How To Build Your Brand and Attract High-Paying Customers

Introduction.

Have you ever wondered why some businesses continue to do better than their competitors?
The new and smaller brand tends t offer better products and services than their superior competitor, but they still find it hard to attract high-paying customers. The reason is simple; people don’t buy products or services; they buy the brand.

Despite offering better services and even quality products, many businesses will suffer more than more prominent brand names because they know nothing about brand building.

Please take a look at Coca-Cola, Fanta, and many of those vast brands in the beverage industry; no matter how a new brand tries to do the same thing that they do, even better than these big names, they find it hard to break through because the huge brand has built their brand name over the years and continued to attract loyal customers.

The same goes for global brands like KFC, McDonald’s and the likes. Coming to the tech world, you see brands like IBM, Apple, Facebook, and Google.

They have become organic and require little or no marketing effort. Their names are being mentioned everywhere, in Movies, Newspapers, children’s books and even used to make jokes; this has continued to strengthen their brand name.

Bringing this to a real-life context, let us assume you start a business; one of the things that you discover is the inability to convert high-paying clients first; the wrong idea most business owners get is that they are doing something wrong, instead of working on their brand to build trust, they start charging less for their services to meet up.

Charging way lesser than others won’t give your brand a better picture and won’t attract a high-paying customer; all it does is portray your brand as a weaker and inferior brand.

Instead of seeking out clients out of nowhere and trying to convince every dick and harry to come to patronize your business, you should invest quality time in building your business brand.

My Personal Experience.

When I initially started as a web designer and a digital marketing expert in my field, many people doubted my ability. I could remember charging way less than what others used to convince my clients that I was the best man for the job.

I often landed in trouble because I underpriced my service, which caused most prospective clients not to consult me for business. I understood the concept of Branding and how it separated my competitors away from me and made them far better than I do.

All I did was develop my brand image, and suddenly, things began to change for the better. I started charging way higher than I used to do, and guess what? They all paid without hassle.

In this article, I will expose the concept behind building a brand, so I recommend you stay glued to this article till you eventually consume and meditate on its contents.

What Is Branding?

Simply put, Branding is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it distinguishes your offering from that of your contenders. Your brand is obtained from who you are, who you want to be and how people see you.

Are you an innovative radical in your industry? Or the sophisticated, reliable one? Is your product the high-cost, high-quality option or the low-cost, high-value option? You can’t be both, and you can’t be all things to all people. The bottom line lies in the fact that your brand represents you.

Reasons Why You Should Build your Brand.

Whenever I Say People hate to be sold, but they love to buy; I mean they hate being lied to, manipulated, compelled, and restricted from making up their minds in their own time.

When you create a business just because you intend to make a profit, all you just did is create a competition that would eventually swallow you up, making you regret ever wanting to start that particular business.

When your service or product becomes irrelevant, priced out, or overtaken by competition, all those hours of time, sweat, and tears spent over building this business will be gone.

Building a brand does not mean you would not make a profit as a business; all Branding does is portray the core values of your business to the world to build loyal and returning customers.

This section will take a deeper look into how new and existing businesses can build the brand that they desire to be.

1. Building A brand makes you look bigger.

Branding is a core concept that allows you to find uniqueness in your brand, elevating your business and leaving little or no room for competitors.

All you have to do as a business is research other companies and do what they are not doing, which can become a branding experience.

For example, we have various restaurants worldwide, but the likes of KFC are different because they chose a unique recipe to represent their brand.

2. Branding Builds Credibility.

Branding brings out your uniqueness, helping you lay more emphasis on what builds credibility. Think about what you stand for and communicate that to your customers in everything you do, from the colours you choose to your words.

3. Building A brand Makes You Memorable

When building a brand, one thing you should have in mind is making your brand memorable and standing out from the crowd.

It would help if you understood that there are thousands of other brands like you; the winning idea is to make your brand speak for you when you are not there.

For example, The Coca-Cola brand has grown brand that anytime a random person fantasises about any beverage to cool off their thirst, all that comes to their mind is Coca-Cola.

When I was a lot younger, here in Nigeria, they referred to it as Coca-Cola whenever someone wanted to take any soft drink. The reason behind this behaviour is that the Coca-Cola brand has effectively passed a clear message about its brand that has stuck in the mind of its customers both at home and abroad.

4. Building A Brand Attracts Customers.

When choosing brands to work with, your customers have many other brands in mind, but portraying your brand as unique compared to your competitors will help prospective customers identify with you better.

When customers understand who you are and what you offer, they think about doing business with you. They tell their friends when they trust you and begin to love you. Once your brand is solid, word of mouth is the best way to grow your base.

One of the only ways to build a brand that attracts customers is to ask for reviews and referrals and make sure that your customers appreciate your business. This can be done using Google My Business and all social media platforms.

The bottom line is that people do business with who they trust, no one does business with a brand out of pity or necessity, and it all starts with the mindset. When your brand resonates in the mind of people, they tend to become your customer.

How To Build Your Brand.

Do you knw that there is a big difference between creating a business that sells a product or service and creating a brand that lasts for many years to come?

Building a business to make money for you or help you pay your bills, or generate some income is a bad idea for brand creation.

If all you are doing is building a business to make more money and free yourself of corporate chains, it is not going to last you for long because your competition will overwhelm you sooner or later.

In this section, I will take a deeper approach to help your business become the best brand it can be.

1. Establish The Purpose Of Your Brand’s Existence.

The first question you need to ask yourself when building your brand is why you are in business in the first place.
Ask yourself;

Why am I in business?

Answering this question must go beyond the products or services your business offers.

For example, let’s say your business helps non-techy people get tech skills; your brand purpose should not only be centred around providing tech skills alone; you can decide to centre your audience around a targeted audience of children.

This helps your brand stand out among other competitors and leaves room for improvement. Come to think of it; there are many coding companies all over the world, majority of these brands are even more significant and well respected, so diving into the same business with them would bring about tons of competition that may eventually bring you down because of the vast client base of your competitors.

The main idea behind establishing the purpose of your business is to reduce the level of competition as much as possible to help you grow.

2. Identify Your Brands Target Audience.

The following substantial question to answer is to identify your target audience, and you can do this by asking yourself a simple question such as;

Who wants to buy what you’re selling?

Identifying your target audience is one of the most critical aspects of Branding. If you overlook this step, the rest of your brand-building strategy will suffer.

Make sure to note that Your business is not for everyone; don’t try to make it appeal to every single person on the planet. Likewise, not everyone would be your target audience; make sure to carve out a niche and stay true to it.

3. Study Your Competitor Brands Within Your industry.

Make sure that you are not trying to copy what other big brands are doing because your business would be seen as a copycat and die due to stronger competition.

The goal is to differentiate from the competition. Convince a customer to purchase from you over them.

Research your main competitors or benchmark brands. For instance, study how well they have gone about building a brand name; there is something they are not doing and have continued to fail at that should be a big win for you.

4. Create a brand logo and tagline.

A logo is a visual representation of your brand; a logo is a trademark that portrays your business to your targetted customers. So when you see a big letter “F” engulfed around a big blue container? Let me guess, Facebook.

The same thing goes when choosing a tagline for your business. See tagline as a phrase that talks about the vision and mission of your business.

For example, Google’s tagline is to make information accessible worldwide.

This logo and tagline will appear on everything that relates to your business. It will become your identity, calling card, and the visual recognition of your promise.

So be willing to invest the time and money by creating something exceptional to reinforce the visual identity of your business.

Make sure that your brand logo when designing a logo, make sure to seek out an expert; one place to get started is on Fiverr. You can also make use of a third-party graphics design app called Canva.

5. Tell Your Brand’s Story.

There is a reason you chose to invest or start that business in the first place. That reason is referred to as a brand story. This explanation of why you’re in business should appeal to your target market while being expressed in your brand voice.

Here’s an excellent example from Facebook.

Before Facebook became a profit-generating venture, its brand story encompassed connecting people worldwide on one platform. That was why it was created, and it has not relented in continuing to achieve that.

6. Develop A Long-Term Relationship With Your Customers.

Every business should understand that just winning customers might be the short game; earning their long-term loyalty is the key to a thriving enterprise.

It’s simply not enough for companies to create a great product or complete a reliable service. Beyond just transactional experience, companies look for an emotional experience or a unique memory.

The bottom line is to keep these customers coming back for your product or service.

7. Get Featured On A Live Radio Show.

When trying to build a brand, your first set of clients would be in your location, and one of the potent ways to reach out to them is to subscribe to the power of a terrestrial radio channel in your country.

There are thousands and millions of local radio listeners in your country every day, most of which you don’t even know about. Radio listeners are more likely to believe in a brand that gets featured on a radio show that they love.

Reaching out to your target audience via radio is one way to build your brand and attract paying customers. For example, there is an online radio show here in Nigeria dedicated to entrepreneurship, and it has a guest host that anchors that program every day.

Do you know that he decided to host a physical event in a city here in Nigeria at one time? To my shocking amazement, it attracted thousands of people, most of whom paid heavily? One of the primary reasons he gathered this kind of audience is that he chose one of the most potent media to showcase his brand, which was the radio.

8. Go on Local TV.

Another avenue that attracts lots of views is a local television platform. Though it remains one of the oldest means of publicity, the constant use of television continues to thrive even years after its invention.

Bringing your brand on television makes your brand authentic and trustworthy. When the covid was about to hit the world, the need for hand sanitisers grew here in Nigeria, and many people ventured into this business.

A particular brand was smart enough to know that this was a huge business and it would attract lots of competition. Of course, the local manufacturers did their job; after all, hand sanitisers were easy to produce but guess what? This particular brand took to the television, hired a famous influencer and ran constant TV ads for an extended period.

This branding strategy attracted high-paying customers to that brand, which eventually led to that particular brand standing out from all other brands that ventured into that business.

9. Start A YouTube Channel.

Starting a YouTube channel goes a long way in connecting you with the right audience. However, after the Google search engine, YouTube remains the most queried search engine.

This sends a message about the constant need for video content worldwide. Your brand can fully utilize this advantage to connect with your target audience by creating a video telling a story about the brand and the product or services.

You can do this by utilizing YOuTube SEO or creating a paid ad campaign with the target keywords to help you reach out to the audience instantly.

I wrote a comprehensive guide on how to scale your brand using YouTube. Click the link to the article below to get started.

How To Start A YouTube Channel And Make Money

10. Explore Content Marketing (Blogging).

Whenever someone has doubts or needs urgent information about a product or service, one of the first things they do is go on Google to access related information from experts on this topic all over the internet.

This gives rise to and need for targetted content creation and Blogging.
Blogging puts your brand in a perfect position to connect with potential customers by providing necessary information about your product and service, which may eventually lead to building a better brand.

I wrote a comprehensive guide on how to get started with Blogging. Click the link below to get started.

How To Start A Blog And Make Money

11. Utilize The Power Of Email Marketing.

Email Marketing is the act of sending out mass emails to potential customers to create awareness and sell a product or service.

Email marketing is one medium by which a business can build its brand effectively without hassle.

Getting your first email leads may be challenging, but it can be done using a few techniques. This is why I wrote a comprehensive guide on how you can get started with email marketing. Click the link below to get started.

12. Use Facebook.

Social media platforms like Facebook can also help you portray your brand to the world. Facebook is a social platform presently home to over 2 Billion people worldwide.

All you need to get started is a Facebook account and a Facebook business page. The Facebook business page gives you access to the necessary tools to grow your business. For example, with the Facebook business page tool, you can own a publishing tool, Advertising tool and many more.

I wrote a comprehensive guide to help you hack your way through Facebook. Click the link to the article below.

13. Leverage The Power Of Twitter.

Twitter is one great platform that allows you to tell your brand story. The peculiar thing about Twitter is that it will enable you to reach out to your target audience via Text, Images, Videos, Hashtags and mentions features.

Twitter has a database of over 1 Billion users globally, making it one of the big tech companies in social networking.

Twitter is used by so many businesses to build their brands because it has the presence of various VIPs on its platforms, comprising of people like Politicians, Government, celebrities and many others. Most times, all you need to do is get mentioned by one of these top figures, which settles it.

When starting on Twitter, you can use paid advertising to grow your reach or, better still, collaborate with influencers to help you announce your brand.

I wrote a comprehensive guide on how to get started with growing your brand on Twitter. Click the link below to get started.

How To Grow Your Business On Twitter

14. Use Instagram.

Facebook acquired Instagram in 2010, and ever since, it has become a part of Facebook, Inc.

It has over 1 Billion users and still counting; Instagram became the only platform to host the highest number of photos on the internet, superseding Facebook and Pinterest in the business.

Recently, Instagram expanded its platform to support various other media types such as videos, audio, etc.

Instagram allows you to promote your business via collaboration with influencers and inbuilt support for paid advertising.

When it comes to brand building, Instagram has been noted as one of the most prefered platforms.

Building an influence on Facebook will directly reflect on your Instagram account because they are all synced under one platform.

Most businesses prefer to leverage directly on Instagram, treating it as a different platform when it’s not.

I wrote a comprehensive guide on how to get started with Instagram. Click the link below to get started.

How To Grow Your Business On Instagram

15. Collaborate With Social Media Influencers.

A social media influencer has immersed a vast and engaging audience on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.

An audience gathered by a social media influencer is ready to engage with that influencer at any given time that influencer makes a post; this gives them to generate engagement that can lead to sales for any brand.

One of the fastest means to build your brand is to get your brand mentioned by a known and trusted figure on social media.

Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are created to operate with trust. As a result, natural engagement is generated around people known and trusted by their audience.

Most times, it is not about having tons of robot generated followers that count; it all depends on the level of engagement generated.

Influence marketing gives provision for your brand to be mentioned by an outstanding and trusted figure on any social media platform(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok).

Influence marketing is not free. On the contrary, it can be a lot more expensive than creating a paid campaign itself. The only reason influence marketing counts is that your brand will be mentioned by a known figure on social media, which can generate engagement around your brand that might eventually lead to sales.

Make sure to look out for an influencer’s engagement rate before going into a business partnership. Business ethics should also matter; most influencers collect money from you only to talk about your brand only once and never do that again.

For a social media influencer to convince their audience successfully about a brand, such a person in question has to connect with that brand deeper. This implies that posts about that particular brand be made more than once.

One big mistake that the brand often makes is to choose influence marketing over the constant creation of paid advertising campaigns on all social media platforms. But, unfortunately, you never can tell the kind of audience behind an influencer.

But you can always decide the type of demographics you want your ads to reach out to when creating a paid social media advert.

Are you trying to become a social media influencer? Do you currently seek ways to reach out to an influencer but don’t know how?. I wrote a comprehensive guide to help you kick off your social media influencing career.