Every entrepreneur knows that one of the most important parts of any company’s marketing efforts is its brand identity. However, having a strong brand identity doesn’t happen instantly. You can’t just put a logo together and expect it to work. You need to approach the process strategically to be able to build an identity that reflects your brand. That requires a deep understanding of who you are, what you do, and how you want to present your brand to the world.
While that isn’t easy, building a brand identity is vital. So, if you are going to do it, you need to do it right. That’s why we’re here to help you do that by sharing a few expert tips on how to approach the process. We’ll also take a look at how branding works and why it is essential to have a strong brand identity.
What Is Branding and How Does It Work?
Generally speaking, branding is the process of giving meaning to a specific product, company, organisation or service. It involves creating and shaping a brand in the consumers’ minds to help them identify your products and give them a reason to choose your brand over similar alternatives. In other words, branding refers to your company’s logo, core values, tag line, mission, and vision.
However, as previously mentioned, a simple logo won’t cut it. You will have to start by coming up with a brand strategy that taps into the purpose and the reason people want to do business with you. Once you’ve done that, you can bring it to life through logos, tag lines and other advertising materials. Just make sure that they portray your core values accordingly. Additionally, your brand identity needs to be consistent across all channels, such as your website, your social media accounts, your retail shops and anything in between.
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What Is an Online Brand Identity?
With almost five billion internet users, extending your brand into the online space is vital for your company’s success. More specifically, you’ll need to incorporate your core values and existing brand identity into your online presence. By investing in your online brand identity, you can create more brand awareness, connect with your customers and eventually increase sales. To do that, you can either replicate other companies’ strategies or come up with your own and tweak it as you see fit.
How to Build Your Brand Identity
Building a brand identity is no easy task. You’ll have to do a lot of research and employ trial-and-error tactics until you get it right. Fortunately, the following tips should make the process more manageable and help you come up with a brand identity that will outshine your competition.
Understand Your Audience
It doesn’t matter what kind of company you are running, you most likely have a specific target audience in mind. But have you ever thought about how well you know them? Without understanding your clients on a deeper level, you’ll have a hard time building your brand identity.
Here are a couple of things you should know about your audience before attempting to build your identity:
- Their values
- Their preferences
- What motivates them
- Their pain points
- What they want from a business
- How their core values align with yours
- Their education level
- Their income
By knowing your target group, you will be able to adapt your brand to their needs. That will help you connect better with them, encourage them to interact with you, and eventually transform them into loyal customers.
Find Your Value
Take a moment to think about what makes your company valuable. Actually, why should anyone come to you instead of one of your competitors? If you don’t have an answer, you’ll have to rethink your business strategy and find a reason for your brand’s existence.
Why is that important? Because you’ll need to make your values evident in your branding, otherwise, your target audience won’t even want to check out your products or services.
Adapt Your Mission
There’s a big chance that you’ve created a mission statement when you started your business. However, depending on how much time has passed since then, it might not align with your brand anymore. If that’s the case, you need to adapt or come up with a new mission statement since you’ll have to build your brand around it.
Give Character to Your Brand
You will need to use your company’s mission and target audience to develop your brand’s character. To put it simply, you should think about how you want others to see your business without compromising your core values.
Do you target business professionals? Then your brand should feature muted colours, fancy fonts and serious taglines. In contrast, young adults, teenagers and children prefer bright colours and fun fonts.
You should note that mismatching the character of your brand with that of your intended users, can have a negative impact on your brand awareness. That’s because people won’t be able to relate to your company and will opt for one of your competitors.
Know Your Competitors
Fully replicating your competitor’s strategies is rarely a good idea. With that being said, you still need to know what they are doing right and wrong. That way, you’ll be able to adapt your brand by incorporating parts of their most successful marketing strategies. So, don’t be afraid to check out their websites, follow them on social media, and watch their advertising. Seeing how people interact and react to their strategy helps you avoid making the same mistakes.
Be Unique
Nowadays, every company, no matter how big or small, has something that makes it special. You will need to discover what your company brings to the table that others don’t. Whether it is your products or the values that you provide, take a deep look at your business and figure it out.
Once you know what makes your business unique, you need to adapt your branding around it. Avoid reusing the same ideas and strategies that other companies do. Instead, take an approach that will make your brand stand out from the crowd. For instance, you could give sneak peeks into your company’s daily operations on your social media account. Or, you can bring your employees to the forefront of your branding and focus your marketing efforts on the people behind the scenes. Regardless of which approach you take, remember to make it unique.
Create Your Logo and Tagline
After you’ve come up with the strategy behind your brand identity, you need to materialise it with the help of a tagline and logo. Take a look at other successful brands, such as Samsung or Apple, and see how they tackled this challenge.
When designing your logo, make sure that it aligns with your brand’s mission and character. Since they will appear on every piece of branding or ad you use, your logo and tagline should be appropriate for your company’s target audience. As such, you shouldn’t rely on an overly complicated logo if you plan to target young adults. Similarly, you might want to go for a professional tagline if your plan is to market to other business owners.
Always Be Consistent
You have your brand, logo and tagline; now what? For starters, you have to advertise it as often as you can. Every piece of content, email, document, business card, and anything in between needs to feature your branding. Also, make sure to update your social media pages as well as your website with your new logo.
Keep in mind that people love consistency, so once you decide on a brand, don’t change it on the fly. That doesn’t mean you can’t make a couple of tweaks later down the road, but overall, you should stick to what you’ve created.
Hire People Who Align With Your Brand Identity
Finally, you must remember that your employees are also part of the brand. Therefore, you need to hire people who believe in your mission and share your values. That way, you will ensure that your employees will support the company and talk about it, further increasing brand awareness.
To Sum It Up
All in all, building your own brand identity takes a lot of time and effort. However, it is also a key part of any successful business. It doesn’t matter if you have the best products, if your branding is not on point, you won’t have that many customers to purchase them. So, if you want to take your business to the next level, do your research, understand what makes your company special, and start building your brand identity.
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If you need even more info about branding or any other related subject, we are here for you. Give us a call at 0800 0148 970 or simply email us today.
