Have you ever wondered how to build a brand that people recognize?

We talked to Brandon Vaughn to find out how he expanded Wise Coatings from a single location into a multimillion-dollar brand with over 30 locations. He shared his secrets about how to build a brand identity that stands out from other competitors in your industry.

By the time you’re done, you’ll be ready to tell your brand story and create a marketing strategy that helps your brand’s personality shine. You can either keep reading or click on any of the links below to jump to the section that interests you:

By the time you’re done, you’ll be ready to tell your brand story and create a marketing strategy that helps your brand’s personality shine. You can either keep reading or click on any of the links below to jump to the section that interests you:

Read on to learn more about creating a memorable brand identity.

What is a brand?

A brand is a company’s identity and personality. Having a distinctive brand helps customers recognize your business and your reputation.

Your logo, packaging, and colors are huge parts of your brand. The way you communicate also impacts how customers will see you.

According to recent research, 42% of the S&P 500’s value is in goodwill or intangible assets like brand equity. In fact, the entire S&P 500 has more value in goodwill than they hold cash.

When you start a business, you’ll need to spend a lot of time defining and sharing your branding. Having a cohesive brand image will make people instantly think of you when they need your services. You’ll want to create a consistent presentation that makes you stand out in your field.

Branding Case Study: Wise Coatings

Brandon Vaughn has built 12 multimillion-dollar businesses, but his flagship business is the floor coatings company Wise Coatings.

The Wise Coatings logo is an elephant with a paint roller. An elephant is a wise animal, and he takes the connection even further by sponsoring an elephant for every floor coating. Brandon also chose colors that really stand out.

His branding and marketing strategies have helped Wise Coatings rank as one of the top new and emerging franchises in Entrepreneur. The parent company earns $9 million per year in revenue, and its 33 franchisees earn an average of $500,000. That’s a 1,300% growth rate in just three years.

Check out our interview with Brandon below:

If you’re interested in learning more about Brandon’s business model, request more information about becoming a franchisee. He also teaches The Business Startup & Growth Blueprint in the UpFlip Academy.

What makes a successful brand?

A successful brand has five qualities. Ask yourself whether your brand meets these criteria:

• Recognizable: Your brand should be recognizable to your customers and the general public. Your brand logo, name, and brand colors all help to create a visual identity.
• Unique: People should be able to easily understand why your brand is different from competitors.
• Consistent: Your messaging and overall brand identity should be consistent so that people don’t confuse you with your direct or indirect competitors.
• Relevant: Your brand should resonate with your target audience and match up with their interests.
• Engaging: Great brands don’t just send information to their target audience. They take the time to interact with people and show that their customers are a priority.

How much does it cost to build a brand?

Expect to spend at least $1,000 to build your brand. In some cases, brand building can cost $50,000 or more when you use an agency with an extensive scope of work.

Some of the costs you’ll need to plan for include target audience research and competitor research. You’ll also need to create a logo and order marketing materials. Don’t forget about the costs of uniforms and store displays.

How to Build a Brand

Step #1. Identify Your Target Market

Before you focus on building your brand, you’ll need to identify your target market. Make sure to dig as deep as possible as you identify the key behaviors and lifestyles of your target audience. You’ll want to know:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Spending habits
• How they prefer to shop
• Marital status
• Number of kids
• Occupation
• Hobbies
• Their favorite social media channels
• Whether they rent or own

Facebook has 23 high-level ways of targeting and lots of options inside each one. Check out the picture below to see the high-level options:

You may want to create a brand persona or cheat sheet to keep your target audience and brand voice in focus during the brand building process.

While you can conduct market research on your own or hire a freelancer to do it, you’ll get much better results if the person doing the research has access to paid tools like IBISWorld or Dun & Bradstreet.

Step #2. Research Your Competitors

In this step, you’ll identify how successful companies in your industry are branding themselves.

1. Find competitors: I’d suggest finding 3 to 10 depending on how much data you want before creating your brand identity.
2. Look up their marketing channels: Search for the competitors you chose on all social media platforms, and follow them to stay up to date. Don’t forget YouTube and your competitors’ websites because there might be valuable content there.
3. Analyze how channels are being used: Look into how often your competitors are posting and what subjects they’re focusing on. Pay attention to logos, fonts, and visuals.
4. Learn what they do well: After researching several brands, you’ll notice that there are things every brand does and things that only some do. Learning what other brands are avoiding is also important.

If you want to differentiate yourself from the competition, you have to be different. This is the first step to building a strong brand identity.

Brand Identity Examples

You’ll want to create a strong brand identity to differentiate your company. One way to create brand value is to become known for a specific service or characteristic. Think about the companies that fall into these categories:

• Innovators: An innovator is a company that’s pushing the entire industry ahead. For example, Apple is known for its innovative products and designs.
• Best customer service: These companies go above and beyond to improve the customer experience.
• Low cost: A company like Walmart wins by offering products at low prices.
• Luxury providers: High-end companies create a brand reputation that justifies paying higher prices. You could offer better service, a luxurious shopping environment, or through better service, environment, or quality of products.
• Socially conscious: Your social interests and commitments can attract customers with similar mindsets. This could include reducing your environmental footprint or donating to special causes.
• Flexible: Offering more channels to purchase from or special offers like paying over time can bring in customers looking for a specific payment method.

Each of these offer a different value proposition to customers. Your goal is to define your brand identity by keeping them in mind.

Step #3. Define Your Mission and Values

Your brand goals and values explain why you do what you do. They are the part of branding your business that lets people know why they should trust you.

Your mission statement is your brand’s purpose. It’s the positive change you’re trying to create in the world.

Meanwhile, your goals are things that you want to achieve to make your mission statement a reality. Your goals could include customer service milestones or selling a certain number of products.

You may also want to develop a personal brand around your company if you want to stand out as an individual leader. Brandon describes his brand values as:

• Buffalo: When a storm comes, a buffalo runs toward it, while cows run away from it. The end result is the buffalo makes it through the storm faster.
• Ascend: Strive every day to level up your skills, rise above, and do things you’ve never done.
• Service: The more people you help, the better you’ll do.
• Efficiency: Do things right the first time, and look for ways to improve processes.

Note these values spell BASE, which is the foundation everything is built on.

Step #4. Choose Your Brand Voice

Your brand voice is the way you communicate with your target market. You need to speak their language in a consistent way.

One of the best examples of a company with a distinct brand voice is Chick-fil-A. Employees make it a point to say “my pleasure” any time someone thanks them.

Scripts and training are key to keeping this unique brand voice consistent across employees and locations. When you’ve properly trained someone, they’ll stick to the script even when they’re having a bad day.

Step #5. Choose Your Brand Name

You’ll want to choose a brand name that represents what your company stands for. The business name should be easy to remember, reference what you do, and support your brand image.

Wise Coatings communicates that you’ll be making a good decision when you choose them for your floor coatings. When combined with the elephant logo, it increases the references to the word wise.

Try our business name generator to get ideas for your business. Our name generator will also tell you whether the associated domain names are available for purchase.

If you’re not ready to buy right away, you can visit DreamHost at any time to purchase your domain name.

Step #6. Tell Your Brand Story

Telling your brand story allows you to show what makes you different and why your customers should choose your company.

The best marketing minds follow a similar branding strategy when they communicate. They follow this process:

• Why does it matter?: Talk about why you’re passionate about the business and how your products will change customers’ lives.
• How will it change their lives?: This is a chance to differentiate yourself from direct competitors. Focus on what you do well and avoid mentioning other brands.
• What is this about anyway?: Introduce potential customers to the brand or product.

This powerful brand messaging technique was dubbed “the Golden Circle” by Simon Sinek in the book Start with Why.

Wise Coatings approaches their brand identity from multiple angles. For customers, they offer a lifetime warranty on an environmentally friendly, damage-resistant coating that’s installed by professionals. On top of that, they donate to help protect endangered species.

From a franchisee perspective, Wise Coatings manages all marketing and internal systems so that you can focus on providing excellent service. They also connect you with a large network of franchisees in different stages of growth to help you solve problems quicker.

Step #7. Define Your Brand Strategy

Take all the information you’ve gathered from the previous steps and develop a written plan. This document will guide your company as you create the brand you want. Your brand strategy document should include:

• Channels for building your brand
• The marketing strategies you’ll use to grow the brand
• Promotional strategies to increase awareness

The next part of the document will focus on how to create a brand marketing campaign. You’ll want to use each of these strategies to get you in front of new and existing customers:

• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Data analytics software
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Content creation
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Paid advertising
• Physical marketing
• Pricing and loyalty programs

You don’t have to use every strategy on this list. In fact, it would be prohibitively expensive if you tried to market on all these channels.

Start small and build up to more complicated branding methods. Remember to maintain brand consistency while using all these marketing tools.

Customer Relationship Management

If you’ve already set up a good CRM program, you probably realized that you should have done it earlier. Aside from a website, this is the tool that I think is the most important for managing your own brand. Here’s why:

According to Prosperity Media, the average business employee receives 121 emails per day. How are you supposed to keep up with all those different interactions without a good way to manage them?

Worse yet, how difficult will it be to organize all the emails when you finally get a CRM after operating for several years? You’ll have 100,000 interactions to classify as customers, potential customers, partners, or hard passes.

Those statistics are just for one type of marketing. What happens when you have 10 channels?

Make sure to get a CRM system as early as possible. In a recent Google Trends search about business software, Monday.com was trending for CRM, project management, and workforce software. They also have a 4.3 TrustPilot rating with over 2,800 reviews.

Once you have a website and CRM software, you’ll want to connect some data analytics software as well.

Data Analytics

Data analytics is about collecting and analyzing information. It’s how you measure whether your brand story resonates with your brand’s target audience.

The proof is as obvious as looking at the world’s most successful companies. Of the top 10 companies, 70% of them collect massive amounts of user data to improve their products. If you really want to be different, you need to get the data analysis just right. You’ll be connecting it to every single platform you have.

There are plenty of analytics software options, but the two that almost everyone uses are Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel. These can be a little complicated to set up, so I’d recommend finding a suitable freelancer on Fiverr to help.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the art of making your online content meet users’ specific requests better than everyone else. It’s the key to reaching the first page of Google without spending on paid advertising.

Each search engine uses a variety of ranking factors, but the largest is Google. Search Engine Journal has a great article about Google ranking considerations.

This is a long game, though. Don’t spend a lot of money on it right away. You’ll need that money for advertising.

Content Creation

It doesn’t cost anything to make some videos on your phone, and you can add them to YouTube for free. A blog is also pretty easy to write. If you aren’t a great writer, you can hire a freelancer.

You’ll need to plan out your blog or video development in advance. Take these factors into consideration:

• The difficulty of keyword ranking
• The volume of search results
• Frequency of posting
• How to attract readers or viewers
• Time to create

Our videos cost around $1,500 each, and our blogs can cost up to $400 to $1,000 after everything is included. That’s why Mike Andes, the owner of Augusta Lawn Care, suggests focusing on tasks that generate more immediate income first.

Find out more of Mike’s recommendations in the interview below:

Social Media Marketing

Based on research by Statista, social media advertising was worth over $250 billion in 2023. That figure doesn’t include what businesses spend on organic marketing efforts.

You need to understand how to interact with your audience on each platform. You’ll want to consider the following questions:

• What content should I be posting?
• How can I tie my content to current events?
• When is the best time to engage with my community?
• How much can I afford to spend on ads, and is it worth it?

Social media is one of the best ways for brands to connect with customers. Try them all in small doses to see which ones work best for your industry.

Email Marketing

Building your email list early in the life of your business can have huge payoffs. Lyfe Marketing estimates that 72% of people prefer business communication via email. Mail Chimp also says that for every $1 spent on email, businesses receive $52 in revenue.

The mail marketing process includes:

• Choosing your email marketing software
• Creating an email list
• Importing your contacts
• Writing a welcome email
• Creating a brand template
• Writing an offer email with a personalized subject line
• Using A/B testing
• Sending a test email
• Adjusting your campaigns based on the data

It’s best to send emails from Tuesday through Thursday between the hours of 9:30 a.m. and 9:55 a.m. or 12:30 p.m. to 12:55 p.m. Read this blog by Super Office to understand why.

Paid Advertising

Brands should be spending between 6% and 10% of their desired revenue on marketing. Up to half of that might be paid ads. A digital marketer will typically use three styles of ads:

• Pay per view: This method calculates the cost per 1,000 views. You may see it referred to as CPM, or cost per mille. It focuses on getting your ads in front of as many people as possible.
• Pay per click (PPC): With this strategy, you pay each time a viewer clicks on the ad. Users then go to your web page or social media, where you can develop more of a relationship.
• Pay per action (PPA): This type of advertising gives you the most control over costs, but most people won’t buy from you the first type they see your ads. They have to develop trust. These are great when combined with remarketing because you’re trying to convert someone who’s already aware of your brand into a buyer.

Learn more about advertising agencies.

Pricing and Loyalty Programs

One of the biggest mistakes that business owners make is trying to create a brand that works for everyone. It’s impossible.

Make it a point to document where you want to be priced in the market and how you want to reward customer loyalty. Choose where you can make a profit and stay true to your brand. Then focus on rewarding customer loyalty.

Once you find the right customers through brand building, you’ll need to increase the value of those relationships through communication and rewarding loyalty. Encourage your existing customers to refer others.

Now that you’ve documented the important elements of brand building, it’s time to implement your strategy.

Step #8. Create a Brand Style Guide

Your style guide helps marketers and employees understand everything they can and can’t do with your brand assets. Brandon told us:

He also warned about using budget freelancers. They sometimes use other people’s assets and you can end up having to replace everything

Step #9. Design Your Brand Assets

Once you’ve defined your styles, it’s time to design your brand assets. This includes:

• Your website
• Logo
• Social media
• Print materials
• Vehicle wraps

Web Site

Most brands should create a website immediately. It’s the one digital media platform you can fully control as you build brand awareness. A website has several important benefits for a new business:

• Sales on your website will normally have higher margins because any platform you sell on takes a percentage.
• You own any data you collect. When someone makes a purchase, you collect emails, addresses, and other information that you can then use to remarket to them later. Remarketing can create more loyal customers and lead to higher revenue for every customer relationship.
• Censorship has become a major topic, and tech companies are notorious for it. They can take away your access to their platform because they disagree with you. If you haven’t been collecting customer data separately when that happens, you’ve lost every customer you got from that sales channel.

We use WordPress for our site. WordPress has two different ways of building a website:

• WordPress.com has a website builder that you can start for free and upgrade as you go. It is the easier of the two WordPress options.
• WordPress.org is for more advanced users. It’s typically reserved for companies that have their own servers.

Read our blog about how to create a website for more information.

Logo

Your logo is a visual representation of your brand. Logos often include your business name and brand colors. You can choose a digitally designed or hand-drawn logo.

Social Media

All your web assets should show a similar communication style. Make sure your logo, name, and cover photos are similar so that customers can easily recognize you across channels.

Print Materials

Different kinds of materials can communicate different priorities to your customers. For instance, using recycled paper may be meaningful to some people and not to others.

Vehicle Wraps

A vehicle wrap is important for businesses that drive around. It makes you look more professional and communicates that you take your business seriously.

Step #10. Apply Branding Consistently

The next step is to implement your plan and create content that resonates with your target audience. Maintain a consistent brand voice and message as you go. Brandon reminded us to enjoy the process:

Remember that your brand will evolve as it grows. You’ll need to update brand guidelines, systems, and brand-building processes as the business changes over time. Mike Andes told us:

The Brand-Building Process Never Ends

When you look at each company, you’ll find things you like and dislike about them. Your business will be the same way for some customers. Whether your pricing is just a little out of their price range or you have long lead times because everything is custom, there will be something a customer wishes you could do better.

It’s natural to make mistakes. You’ll inevitably have some hiccups as you build your brand identity and figure out what works for your customer base. If you’re just getting started, check out our blog on how to start a business, then go through the rest of the business hub.

You have to decide how to brand your business and deliver on the promises you make to customers. If you honor your word, people will keep coming back.

What topics do you want us to discuss more in future blogs? Let us know in the comments below.