Basics of Branding: How to Build Your Own Brand

Your offering, whether it's a service or a product, should always be viewed from the target market's perspective. What problem are you solving for them? What are you making dramatically easier? Why does using your offering make more sense than what they already use? It should fill a gap in your local area or in your customer's everyday life, and slot into their routine easily.

This guide assumes the offering already exists. From there, four large decisions orbit it:

Deciding on a name should be the first big decision you make, and the best advice I can give is to go with your gut. Keep it simple and easy to remember. If your last name is 5 syllables long, consider a play on words instead. Short. Sweet. Memorable.

Local businesses often go with namesakes like The Johnson Brothers Plumbing, or a catchy phrase like Superfoam Insulation.

Do some research to see if the name you want is already a live trademark. You can search the US Patent and Trademark Database and set filters to confirm you're clear within your industry.

Similar names can coexist across unrelated industries. Plenty of live trademarks contain the word Organically, but they cover cosmetics and agriculture, far from my main offerings of SEO and web design. Treat this as a starting point; a trademark attorney gets the final word.

To spark ideas, try a service like Namelix. It generates names from your description, plays on words, and suggests different brand moods, logo styles, and color vibes.

Your name, colors, logo, and website should all blend together into one mood. Mood matters because it's the emotion your audience feels when they interact with your brand.

These are important decisions, but it's best to pick something and keep moving. You can pivot later if something stops matching your vision.

Once you have a name, start thinking about colors. What mood do you want your audience to feel when they use your brand? What experience do you want to create?

Look up colors you like, check what themes and emotions they convey, and decide if that's how you want the end user to see you. Choose colors aligned with your message. Colors pull specific emotions out of people: orange and yellow read as joy and energy, purple radiates royalty and tranquility.

You can run different shades of one color, a mix of two complementary colors, or a full palette of 3 to 7 colors. If you're stuck, look into color theory in the context of user interactions.

A random palette generator like coolors.co will spin up infinite palettes until one speaks to you.

Once colors are set, the logo is next in line. Think about where it will be seen when you weigh contrast and color. Flat, rectangular logos sit at the top left of a website, or wrap onto a truck or box trailer. Circular or square logos appear on merch, website icons and backgrounds, and social profile pictures.

A good logo designer can draw up digital graphics and shapes from your vision and slowly mould the idea into a clean visual. AI logo generators are fine for inspiration, but the copyright and legal implications are still murky.

If your logo is a word, use the same font for the main headings on your website to echo the brand mood. Matching marketing and website content to your logo font builds consistency and boosts recognition.

To draft a type logo, go to Dafont.com and filter for 100% free fonts. You can download those and use them across marketing, logo, and website content. Designers tend to pair serif fonts (letters with small accents and curls) for headings with sans-serif (clean, unadorned letters) for longer text, or the reverse. Many books are set in serif, so there is no single right answer.

The key is consistency. Keep the same heading font on every page of your site. Most websites run on 2 or 3 fonts total.

The next step is a custom website aligned with your vision. A website is your audience's chance to experience the company before they ever use the offering. A good one is obvious with its rhetoric, interactive, personal, and to the point.

To start, choose a platform and hosting service, and buy a custom domain. I use Webflow because it pairs a design platform with integrated hosting. It lets you customize nearly any aspect of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with zero prior coding knowledge. I call it photoshop for websites. The platform is taught free on YouTube and Webflow University, and the content is actually fun to learn.

No-code platforms like Webflow and Wix also sell pre-made templates you can adapt, though templates tend to look generic. I'd always suggest hiring a professional designer for something custom and memorable. Either way, your pages should include your most important SEO keywords so they show up on search engines, and they should limit whitespace with background contrast, large shapes, or texture.

For your website to earn traffic from search engines, the right keywords need to live in your headings and main ideas. You find them by researching search volume and ranking difficulty. Every Google search for a specific inquiry contributes to Search Volume (SV). The number of websites trying to answer that inquiry contributes to Keyword Difficulty (KD).

Use keyword software to surface this data. Ahrefs has a free keyword generator tool, and Google Ads includes keyword metrics. Keyword research should decide which headings go on your site. Many companies have had websites for years that just float out at sea with zero traffic. Do your SEO due diligence or hire someone to set the site on the right path.

Keep homepage text light. If you have a lot to explain, break it into small blurbs spaced across sections. Make it easy and entertaining for someone to experience your website.

Hope you're ready to start a brand from scratch. To recap, we covered: