Why Building a Brand is Surprisingly Difficult

Introduction

Building a brand is something most—if not all—businesses strive to do. Die-hard fans and happy, paying customers—who wouldn’t want that? Yet very few companies reach the point where they can truly be considered a brand. Why is that? In an age where information is widely available, why can’t every business build a brand? As it turns out, the intricacies of branding reveal complexities that limit entrepreneurs’ ability to simply establish and craft one.

I wrote this article in the hope that business owners will understand what a brand fundamentally is—and why most have a flawed vision of branding that leads them to create a brand that exists only in their minds. Without further delay, let’s start by defining the term in question.

What a Brand Really Is

Put simply, a brand represents the identity of a company. It is the voice and soul of your business. It revolves primarily around the emotional response people have when they think about or interact with your company. Let me give you an example. When you think of Nike, most would agree that the core emotional component of their brand is about being active and pushing beyond one’s limits. That’s branding in action. If we turn our attention to the grocery giant Whole Foods, the widely recognized emotion tied to their brand is the idea of better, organic, ethically sourced food.

As made clear in the previous paragraph, branding is about manufacturing emotions you hope your customers will associate with you. A basic branding strategy should therefore answer the question: “What does my business strive to be, and how can I make that as clear and evident as possible so my customers understand it?”

The illusion of branding

The main problem with branding is that most business owners don’t actually know how to create one in the first place. Sure, they understand the concept, but applying it in practice is a whole different story. That’s why the illusion of branding often comes from entrepreneurs thinking they’ve successfully built a brand—when in reality, no one connects with it objectively. I use the term objectively because, when building a company, friends and family should never be part of any business-related consensus—they’re biased in your favor no matter what you create. In other words, the illusion of branding arises when there’s a disconnect between what you want random people to know about your brand and what they actually think of it.

In the following section, I will explain how the illusion of branding takes form and why branding can be surprisingly tedious.

Why building a brand is very difficult

Every business is a brand, but not every business is a good brand.

Only a few entrepreneurs take the time to think about what kind of brand they would like to have. Granted, this is not an easy question. It’s like asking yourself what kind of person you strive to be. Conversely, most business owners start with a product or a service and build upon it. Is it that big of a deal to build a brand after launching a business? I wouldn’t say so, but it definitely adds a level of complexity.

When building a brand, you need to ponder deep and abstract questions. It requires several exercises that open the way toward a better understanding of who the business is and why it matters to people emotionally. It is a laborious task. If, however, you already have a catalog of products and/or services, it becomes tougher because your customers have already developed an idea of what kind of business you operate based on multiple factors unique to them. Therefore, if you haven’t thought about a branding strategy, it is entirely up to your customers to decide what to think about your company, and it will lead to them having either a neutral or a negative opinion of it.

A branding strategy helps your customers understand why they should connect with and appreciate your business by providing them with good reasons to do so.

A brand requires long-term consistency

Another reason why building a brand is difficult is that it requires a serious commitment to justify, sustain, and enrich it over a long period of time. Let’s go over these three crucial attributes.

• Justification: At the core of a branding strategy lie the promises and obligations you make as a company. For example, you might decide to give 2% of your revenue to a specific non-profit organization. By doing so, it becomes your responsibility as a company to provide a valid and constant justification for why it is important to you—and, by extension, your customers.
• Sustainability: If you can’t support or uphold the promises you made as a brand, your customers will catch on and stop believing your intentions are honest. A brand requires you to keep your commitments going continuously over time. You can’t just abandon or pause them.
• Enrichment: The value and beauty of a brand often come from how it grows and expands over time. Like a person, a brand should always evolve and become bigger than it was. This is partly how you retain your followers over time—by keeping them engaged, invested, and interested.

Always remember: your followers should see themselves in your brand, like a reflection. It’s therefore your job as a brand to follow your followers’ changing behaviors and interests—not the other way around. Always follow the current; don’t try to swim against the tide.

You’re competing with all the other brands

It will come as no surprise that humans have a hard time connecting with corporations due to their impersonal nature. The reality is that branding requires a strong emotional connection—something that is becoming absurdly difficult to achieve nowadays. With tons of options, customers are bombarded daily with marketing material trying to convince them to choose one company over another.

Why should someone connect with your business when they could easily and conveniently spend their money elsewhere? When faced with options, customers often develop a sense of apathy that limits a business’s ability to give them good enough reasons to stay. Without clear value, they default to indifference and constantly switch between brands based on arbitrary factors like price fluctuations or temporary deals.

Your branding strategy is unconvincing

Another important aspect that reveals the difficulty of branding is how most businesses build unconvincing or uninspiring brands. The key to successful branding is a strong, nearly polarizing stance. You need to stand for something clear that resonates deeply with your followers. If you try to please everyone through a generic identity—or worse, by mimicking other brands—you’ll realize that your brand will attract few people.

An uninspiring brand equals no brand, because you must assume your competitors are doing exactly the same thing as you—if not better. Even if you’re the first business to market in a specific niche, be certain you’ll be copied the minute you see success. By providing your customers with compelling reasons to stay, you protect yourself against the competition.

Here are my favorite overused brand statements that I’m sure you also see repeatedly:

• We strive to deliver quality products at affordable prices: This statement bugs me particularly because quality is abstract and personal. My definition of quality may differ from yours based on what I’m looking for in a product. Secondly, affordable prices are not always better—loyal customers are often willing to pay a premium for a brand they respect.
• Customer satisfaction is our top priority: This is another statement that grinds my ears, since customer satisfaction should be every company’s top priority. Rather than telling me that, tell me how you approach customer service differently. Tell me how you go the extra mile for your customers.
• Your one-stop shop for all your [insert niche] needs: Trying to be everything to everyone rarely works in business. Building your brand around this attribute won’t work well. Let me remind you that a brand is an alignment of values between your company and your customers. Being a one-stop shop is not valuable enough for most people.
• We’re passionate about what we do: I personally consider this statement fluff, as it doesn’t tell customers why they should be passionate about your company. The blunt reality is that most people don’t care if you’re passionate about your business. A better message would be, “We’re passionate about [insert something you and your customers can share].” For example, if you’re in the dog food business, it could be “We’re passionate about healthy, well-fed dogs.”
• Innovation is at the heart of our company: This is another brand message that doesn’t explain why I should care about your company. It might be true that your company spends a great deal of time and resources on innovation, but that doesn’t concern the customer. It should therefore be removed from any branding material.

Once you’ve grasped the deeper reasons why branding is hard, the next natural step is to learn how to communicate your brand effectively. That’s where defining your brand voice becomes essential. In my article How to Find Your Brand’s Unique Voice, I walk you through how to craft a voice that resonates with your audience across all your brand touchpoints.

What you should remember

I often hear people say that branding is only reserved for big companies, but I strongly disagree. I firmly believe that every company, no matter how small or big, can create a strong, compelling brand. You just have to be wary of the potential problems outlined above.

If I had to summarize this article in one sentence, I would say that branding is difficult, but it can absolutely be achieved if you find the unique reason why your business exists, find the people who care, and commit to your purpose.