The Components of a Successful Brand (6 key elements for success)

As small businesses competing against larger or more well-known businesses, it isn’t as effective to just talk about what you do as a business. The key to standing out is the brand that you build. A recognizable and loved brand is one of the most valuable assets a business owns.

However, a brand is much more than just a name, tagline, logo, and other visuals. Even though these pieces do play a role in the bigger picture, there are other elements that bring it all together.

So, with that said, let’s dive into the components of a successful brand!

What Makes a Brand Successful?

We believe that there are 6 key elements that make a brand successful:

1. Brand purpose

2. Target audience

3. Mission statement

4. Brand voice

5. The visuals

6. Consistency

HONING INTO YOUR BRAND PURPOSE

The purpose behind your brand is the reason that you wake up every day to do what you do. Understanding this purpose and passion and building your brand around that will ultimately create a brand that not only you love but that others will, too!

Ask yourself these questions:

Why am I in this business?

What differentiates me from others?

What problem do I solve?

Why should people care?

Your answers to these questions serve as the foundation of your brand and will help you to pull together all of the other elements that make it up.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

You can’t be everything to everyone, so really niche down and understand your target audience. Who are the people that you would love to work with the most? The people that would benefit from your offerings the most? When building your brand, it’s important to keep these people in mind. 

Try to get as specific as possible and narrow down their demographics and psychographics. Demographics include:

• Age range

• Gender

• Location

• Income level

• Education level (if applicable)

Psychographics are more about what’s going on psychologically. Things like:

• Goals

• Pain points/struggles

• Fears and desires

• Motivations

Once you know exactly who you want to serve, you’re able to tailor your messaging to speak directly to them.

DEFINING YOUR MISSION STATEMENT

Your mission statement is the why behind your brand. Think about where you want your brand to be in the future and what impact you aspire for it to have on people. This is what will ultimately drive your brand, and showcasing this to your audience allows them to better understand why you do what you do, why your brand exists in the first place!

ESTABLISHING YOUR BRAND VOICE

Your brand voice is how you communicate with your audience– the distinct personality that your brand takes on in its messaging. Brand voice plays a big part in the overall nature of your brand and the feelings it evokes from your target audience. You could want your brand voice to come across as:

• Professional

• Friendly

• Casual and conversational

• Informative

• Playful and humorous

If you’re stuck on your brand voice, keep two things in mind: Your target audience and your personality. Usually, these two things intertwine. For example, if you aren’t all about the professional, corporate, LinkedIn-y vibe, chances are your target audience isn’t either. But if your personality is more playful and humorous, it’s likely that your target audience is totally into that. 

For us personally, we prefer to keep our messaging conversational, especially in our ads and social media posts. We aren’t afraid to use profanity, emojis, GIFs, exclamation points, the whole nine. We speak to our target audience as we would a friend, although we can lean on the more professional/informational side with our educational content.

CREATING YOUR VISUALS

Now that you’ve defined your purpose, mission statement, target audience, and brand voice, you can use all of that to create your visuals. Your color palette should mesh well with your brand voice and what you want your audience to feel when they see it. For example, if your personality is loud and playful, a bright color palette with bold colors translates it well. Luxury brands tend to use more muted tones.

But it isn’t just about the colors. Your logos, tagline, images you use, elements like patterns, even down to the typography– all of these things are what encompasses your brand.

If you need help pulling this all together, check out our Brand Kit Template in The Creative Template Shop! Created by our award-winning graphic designer, you’ll receive a Canva template that includes customizable logos, color palette (including hex codes), typography, and patterns, all put together in a brand kit that you can save and refer back to.

By becoming a member of The Shop, you can instantly download this brand kit plus every other template we have available for only $47/month.

MAINTAINING BRAND CONSISTENCY

Your brand should be reflected in every single thing your audience can see, read, and hear. This means ensuring that your visual identity is the same across all mediums and that your brand voice is integrated effectively, too. This is what helps you solidify brand recognition, building trust and loyalty in the process.

And there you have the 6 key elements that we believe compose a successful brand! As long as you remember that a brand is deeper than a pretty color palette and logo, and hone into the more personality- and purpose-driven elements to help tie it all together, you’ll feel much more in love with your brand (and your audience will, too!).