising with quality. Cheap branding services or online tools only have a few templates for you to choose from. They hardly ever create a completely personalized brand identity. And such cheap branding cannot sustain in the competitive market as they fail to attract customers. So, you end up changing it, and all the work you did till now goes in vain.

3. Overcomplicating your identity

With a branding strategy in place, you should have a clear idea of what your brand is going to deliver and who your target audience is. If your brand identity is not clearly conveying the same message, then you have probably overcomplicated your brand image. It is one thing to look and sound intriguing, but if it creates a confusing or complicated image for your business, your brand is of no use. Keep things simple and crisp. Use relevant and concise tag lines. Use a logo that speaks something about what you offer, even if it looks simple. Trying to accommodate everything you can in your brand image will only make it look less focused.

4. Not having a unique look

Anyone can have a brand. Even roadside shops these days have a fancy signboard with their names written in complex fonts. So, how is your brand going to have a different identity that people can recognize? If you try to create a brand that goes with the standard and is inspired by other brands in the market, conveying the same message, there is nothing new about you. Your brand should be unique to you alone. If you know what you are offering that your competitors aren’t, it should reflect in your branding. Originality is very important if you want to stand out of the crowd.

5. Trying to cater to everyone

Your business surely has a target customer base. Most businesses cater to a certain section of people. But in brand marketing, many of them make the mistake of being available for everyone. Your brand will lose its essence if it is not directed to your target audience. The others don’t need your product and won’t buy anyway, and your target audience will not be focused upon, so they won’t know much about your product either. It will end becoming a lose-lose situation for you. Your brand identity can help you build on the trust of your target audience, so it is best to focus on this section alone instead of trying to cater to everyone.

6. Expanding too far

Expanding your business into new areas is fine. Every business does that. But stretching it too far can be harmful to your brand image. If you started-off with selling toothpaste and expand into the airline business, people are surely going to confuse your brand image. It gets confusing because you already have a customer base that relates your brand to a particular product or service, and if you venture into a completely new area with the same brand, your identity is lost. So, you could, for instance, expand from selling toothpaste to shampoo, that people can relate to. But for the airlines business, it would be advisable to create a new brand instead.

7. Not offering what your brand promises

If you have created a brand identifier, customers have an idea of what to expect from you. But failing to offer what your brand image promises will bring a bad name to your business. Customers must have a good brand experience to remain loyal to your brand. So, do not promise things you cannot offer, and if you have made a promise through your brand image, make sure customers are getting what they came for.

8. Not keeping up with the times

To remain relevant in the market, your brand must be in sync with the current trends. Brands also tend to age and may require a facelift occasionally. Although it has been said before that changing your brand image too often is not a good move, yet, over the years, you may need to revamp the image a little to remain relevant among the target audience.