What is Branding? How To Build A Successful Brand In 6 Steps

If you can't define what your business is and what it does within two sentences, Chances are your brand needs some work. Hey, I'm Seb. I've been an entrepreneur since I was 13 when I began building websites for eSports teams. I've created several businesses over the years and today I'm gonna show you how to build a brand. If you're new to the channel hit that subscribe button and the little bell icon as I'll be adding more videos with helpful tips to start and grow your business.

如果你不能用两句话清楚地定义你的业务是什么以及它在做什么，那么你的品牌很可能需要一些提升。大家好，我是Seb。我从13岁开始就是一名企业家，那时我开始为电子竞技团队制作网站。多年来，我创办了几个企业，今天我将教你如何建立一个品牌。如果你是新来的朋友，请点击订阅按钮和小铃铛图标，因为我将会发布更多关于创业和发展生意的实用技巧视频。

Okay, now let's talk brand. A brand isn't just a recognizable name and logo that distinguishes you in a crowded market. Marty Newmeyer, who's worked for companies like Adobe, Apple and Microsoft, states that your brand isn't what you say it is. It's what they, your customers say it is. Essentially, brand is your reputation and how you'll be perceived as a business. I like to break down building a brand into a six-part checklist. Researching our target audience in our competitors, picking our focus and business personality, choosing our business name, writing our slogan, choosing the look and feel of our brand and designing our logo.

好的，现在让我们谈谈品牌。品牌不仅仅是一个可以在拥挤市场中区分你的名字和标志。曾为Adobe、苹果和微软工作过的Marty Newmeyer指出，你的品牌不是你所说的样子，而是你的顾客如何评价它。简单来说，品牌就是你的声誉，以及作为一个企业你会被如何看待。我喜欢将品牌建设分解为六个步骤。研究我们的目标受众和竞争对手，确定我们的重点和企业个性，选择我们的企业名称，撰写我们的口号，选择品牌的外观和风格，以及设计我们的标志。

To help illustrate these steps, I'll be creating a golf brand for this video. Why golf? Well, because I love golf. Even if golf doesn't love me back. I'll also share a template with each step that will help you develop your own brand. I'll be sure to link that in the description down below. Alright, let's get started. Our first step before we start making any decision about our brand is going to be researching our business's current market, specifically who our potential customers and competitors are.

为了更清晰地展示这些步骤，我将在这个视频中创建一个高尔夫品牌。为什么选择高尔夫呢？因为我热爱高尔夫，尽管高尔夫并不一定“爱”我。每个步骤我都会分享一个模板，帮助你开发自己的品牌。我会把相关链接放在下面的描述中。好了，我们开始吧。在对我们的品牌做出任何决策之前，第一步是要研究我们的业务当前市场，特别是了解潜在客户和竞争对手。

Let's start doing that by jumping into Google. From here, I'll type in golf apparel market analysis. This should help get me a sense of who the big competitors are in this specific space. Now, unfortunately, a lot of the deeper analysis is hidden behind a paywall. So for our audience, we're going to go with Facebook audience insights. From here, I'll type in golf as an interest. And for this example, I'll keep USA as my target audience, as this is likely where I'd be selling my product. Okay, so we can see here that roughly 58% of people with golf as an interest identify as men. And that our primary age group is between 25 and 34 years old. We can also see that the majority of our audience is married.

让我们开始通过谷歌来进行这项工作。从这里，我将输入“高尔夫服装市场分析”。这应该能帮助我了解这个特定领域的大竞争者是谁。不过，不幸的是，很多更深入的分析都被隐藏在付费墙后面。所以对于我们的观众，我们将使用Facebook受众洞察。现在，我会在这里输入“高尔夫”作为兴趣。在这个例子中，我将目标受众定为美国，因为这可能是我销售产品的主要市场。好了，我们可以看到，大约58%对高尔夫感兴趣的人是男性，并且我们主要的年龄群体在25到34岁之间。我们还可以看到，我们的受众群体大多数已婚。

I'll encourage you to revisit your own audience as you build up your brand to get a better sense of who your actual audience is. Next, let's open up a few of our competitors' web pages and social media pages. From here, I'll start pulling screenshots and noting down color schemes from these websites. I'll also go through their social media and start identifying posts with high engagement. So post with a lot of comments and likes. Now, the idea here isn't that we want to mimic what these brands are doing, but we want to start identifying some commonalities and use that as a foundation to build our own brand. Some other things we could do is browse subreddits and review sites that are related to our customers. We can also run focus groups with our friends and families that might be interested in products like the ones that we are selling.

我建议你在打造品牌的过程中，重新审视你的目标受众，以便更好地了解他们的真实情况。接下来，我们可以打开一些竞争对手的网站和社交媒体页面。我会从这些网站中截图并记录下它们的色彩搭配。同时，我还会浏览它们的社交媒体，找出互动率高的帖子，比如评论和点赞数很多的那些。我们的目的并不是要模仿这些品牌，而是要找出一些共同点，以此为基础来建立我们自己的品牌。我们还可以浏览与客户相关的 subreddits 和评论网站。我们也可以邀请有可能对我们产品感兴趣的朋友和家人参与焦点小组讨论。

Alright, now let's talk about building our brand's focus and our brand's personality. Who your business is and what you do should always be crystal clear to customers. For that reason, it's important to find our focus and let that inform all other parts of our brand as we build it. I have three exercises that I like to do when thinking about solidifying my brand's focus and personality. Firstly, I start with creating a positioning statement. A positioning statement is one or two lines that state your claim in the market and differentiates you from your competitors.

好的，现在我们来谈谈如何建立品牌的定位和个性。您的业务身份和您所做的事情对客户来说应该始终清晰明了。因此，在建立品牌时，找到我们的定位并以此为指导，将其反映到品牌的各个方面是很重要的。我有三个练习，通常用来思考如何巩固品牌的定位和个性。首先，我会从创建一个定位声明开始。定位声明是能够阐明您在市场中的地位并使您与竞争对手区分开来的简短一句或两句话。

Your positioning statement should go something like, we offer product or service for target market to value proposition. Unlike the alternative, we key differentiator. So in my case, I could say, we offer apparel for golfers to help them play in comfort. Unlike other golf apparel brands, we donate to underprivileged youth groups that are learning the game. A positioning statement shouldn't be viewed in the same way that you would view an elevator page or a tagline. Rather, it's an internal opinion of who you are and who you want to be. Once you've created your positioning statement, let the world see it by sharing it in the comments below.

你的定位陈述应该这样表达：我们为目标市场提供产品或服务，以实现价值主张。与替代方案不同，我们的关键差异点是XXX。以我为例，我可以说：我们为高尔夫球手提供服装，以帮助他们舒适地打球。与其他高尔夫服装品牌不同的是，我们会向学习这项运动的弱势青少年团体捐款。定位陈述不应该像电梯间演讲或标语那样看待，而应视为对你是谁以及你想成为谁的内部看法。一旦你创建了你的定位陈述，可以通过在下面的评论中分享它，让全世界看到。

Next, let's start thinking about words we would associate with our brand. How I like to do this is by thinking about my brand as a person and what terms I would use to describe this person to a friend. Thinking about your brand as a metaphor or personifying it can help you identify the individual qualities you want it to have. For example, if I was to speak about my golf company, I might say they are passionate teachers who strive to bring new people into the game of golf. This step in brand development will help inform your voice on social media and the tone of all of your creative assets, both visual and written. As I said before, a brand is so much more than a name. The personality, actions and reputation of your brand are really what give the name any meaning in the market.

接下来，让我们开始考虑那些与我们的品牌相关联的词。我喜欢用把品牌当作一个人来思考的方法，然后想想我会如何向朋友描述这个人。将品牌拟人化或将其视为一种隐喻，可以帮助你识别出希望品牌具备的独特品质。例如，如果我要介绍我的高尔夫公司，我可能会说他们是充满热情的老师，努力把新手引入高尔夫运动。这个步骤在品牌发展中会帮助你确定在社交媒体上的发声方式，以及所有创意素材（包括视觉和文字）的基调。正如我之前所说，品牌远不止是一个名字。品牌的个性、行动和声誉才是真正赋予这个名字市场意义的因素。

That being said, your company's name is probably one of the first big commitments you have to make. So where do you even start when thinking of a name? I personally like walking through a few exercises when thinking of names. You can try to make up a word like Pepsi. The benefit in doing this is that it can help your brand be instantly recognizable. And it will be much easier to rank your brand's domain name on search engines. You can reframe a somewhat unrelated word like Apple for computers or off-white profession. You can also use suggestive words or metaphors like buffer. You can also describe what it is, literally, like the shoe company.

话虽如此，公司名称可能是你需要做出的第一个重大决定之一。那么，当你开始思考公司名称时，该从哪里开始呢？我个人喜欢通过一些练习来思考名字。你可以尝试创造一个新词，例如百事可乐。这样做的好处是可以让你的品牌立即被人识别，并且更容易在搜索引擎上提升品牌域名的排名。你也可以重新定义一个与行业不太相关的词，比如苹果用于电脑，或者“off-white”用于专业领域。你还可以使用暗示性的词语或隐喻，例如“buffer”。你也可以直接描述产品本身，比如某个鞋类公司。

You can try altering a word by removing letters, adding letters or using Latin endings like Tumblr or Octavia. You can also try combining two relevant words like pin and interest to make up Pinterest or face and book to make up Facebook. You can also try turning a string of words into an acronym like BMW did with Byreesh Motorin Work. I feel like for a French dude, French Quebec dude, that was okay. Like that was like a solid like 5.5 out of 10, which is almost a passing grade, right? If you need a little extra help in coming up with a name, there are loads of apps and sites they can help you decide. Just to name a few, you could try Shopify's business name generator. It's free and will automatically combine a topic or a keyword with other words and modifiers to generate a list of potential business names.

你可以尝试通过去掉字母、添加字母或使用拉丁语后缀（如Tumblr或Octavia）来改变一个词。你也可以尝试将两个相关的词结合起来，比如用pin和interest组成Pinterest，或用face和book组成Facebook。此外，还可以将一串词缩写成一个首字母缩略词，就像BMW是Byreesh Motorin Work的缩写。如果你是一位法国人或者魁北克的法国人，这种方法可能会让你取得一个中规中矩的成绩，比如5.5分（满分10分），这几乎接近及格了。如果你在起名字方面需要一些额外的帮助，可以使用大量的应用程序和网站来帮你做出决定。举几个例子，你可以试试Shopify的企业名称生成器。它是免费的，会自动将主题或关键词与其他词和修饰词组合，生成一系列潜在的企业名称。

Overloads business name generator lets you enter a word that you would like to include in your business name. The tool will then spit out a list of variations to browse. Wordoid is an intelligent naming tool that supplies you with a list of invented words that look nice and feel great. If you're looking for a creative name that's brandable but isn't necessarily a real word, then you'll find this tool helpful. Let's use Shopify's business name generator for our golf brand. Okay, so going through these, the one that stands out immediately is equal golf. I like this one because it lines up nicely with my positioning statement and my values around getting new and underprivileged people into golf.

Overloads 商业名称生成器允许您输入一个您希望包含在您的商店名称中的词汇。这个工具将为您提供一系列变体以供浏览。Wordoid 是一个智能命名工具，它会为您提供一份看起来不错且感觉良好的虚构词的列表。如果您正在寻找一个有创意且具有品牌潜力的名称，但不一定是真实词汇，那么您会发现这个工具非常有用。我们来使用 Shopify 的商业名称生成器为我们的高尔夫品牌命名。在浏览这些选项时，立即引起我注意的是 "Equal Golf"。我喜欢这个名字，因为它很好地符合我的定位声明和关于吸引新手及弱势群体参与高尔夫的价值观。

Next up, let's write a slogan. A good slogan is always short, catchy and makes a strong impression. It's nice to have the brand as it will make you identifiable and can be used with marketing and social assets. Some ways to approach writing a slogan of your own can include staking your claim. For example, Death Wish Coffee's slogan is the world's strongest coffee. You can make up a metaphor like Red Bull's, Red Bull gives you wings. Just remember to make the metaphor part extra clear. You don't want people thinking that they're actually getting wings. You could adapt your customers attitude like Nike's just do it.

接下来，我们来编写一句口号。一个好的口号应该简短、有吸引力，并留下深刻印象。拥有一个代表品牌的口号会让你更容易被识别，也可以用于营销和社交平台。一些编写自己口号的方法包括宣示立场。比如，Death Wish Coffee 的口号是“世界上最强的咖啡”。你也可以创造一个比喻，比如红牛的“红牛给你翅膀”。记住，比喻部分要非常清晰，你不希望人们真的以为他们会长出翅膀。你还可以迎合顾客的态度，比如耐克的“Just Do It”。

Now, I'm actually not the best or most creative when it comes to writing slogans. But I would go with something that speaks to our brand. So in my case, let's go with something like equal golf. Everyone is in play. I think this is a bit cheeky and plays on the fact that keeping your ball in play is one of the hardest and most important parts of golf. But you're not. If you're struggling to find ideas, you can always try using Shopify slogan maker to brainstorm some ideas or play off your positioning statement to generate some potential one-liners to describe your business.

现在，在写口号方面，我其实不是最擅长或最有创意的人。但我会选择一些能够体现我们品牌的口号。所以在我的例子中，我会选择类似“平等高尔夫，人人皆可参与”的口号。我觉得这个口号有点幽默，还巧妙地结合了高尔夫中让球保持在场内是最难也是最重要的部分。但这并不是个问题。如果你在找灵感时遇到困难，你可以试试用Shopify的口号生成器来头脑风暴一下，或者基于你的定位陈述来生成一些潜在的一句话，描述你的业务。

Okay, now that we have a name and slogan lockdown, let's dive into brand colors. Colors won't just define the look of your brand. They'll also convey the feeling that you want to communicate. When researching into what brand colors I could be using, I like to dive into color psychology. Color psychology is basically the study of colors in relation to how they affect human behavior. For example, colors like red can capture attention. The red color meaning is associated with excitement, passion, danger, energy, and action. For brands like Coca-Cola, the color red tends to encourage appetite. Hence why they use it so often in their branding.

好的，现在我们已经确定了名称和口号，接下来让我们讨论品牌的颜色。颜色不仅会决定品牌的外观，还会传达您想要表达的感受。在研究可以使用哪些品牌颜色时，我喜欢深入了解色彩心理学。色彩心理学主要研究颜色与人类行为之间的关系。例如，红色能够吸引注意力，它通常与兴奋、激情、危险、能量和行动相关。对于像可口可乐这样的品牌，红色能够激发食欲，因此他们在品牌推广中经常使用这种颜色。

The next time you're browsing a popular brand, take the time to think about the colors that you're seeing. You may start to notice that your favorite outdoor brands use very earthy color tones. This really gets you thinking about the outdoors. For our color scheme, we'll use coolers. Did I hear coolers? Coolers to brainstorm colors that work together. Coolers allows you to grab hex codes to keep handy and sift through different shades to find the ones you like. So I'll put in a green color that I think would work on my site and creative assets. And coolers will then show me different colors that will complement that green.

下次浏览一个知名品牌时，花点时间想想你看到的颜色。你可能会开始注意到，你喜欢的户外品牌常常使用非常自然的色调。这真的让人联想到户外。对于我们的配色方案，我们会使用Coolers。你是否听到了"Cooiers"? 使用Coolers来集思广益，找出能搭配在一起的颜色。Coolers可以让你获取十六进制色码以便随时查看，并筛选出不同的色调来找到你喜欢的。比如，我会输入一个我认为适合用于网站和创意素材的绿色，然后Coolers会显示出不同的颜色来搭配那个绿色。

Alternatively, you could also try using Adobe color, which is free online and lets you apply different color harmonies. So once we've picked a color palette, let's move on to fonts. You always want to try picking two fonts at the most. One for headings and one for body text. Any more than that can unnecessarily confuse your customers. I like to try using font pair and browse through the wide selection of fonts that go well together. Now that we have our colors and font decided, let's move on to a biggie in building a brand, the logo.

或者，你也可以尝试使用Adobe Color，这是一个免费的在线工具，可以让你应用不同的色彩和谐。一旦我们选定了色彩方案，就可以继续选择字体了。你最好选用不超过两种字体：一种用作标题字体，另一种用于正文字体。如果超过这个数量可能会不必要地混淆客户。我喜欢使用字体配对工具，浏览大量搭配良好的字体选项。现在我们已经确定了色彩和字体，接下来就要进行品牌建设中的一个大项——设计标志。

A company's logo is probably one of the first things that come to mind when thinking about building or recognizing a brand. Now, I want you to think about the worst logo you've ever seen. What comes in mind? If you're having trouble thinking of one, I'm not surprised. Good logos stick; bad ones don't. A logo should be viewed as a symbol that represents your brand and your brand's personality through the simplest image possible. When thinking about a logo, you really need to consider every place the brand's logo needs to appear. From your website to various social media accounts to the Fave icon that pops up in your web browser tap.

一家公司标志可能是谈到建立或识别品牌时首先想到的事情之一。现在，我想让你想想你见过的最糟糕的标志。你想到什么了吗？如果你觉得难以想到一个糟糕的标志，我并不意外。好的标志令人印象深刻，而差的标志则不会。标志应该被视为一种符号，通过最简单的图像代表你的品牌和品牌特性。在考虑设计标志时，你需要仔细考虑品牌标志会出现的每个地方：从你的网站，到各种社交媒体账户，再到网络浏览器标签中的图标。

Because I'm not a designer myself, I tend to do a few mockups and send those off to freelancers. You can outsource these for a low cost on Fiber, Shopify's expert marketplace, or you could even run a logo contest on 99 Designs. Let's quickly browse through a few designers on Fiber and try to find one that's created some logos that I like. Okay, so here's one. This person's got a great portfolio, positive reviews, and a quick turnaround time that also allows for revisions in case I don't like the original one. I'll put in a short blurb about my company and some elements that I would like to incorporate. From my company, I'm thinking of something that signifies equality with a golf element.

因为我自己不是设计师，我通常会做一些简单的草图，然后交给自由职业者完成。你可以在Fiverr、Shopify的专家市场上以较低的成本外包这些设计，或者在99 Designs上举办一个logo设计比赛。我们快速浏览一下Fiverr上的一些设计师，试着找到一个做过我喜欢的logo设计的人。好，这里有一个。这位设计师有很棒的作品集、积极的评价，而且完成时间快，还允许我在不喜欢原设计的情况下进行修改。我会写一段关于我公司的简介以及我想要加入的一些元素。对于我的公司，我想要一个能象征平等和高尔夫元素的设计。

But before that, you should learn to speak the language of logos like the Gestalt theory so that you can effectively communicate your vision. In doing so, you'll start to notice that not all logos are created the same. For example, an abstract logo has no explicit meaning. It's just a shape and colors that you can't easily tie back to anything in the real world. Adidas logo is a perfect example of this. Emblem logos are often circular and combine text with an element or a bold and regal look. Think about the Starbucks logo for that one.

在此之前，你应该学习像格式塔理论一样的标志设计语言，以便能有效地传达你的理念。这样做的过程中，你会发现并不是所有的标志都是一样的。比如，抽象标志没有明确的含义，它只是一个形状和颜色，无法轻易与现实世界中的任何事物联系起来。阿迪达斯的标志就是一个很好的例子。徽章标志通常是圆形的，将文字和一个元素结合在一起，或者带有大胆和庄严的外观。关于这一点，你可以想想星巴克的标志。

You'll want to pay attention to how detailed you make your design, as you could lose a lot of impact if you have to scale it smaller. Because of the limitation that exists for each logo type, many logos use a combination of styles. To help you along, I would recommend checking out Seek logo for even more logo inspirations or you Shopify's Hatchful logo maker to start generating some ideas. Shopify also has a comprehensive guide on how to design a logo for those of you who are looking to design their own. Click the link in the description if you want to check that out.

您需要注意设计的细节程度，因为如果需要缩小尺寸，过于复杂的设计可能会失去原有的效果。由于每种标志类型都有其局限性，许多标志都结合了多种风格。为了帮助您获得灵感，我建议您访问Seek logo获取更多标志设计灵感，或者试用Shopify的Hatchful标志生成器来激发创意。对于想要自己设计标志的人，Shopify还提供了一个全面的标志设计指南。如果您感兴趣，可以点击描述中的链接查看。

Building a brand doesn't stop with creating a logo, a slogan, or even with a launch of your brand. You'll want to continue to shape and evolve your brand as you expose more customers to it and learn about who they are and how best to speak to them. Your customers and their feedback will be huge in the continued development of your brand. So remain open to adapting and updating throughout your business journey. As promised earlier, we have developed a one-page branding plan that can help you work through your branding journey.

打造品牌不仅仅是创建一个标志、一个口号，甚至不仅仅是品牌的启动。随着越来越多的顾客了解你的品牌，你需要不断地塑造和发展品牌，并了解顾客是谁，以及如何与他们更好地交流。顾客及其反馈将在品牌的持续发展中起到重要作用。因此，在整个商业旅程中保持开放态度，随时准备调整和更新。如我们之前承诺的，我们已经制定了一份单页的品牌计划，它可以帮助您在品牌打造之旅中更好地开展工作。

I'll also include the links to all the various tools that I talked about throughout this video. You can find all of those in the description down below. Until next time.

我会把在视频中提到的各种工具的链接附在下面的描述中。下次再见。