In today’s day and age, having a well-built website or offering great discounts won’t always guarantee success. But, what will guarantee success is a unique branding strategy that gives you an edge over your competitors. It’s important to build your branding strategy and idolize your thoughts into one before diversifying your business.
The first thing that you should ask yourself is “are you really a brand or a person just selling clothes?”
“Brand” is one of those words that everyone in business and marketing uses, but not everyone actually understands. Maybe you’re an artist selling graphic T-shirts, but would you call yourself a brand? Probably not, unless you have a range of styles, silhouettes, and fits that cater to a larger audience. With a clear positioning, identity, and plan, customers know who you are and what you stand for. They know how to find you online, trust your services and turn into loyal customers. So, here are the 6 brand positioning strategies that you can follow to build a brand for yourself.
- Find your Lane
To bring your vision of creating a brand to actually come true, you need to find your own lane by not trying to market your brand to everyone. Even when you have an ideal customer in mind, you need to think about how your product can become a part of your consumer’s everyday lifestyle. Beyond aesthetics, you need to closely observe your consumer’s lifestyle to have a better understanding. What does their day look like? What does their month look like and how many pieces can they buy from your collection to build out their lifestyle. The traits you use must be easy to identify and influence your target lane.
- Overbranding your Collection
Even though we see brands like Supreme overbranding their products, it doesn’t always work in everyone’s favour. Launching your brand with 1 style in multiple colours with logo vomit is a big NO! It sends a message to your customer that says “I don’t know who’s gonna like it so I’m gonna make one for everybody.” You don’t have to slap a logo on everything in order to establish your brand’s identity. Good branding is about generating the right amount of curiosity.
- Build Out Your Brand Guidelines
No matter how big or small the business, everyone needs a brand bible and stick to it. It will help create and establish consistency for your brand’s visual presence and messaging. Having a brand bible will allow you to not completely rely on your logo and brand colours. Research for ideas and then build out on those, as you find these key messages in your branding and collections. Use your brand bible as the law and all your collections will make sense rather than being random.
- Plan your Collection Carefully
When you’re planning your collection, you should do it in a way that each collection tells a story. You don’t want to tell a story that’s too thin but at the same time, you don’t want to tell a story that has too many details. The key is not to launch with 5-10 pieces or 30-40 pieces in a collection. Also, don’t just think about the product, think about the marketing aspect as well. With very few pieces, you will run out of content very quickly, and with too many pieces, your social feed will overflow with content. Capsule collections are a great alternative as it allows you to create a variety of different outfits with fewer items.
- Photographs that convey emotion
You’ll have heard it before: “An image is worth a thousand words.” It’s not always the quality of the photography but the subject matter. When it comes to photography, choosing the right props, photographer and model is equally important as it is the first impression that your potential customers get of your brand. Your images have the ability to quickly and easily convey the emotion that you want your customers to feel. The more thought you put into it, the more it will connect with your audience.
- Instagram Marketing
When planning your Instagram strategy, revert back to your brand bible where you’ve mentioned your ideal customer. Once you have that, you can create a feed that will translate the customer’s lifestyle. Your Instagram page doesn’t have to be about the product all the time. You can talk about the interests of the customers apart from showcasing your product. Valuable content like this will keep them engaged and wanting to come back.
The main takeaways from this article are to do your research, tell your story, be in love with little details and trust us, it makes all the difference. Asking yourself ‘WHY’ at every step of the way will help you to build a brand that people connect with.
