Building your brand universe: how to create a brand that stands out on a small business budget
Your comprehensive guide to the business galaxy.
It seems like there are new requirements to building a successful business every year; be present on every platform, make video content, organise IRL events…is anyone else tired?
And now you’re being told that you need to “build a universe” in order for your business to have any chance of standing out against the competition. I mean, what does that even mean?
Don’t worry though, I’m here to help you navigate your way through the business galaxy - and the good news is, it won’t eat into your budget.
What the heck is a brand universe, anyway?
In short, building a brand universe is about creating a connection with your customers and creating an experience in such a way that every interaction they have with your business reflects its mission, values and identity.
It does sound like a lot, I’ll admit, but once you’ve got things like your mission and values down, it’s really just a case of ensuring that everything you put out there aligns with those, which actually makes things like creating content and making business decisions much easier.
Oh, and by the way, you can do this at any point in your business. You don’t need to be a newbie to benefit from getting clarity on your business basics and using them to fuel your upcoming strategy.
Start with the basics
Sticking with the space theme, the following are what I would describe as the core of your business: things that drive your business and are the underpinning factors in all decisions and activities.
These are:
Your mission and purpose: what does your business hope to achieve - why does it exist? This doesn’t have to be some deep pledge to save the world, it can be as simple as bringing more joy to everyday life.
Your target market: before you do anything, you need to know who your products or services are designed to help so that you can build a brand that appeals to them. Remember, trying to be for everyone = attracting no one.
Your brand values: people want to buy from businesses that share their values. While it’s important to keep your target audience in mind when considering your values, don’t say you value things just because your ideal customers do. Consider what actually matters to you as a business owner and how you want to operate.
Create aligned products and/or services
Now you have the basics down. You know what you want to achieve, who you want to help and the values you’ll use as your guiding compass.
So without further ado, it’s time to create products or services that really speak to your target market, help you achieve your mission and align with your brand values.
There are very few fully unique products, you will often be selling something that already exists and may be in a crowded market, such as clothing, stationery or homeware. So, to stand out to your ideal customers, here are some questions to make sure you can communicate why they need what you’re selling:
What problem does your product or service solve for your customers?
Why do they need this problem to be solved?
How do you make your products or services specifically for your target market?
Why did you choose your target market?
What does your target customer’s daily routine look like, and how do your products or services fit in?
Do your products and services help your target audience achieve an aspiration (e.g. activewear or fitness equipment might help them finally be more active, luxury bedding might help them sleep better).
Carve your identity
The next step is to start creating your brand identity. Who is she?
This involves not just your branding AKA how your business looks, but also how you communicate and how you show up in your marketing.
Your visual identity: this includes things like your logo, colour palette, the typefaces you use and any other visual elements like illustration. Your visual identity should be recognisable and consistent wherever your customers might interact with your business - socials, website, packaging, etc.
Your message: the message you want your business to share with the world
Your voice: how is this different to your message? Your message is what you say and your voice is how you say it. A good way to find your brand voice is to consider the role you want to play to your audience (e.g. expert, friend, wise older sister) and your values as a brand (i.e. if one of your values is fun, you probably don’t want to talk in stuffy corporate speak).
Tell your story
Storytelling is powerful - it’s one of the most effective ways to build human connection. Therefore, the more storytelling you include across your business, the more you tell the story of how and why you started, and the more you get your audience involved, the stronger your bond with them will be.
Here are three ways to include storytelling in your brand universe:
Your origin story: why did you decide to start your business and how did you go about it? What are you doing to achieve your mission and purpose?
Your narrative: what is your unique take? This could be how your products are made, your opinions on your industry, even why you use a specific process with clients.
Side quests: you have your business purpose, but along the way you’ll have some b-plots: things like developing and then working on new products or services and fundraising. Take your audience along with you on these quests and watch your community grow.
Characters: as the business owner, you and, if you have one, your team, are the familiar characters your audience will look forward to seeing. And your customers are characters too - don’t forget to include them on your journey.
Build awareness
Of course, it’s hard to grow your business when no one knows about it!
This is where brand awareness comes in.
Now if you’re anything like me, the idea of networking, reaching out to people you don’t know to suggest collaborating and pitching makes you want to simultaneously throw up and hide under the sofa. But unfortunately, it’s no longer feasible to simply post some pretty pictures on Instagram or a few videos on TikTok and hope that the algorithm will magically show your content to 10,000 or so of your ideal customers.
Businesses do not grow in a vacuum.
So, how exactly do you build awareness?
Go where your people are: you do not need, and probably don’t have the resources, to be across every social media platform. Pick one or two, learn how best to use them, and focus on becoming really good at them before starting a new one. And make sure they’re platforms your target customer actually uses.
Interact: it’s called social media baby, so go and socialise! If your target customer is business owners it will be a bit easier to interact with them as they’ll likely have public accounts, but you can catch the eye of your target customer by showing up in the comment sections and collaborating with brands they already know and love.
Collaboration: Collaborating with influencers, creators or even businesses with a crossover audience can be hugely effective for increasing awareness of your business. Don’t think that you need a certain amount of followers in order to use this strategy, just make sure you get in touch with an idea that will benefit both of you.
Merch: who doesn’t love merch? This may seem like a bit of a rogue idea, especially as a new business, but we’ve all seen a cool tote bag or t-shirt and wondered where it’s from. This may be something you keep up your sleeve until you have a bit more spare cash or you might want to spend a bit of your budget getting some cool designs turned into stickers, totes, sweatshirts - whatever you like, really - and hand them out to your more “out and about” friends or that pal who just seems to know everyone.
Community is everything
Community is one of my favourite parts of the brand universe. There’s so much benefit to building a community around your business: your community will hype up your products and advocate for your business, and as a small business you can interact with your community in a way that big companies simply cannot.
Having a community also means you’ll never have to guess what customers want from your business, because you’ll have a built-in focus group who will be more than happy to provide feedback, ask questions you may not have considered, and tell you exactly what kind of issues they’re dealing with and how you can help them.
And that’s without even mentioning that building a business can be lonely and test your nerve, and a lovely community will keep you going through the tough times.
So, how do you go about building this all-important community for your business?
Interaction: I touched on this in the section above, but make sure you’re actually interacting with your current and target audience, especially on social media - you’d be surprised how many businesses simply don’t reply to comments or DMs. You should also invite interaction: ask your audience questions and make it clear that you want to hear from them.
Events: you may have noticed recently that a lot of online businesses have started hosting events, from brands like Rhode and House of CB launching pop-ups to activewear brands hosting run clubs and even small business owners organising their own IRL networking events. People have social media fatigue and want to do real things with real people. What kind of event could you host to start building your community?
Loyalty: give something back to your most loyal customers, be it a cheeky discount, exclusive first access to your next collection or a loyalty scheme (Shopify has an app to facilitate this).
And that just about sums up our whistle-stop tour of building a brand universe! Let me know if there are any areas you’d like me to go deeper into - I absolutely love talking about this stuff, so I’m happy to natter on about it in more posts.
This is SUPER helpful. Thank you!