Creating a great brand requires a lot of work and effort, but it’s so worth it in the end. But how do you build a brand for your print-on-demand business? Can you build one if you’re just starting your store? What if you already have a store up and running?
You can build a brand for your POD business whether you’re a newcomer or a veteran. It just requires time, patience, and determination to do so. Are you ready to give it a try? Follow the steps below and you’ll be surprised with the results.
First, you need to know what a brand is before you try to build one.
A brand is the culmination of a name, a specific art style, a personality, a voice, and so much more. It’s an easy way for customers to recognize you in a crowd of other businesses.
You can think of it this way. People recognize you as a person because of how you look, how you dress, and how you talk, right? A brand is the same thing but for a business.
A brand is what separates people selling things and actual businesses. You can’t have a successful business without creating a brand for yourself. This is especially true when you have an online store and have to compete with thousands of other stores.
The Starbucks brand is well known worldwide, so we’ll use it as an example. When you think of Starbucks, what comes to mind? Coffee? Their logo? People sitting in the physical cafe and relaxing?
All that is part of their brand. They sell more than “just” coffee, they sell a feeling that people love.
There are eight things you need to do to create a brand. If you follow these steps, in order, you should find that building a brand for yourself is not as intimidating as you thought it was.
The name of your store is going to affect everything when creating your brand. It’ll affect the colors you use, the kind of logo you have, and the audience that you target.
There are so many ways you can brainstorm different business names.
Starbucks got its name from the novel Moby-Dick. It also makes people think about how early coffee traders would go across the sea to trade goods.
If you’re struggling to come up with a name, you can always try a name generator.
Create a list of different ideas and make sure they aren’t already taken. Try searching for the word and make sure no one has it in their domain name already.
Also, ask trusted loved ones what they think of your final choices.
Keep a list of your top three names, in case the name you pick doesn’t work out as you go through the process.
Creating a mission statement will help shape your brand. You need to think long and hard about what it is you want to say about yourself and your brand/store.
Why did you start your store (beyond making money)? Do you have a story to tell?
At GearLaunch, we want to make the process of print-on-demand available to everyone and encourage them to create their own businesses. That is a summary of our mission statement.
This may be one of the most time-consuming tasks out of the list, but it’s because it builds the foundation of your brand.
You’ll need to research your potential customers, how to get them, what kind of products to sell, what designs to make, and who are your competitors.
Potential Customers
You need to figure out who your customers are going to be. It can’t just be to anyone and everyone and you don’t want it to be everyone either. You want the people who will be happy with your product and will be an advocate for your business.
Once you know what your market is, it’ll be even easier to build your brand.
So who do you want to sell things to? Sports lovers? Artists? People obsessed with their pets? People who love to do a specific hobby? Home decor lovers?
Your mission statement, which you should already have a rough draft of, should help you decide what customers you want to target.
For example, if you created your store because you want to show off your art, then you’ll probably want to target people who like art versus pet or hobby lovers.
At GearLaunch, we target entrepreneurs who want to create their own print-on-demand business.
Buyer Persona
Once you know what kind of market you’re going to target, it’s time to create a buyer persona. You might be wondering how that’s different from knowing what market you want to cater to.
A buyer persona is a customer you create from scratch. Almost like designing a toy, you create every aspect of this customer. You create this persona through the information you’ve gathered from customers (if you have any), information based on your mission statement, and demographic data like where they live, gender, and age.
Why do you need to create a buyer persona? Because this is who your brand wants to reach, you’ll use this persona when creating marketing materials, social media posts, and other aspects of your business.
Having a specific person to focus on, whether real or not, makes creating your brand so much easier.
How to Reach Customers
How is your brand going to reach your buyer persona?
Does your buyer like getting emails? Do they spend hours scrolling through social media? Should you create blog posts to help your buyer with a problem they have, like giving the perfect gift or design tips?
What Products to Sell
GearLaunch offers a lot of products and you need to figure out what you want to sell. If you do every single product right away, you may make some sales, but you won’t build a customer base that will keep coming back for more.
In the beginning, it’s best to pick a few products to focus on and then slowly expand your selection.
So, what product is your brand going to be connected to? What does your buyer persona want? Are they a mug collector? Someone who loves home decor?
What you sell will affect your brand.
What Designs to Make
You need to figure out what kind of designs you want to make. Research what your target audience likes and base your design on that. These designs are going to be connected to your brand.
When people think about your brand, what are they going to think about? Animal designs, artsy designs, a specific hobby? This is crucial to think about when you’re creating your brand?
Competition
Who is your competition? What are their brands like? Do they use certain imagery? Do they have a clear mission statement?
What can you do that differentiates yourself from them? How can you fill any gaps you notice within their brand.
Never copy things from your competition. You want to stand out, not blend in.
By now, you should have an idea of what you want your brand to be like.
Now it’s time to create a concrete personality and voice.
Some people will say they’re two separate things, but they work so closely together that we’ve put them in the same step. Your brand’s personality will affect its voice.
Your brand voice isn’t necessarily your voice. It’s the voice you want customers to interact with. You need to think about what voice your buyer persona wants to talk to. Examples are a confident, serious, or funny voice.
We have a great blog post breaking down brand voice in great detail.
Now it’s time for something that you can actually see yourself build. It’s time to get artistic and build your visual brand. There are a few steps you need to take to build your brand’s visuals.
Color Scheme
Colors are so important when it comes to your brand. Colors can communicate intentions and feelings without using words. Smart business owners know to use this to their advantage when deciding on a color scheme for their brand.
Going back to Starbucks as an example, having green in their color scheme gives customers the feeling of healing, nature, and growth. It makes it appealing to different types of people while staying on brand.
Your color scheme needs to make sense. If you’re focusing on sports, using soft, more delicate colors doesn’t make sense. Instead, you should use bold, in-your-face colors.
While there are some exceptions to this rule, you need to think carefully about the colors you want to use.
You should also choose two to three colors so you don’t overwhelm potential customers looking into your brand.
Typography
Typography has to do with how your text looks. You want to make sure your words are readable and make sense. Going back to the hypothetical sports-themed store, you wouldn’t use a cursive font. You would want to use a bold type font.
Pick one to two fonts to avoid confusing people and make things easier to read.
Logo
Time to decide whether you want a logo or not. Logos aren’t necessary for a brand, but they are helpful. You can think of a logo as a visual summary of your brand.
There are many different types of logos and you need to decide what kind best suits your brand. You’ll also include the color scheme and typography that you choose within the logo.
Brand differentiation is similar to the competitor research you already did. This time though, instead of seeing how your competitors stand out, you’re going to figure out how to make your brand stand out.
Are you going to highlight your mission statement? Your designs? The people you hire? How are you going to get your customers’ attention?
An example could be that you use our environmentally friendly products and that your mission statement is to improve the environment, not take from it. This will appeal to people with a variety of environmental concerns.
Make sure your brand stands out because of its greatness, not because of something negative.
Once you have all aspects of your brand decided and confirmed, it’s time to make a brand guideline. A brand guideline is so important because it keeps track of all the little things that make up your brand.
This will not only be a good reference for you, but for anyone you hire.
Your guideline should include everything you created above and things that your brand is not. This will make everything clear and precise, that way mistakes are less likely to happen.
It’s time for all your hard work to pay off, now you can implement everything. You can make social media pages featuring the visuals you created. You can send emails using your brand’s voice. Create a website with everything you’ve developed.
It’s time to show off your hard work.
These are important aspects of maintaining your brand. You need to be consistent, though your brand can evolve over time. The core of what your brand is has to stay the same or you’ll lose the customer base you worked so hard to earn.
Professionalism is important, even if your brand is fun-loving and casual. You want to be trusted by your customers and being professional ensures trust.
Being personal allows customers to feel closer to you than just being a customer and business. This is especially important as a small business because people love supporting businesses they feel like they know.
It may seem like a lot of work to build a brand, and it is, but it’s so worth it. You’ll really appreciate having done all of this as your store takes off.
If you already have an established store, you can still create a brand. Use the info you’ve already gathered as you take these steps.
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