How long does it take to build a Brand?
Everything good takes time. You feel you’re overweight, you’re desperate to get back in shape, into that old pair of jeans you’d hidden in your wardrobe. You go on diets and work out undeterred and it’s only after its own sweet time that you lose weight pound by pound. If you wanted immediate loss of weight, you’d go weak and anemic, leading to complications.
Building a brand shares similar characteristics. When you say brand, you not only include your brand name and the product or service you deliver and build, you mean a lot more. You mean your target audience and the implications they come with – you think you know your target audience but when you reach out to them, there’s no response. So, does that mean your brand is a failure? Or, does that mean you’ve failed to put efforts? Nope!
You see, market, nowadays, has become complicated. Gone are the days when there were just few mediums to reach out to people and get branding done. There was newspaper, print medium, or the visual medium. People were passive in the marketing process. You just have to get your message conveyed and expect conversions. But things are not the same now. There are more mediums popping up every single day. Despite the increase in social media platforms, the reach of brands has drastically come down. You’ve more mediums to connect on but less engagement to connect with. People are bombarded by choices on their newsfeeds and expecting to build a brand soon amidst a few seconds of impressions on their wall doesn’t make sense at all.
Moreover, consumers today also have become active in marketing processes today. Now they talk about our products/services online and talk back, too. Your branding strategies are influenced by the way consumers interact and you’ve to constantly modify your strategy to go ahead with your branding. So, branding today becomes tough to crack but not impossible (cliché).
To build an effective brand, you need to realize what niche your business is into and who your target audience is. If you’re into a fast-moving service like food or manage a food-based app, your strategies will vary and be more frequent in terms of engagement online. Your purpose will be more on engaging your followers with discounts and promos for them to come back to you every day.
On the contrary, if you’re running a service that is a one-time affair or that
requires a long time for your customer to come back, your branding strategy should be optimized to revolve around increasing your online presence and generating buzz perpetually. You need new customers to sustain your business and focusing on engagement will be futile (though it’s an integral part of branding).
To sum it up, building a brand takes time and every phase of it is rewarding in its own way. No effort that you put in will go waste as you either learn from your strategies or earn from them. Also, branding requires a lot of ideas and strategies that will work in the longer run of your business. So, avoid any temporary stuff unless and until it’s totally required to create an impact. Keep understanding your audience, modify your strategies, optimize for results, and build a brand that will stand tall for the coming decades. Most importantly, enjoy the process!
