After spending years of your life traveling the world, hanging out with sharks, and seeing what life is like under the sea, you’ve finally decided to turn your love of snorkeling into a business.
In your quest to understand digital marketing, you’ve come across the word “branding” pretty frequently.
In a nutshell, branding is what helps your customers and your target market recognize your company and understand what you do. Brand building is the process of reaching out to more people.
It’s also all about ensuring that your brand has a specific, unique voice and style.
But where should you start when you’re ready to grow your own brand?
Read on to learn about a few of our top branding tips.
1. Create An Epic Logo
Creating the perfect logo for your snorkeling business is the first step in brand building.
It allows your target market to make a visual connection to your company, helping to build brand recognition. It also communicates what you do, which markets you serve, and how you’re different from your competitors.
When creating your logo, there are a few key things to keep in mind.
Common symbols, like a snorkeling mask, a fish, or a pair of fins, will help to communicate what you do. However, make sure you put your own creative spin on it.
For example, the Australian snorkeling company Ninja Shark’s logo uses the image of a snorkeling mask. However, it also shows the shark wearing the mask and snorkeling happily in the water. Even it’s colors, blue and black, work to build brand consistency.
In short, it’s a logo that encourages people to read more about the company.
Our final logo tip?
Make sure your images aren’t too detailed. Otherwise, when you resize your logo, the image runs the risk of getting blurry.
2. Harness The Power Of Social Media
As you’ve probably guessed, social media is the most important part of brand building.
It helps to expose you to more markets, understand what your target audience is interested in, and allows you to learn more about how they use the Internet.
It’s also an enormous part of your company’s customer service. Today, many current or future customers will send their questions to your brand’s social media accounts.
They may even send complaints directly to your Facebook’s inbox.
If you don’t respond to these queries, you’re compromising your brand’s integrity.
3. Start Blogging
Looking for a way to grow your business and strengthen your brand building?
Start by blogging.
Companies who blog have a lead growth rate that’s 126% higher than those who don’t.
To ensure that you keep up with blogging, it’s a smart idea to create a content calendar at the start of every month. This way, you won’t have to worry about coming up with topics at the last minute.
Dedicate a weekend to writing all of your blog posts for the month, then schedule postings.
If you haven’t exactly been blessed with the creative writing gene, don’t sweat it. There are plenty of content writing companies and professional bloggers who can help you get it right!
One final quick tip: make sure to get active in your own comments section! Follow other snorkeling and diving blogs, comment on them, and always reply to or like messages sent by your readers.
4. Take A Stand
A rapid-fire brand building tip?
As a business, don’t be afraid to stand up for what you believe in.
Angry about how pollution is harming the ecosystem of the Great Barrier Reef? Upset about how global warming is impacting our oceans? Want to protect the fish and other animals that your customers love to interact with when they go snorkeling?
Tweet about it, blog about it, and spread awareness about it.
That doesn’t mean you can — or should — insert your brand into every hot-button political issue.
But when something is relevant to your company and what you do, you should feel free to express your opinion on it. Customers want to work with brands they feel share their values.
5. Keep It Consistent
In today’s fast-paced world, brands are expected to have a presence on as many social media platforms as possible.
This can certainly help you to reach more customers and expand your target market. However, it also means your branding can quickly being muddled.
But consistency is incredibly important.
In fact, 60% of American millennial shoppers say that consistency is one of the first things they look for when deciding whether or not to do business with a brand.
That logo you worked so hard to create?
Make sure you use it as your profile picture on all your social media accounts. The voice and tone you’ve decided on for your blog?
Always bring that same writing style to your other content.
6. Focus On Your Company’s Story
Our final tip for brand building?
If (and when) you get stuck coming up with content ideas for your snorkeling business, remember why you started it in the first place. Think about what your snorkeling company provides that other businesses in your industry don’t.
What void does your brand meet? What need does it fill? Which pain points does it address?
When you’re creating content and connecting with customers, think about how you can tell your story in a new way, or highlight what sets you apart from your competition.
Encourage your followers to tell their own stories, especially regarding their interactions with your brand. Then, share those stories on your social media accounts, blogs, and anywhere else you see fit.
Need More Brand Building Help?
While the brand building tips listed here are a wonderful start, they’re only the beginning of the story.
You still need to think about SEO, email campaigns, website speed, and much more. You also need to find the professionals that can help to take your branding to the next level.
That’s where we come in.
Spend some time on our website to connect with businesses that can help to boost your business, like social media experts or professional content writers.
Be sure to check out our blog for frequent branding tips that will blow your competition, well, out of the water!