Building your brand to have a unique and identifiable story is the keystone to developing a strong brand presence and developing a brand that consumers will identify with and remember in your community or niche.

This is one of the best ways to work to create the idea that you are different in a sea of seemingly similar competitors in what can sometimes be a very competitive market.

One of the key aspects of building a strong brand is getting the consumer to recognize that brand and be aware of and be able to recall that brand within a few seconds.

Think about it this way, people will pay a huge premium for a brand name associated with a product. Case and point sunglasses, why do Oakley sunglasses cost so much more than the ones from the dollar store?

Because Oakley has been able to develop the idea in the consumer's mind that their brand is a premium and gives you status when using it.

This is what you want in an ideal branding scenario to be able to create the brand that everyone wants to use, but not everyone necessarily can. If you can do this it drives both want and desire up for your products and services

The process to developing a strong brand can be broken down into a step by step process that goes in the following order:

• Telling your brand story and how or why your brand came to be

  • Doing this in both a written fashion and in video format is an excellent way to really dive in and understand what is it you’ve started and why it would be interesting to the consumer. A story helps the consumer begin to identify with you and helps them to feel comfortable with your brand.

  • If your story includes how your brand came to be, the people involved in building it up and the struggles and triumphs along the way you will be able to forge a much strong bond with your community by creating humanistic qualities the consumer can identify with in your brand.

• Have your employees tell the story behind your brand and the story of how they came about and why they are involved with your brand. The people behind your product or service are a powerful motivating factor. Especially if they are truly on board with it and truly believe in it.

• Have your best customers tell the story of why they choose you and why they keep coming back to you. This creates the idea that the people who are using your products or services are on board with it and love what you do. There is no tool more powerful than social proof. Especially if you get a customer who tells a very powerful story and can motivate and encourage those who have not jumped on board yet.

• Establishing buyer personas to understand who your target market is so that you are able to produce content specifically tailored to that target market and to be able to build your brand in the most efficient way possible.

• Take the story you made above and compile it into one big story that tells your story from all aspects of people that encompass your brand. From the people who build it to the people who work in it to the consumers who use it.

  • Pay attention to the tone and the unique personality that comes from this

• Design your logo, content and all other branding materials to be congruent and always stay in line with what your culture and themes are. The culture of a brand is a huge piece that should definitely not be neglected

• Create a content calendar and put out stories on a daily basis to all your relevant platforms. You can tell the story of the day, stories from clients, stories about clients, stories from staff etc. The key is that you put out content in the form of videos, blogs etc on a daily basis to ensure you are always in front of the consumer.

Building your brand story is all about telling it from many different aspects and continuously working to recreate the story from many different angles, ideas and platforms. Always make it match the personality and culture of your brand you in the consumer's eyes you will be different and highly noticeable.