Every company has a brand whether they created it through design or accident. By creating your brand through design, you shape the way you wish your company to be viewed by customers and potential customers. This will remove some of the uncertainty concerning what others will expect from you and say about you. The power of a brand can?t be over-estimated.

Do you know what makes your company or its products unique? If you don?t you can?t begin to establish a brand identity by design. Here are seven elements to consider when designing your brand.

1. Know Your Customers

Customers buy for their reasons, not yours. If you want to sell them your product, you must sell to their concerns, not your own. Every piece of marketing copy must focus upon them. If you don?t speak their language, you don?t get their money. With branding as with selling, if you don?t understand your customers, you won?t build a brand of which they want to be a part.

2. Understand Your Competitors

Your competitive environment has a major impact on how you brand your products or your company. Identify the companies to whom you most often lose business. Learn as much as you can about these competitors, including how customers perceive them, what makes them unique, and why they win the business they do.

3. Define Your Brand Personality

People choose brands based upon whether or not the characteristics of the product or company brand fit them. If you have defined your ideal customer well and understand your competitive environment, you can select a brand personality which will appeal to your audience.

4. Make a promise

Find out what is important to your customers about choosing a business like yours and what benefits they get from doing so. Make sure your brand promise is important and valuable to the customers you want most. Your brand promise should be stated clearly, in concise language so everyone in your organization and your customers understand it.

5. Define a Brand Strategy

You now understand your customer and your competitive environment. Your strategy comes out of that information. You need to develop a brand that is distinct from your competitors. You now understand your customer and your competitive environment. Your strategy comes out of that information. Where will you position yourself? How are you gonna approach your customers?

6. Define a Branding Game Plan

Moving to action, you need to define the specific actions you will take to create your brand. They must be the tangible demonstration of your company?s values and beliefs. They come directly from your brand personality, brand promise, and brand strategy. The hardest part of your branding process will not be designing your tactics. The hardest part is being consistent in supporting your brand.

7. Be Consistent in Action

A brand builds over time. A brand becomes successful after years of consistent action. Keep that in mind as you move forward in building your brand.