The word brand dates back to Old Norse, the ancient North Germanic language from which modern Scandinavian languages derived. Brand originally referred to a piece of burning wood. But in the late Middle English, it came to mean ‘mark permanently with a hot iron’. 

Yes, think about this. If the words powerful brand mean to mark something permanently, it is sufficient to say that the practice of branding involves different engravings for people to remember the brand by. For instance, a well-distinguished powerful brand can come to be known for its many public relations strategies and activities to engrave its awareness and promote its credibility within target markets. 

Of course, this is what successful engraving looks like. It is memorable, everlasting, and tells a compelling story that speaks to its audience. Still, what needs to go into this whole engraving process is a whole lot of other things. 

So if you are wondering where to start when it comes to engraving your business in a crowded marketplace, here are five ideas to get your gears turning. 

1. Having a Clear Powerful Brand Identity

Now, a fuzzy idea of branding as a concept is one thing, but having an unclear idea of your brand identity is highly dangerous — because it will diminish your recognizability and credibility in the marketplace and be detrimental to your marketing strategy.

A strong brand identity communicates your business personality and shapes your customers’ perceptions of who you are. It projects the expectations and promises you extend to your customers in terms of quality, service, reliability and trustworthiness. But more importantly, it helps the customers differentiate you from your competitors.

As such, a brand identity is indispensable. You can spend some time determining what your brand is or what it is you want to be known for. Even if you have not done any formal branding exercises, it helps to create a short paragraph that reflects the people you serve, the values you embody and the results you achieve. 

2. Choosing Specific Demographics

Once you know your audience and your product or service, the key is to start identifying who your target audience for your brand is. Start by thinking about factors such as age, location, gender, income level, education, and ethnic background. Figure out who has a need for your brand and who is most likely to buy and support it.

It is key for you to start networking and expand your contact list too. This way, you can think about who you are trying to reach or sell your products to. Most entrepreneurs have already been through this way to reach out to more potential customers and further accelerate growth.

3. Imitating Experts in the Field

Even though the goal is to create strong branding and stand out in your industry, it is essential that the person or group of people involved in your brand know who the major players are in your field. For example, if you think of donuts, and you see the Dunkin’ Donuts pink and orange letters up ahead, even before making out the words, you would automatically recognise it as Dunkin’ Donuts.

For a brand to stand out to the extent that a customer can correctly identify it even before making out the words is pretty incredible. But what really makes it recognisable in the minds of their target audience is the brand’s visual indicators (such as logo and colours). So by imitating the similar concept, you may have better chances of facilitating this kind of success within your target audience.

You can hire a virtual expert to look up their blogs, websites, articles, or anywhere else they have contributed their thoughts on the industry. Use their experience to help you build your own powerful brand.

4. Growing Your Social Media Presence

Believe it or not, social media is considered to be one of the most valuable and important tools for a company to build their own successful powerful brand in 2022. In fact, these days many companies are often noticed through their social media accounts, becoming one and the same. This trend we are all feeling is linked to the digital revolution, causing large amounts of information to be readily available because of computer technology.  

So if you have a mission to build a powerful brand in 2022, it is then crucial to polish your online presence and further build a strong base of audience, or maybe even double your reach with a good marketing campaign. In many cases, an experienced marketer will help get you started by collecting and analysing it all: He will look at your website and social media presence, and also listen to your customers and competitors to understand what your brand identity is. Based on that data, he will generate content to make sure your platforms post frequently about your products or services to engage with your audience. 

5. Having an Entrepreneurial Mindset

Building a powerful brand is far more than just a marketing category. It has a lot to do with our mindset. Our mindset is what will make or break our future successes. So it is important that we swing the entrepreneurial mindset into action (yes we know, although there is no entrepreneurial gene we are either born with or not). 

To achieve an entrepreneurial mindset, it requires one to act like an entrepreneur, think like one, and take complete control and hold yourself accountable to your outcomes – both good and bad. Do not be afraid of failures because as James Altucher said on the podcast, life is a sentence of failures punctuated with brief successes. 

There will always be failures that must be overcome. Aim not to give up in the first try and to not give up in the face of any adversity. The right mindset is what will take you from where you are to where you want to be.

In summary, anyone can learn how to build a powerful brand if you take continuous action on working with your brand identity, demographics, social media presence and entrepreneurial mindset.