Building a successful business is not easy, and takes a lot of things going right. You need strong marketing, kind and helpful customer service and sometimes even a bit of luck. Another one of the most important things is to have a strong brand identity. A brand identity is essentially the visible elements of a brand or company. This can be anything from your logo, your name, to your customer service and even your packaging.
Your brand identity is what distinguishes your brand in the mind of the customer compared to others. It is what makes you stand out as a company, and what people remember. Unfortunately, building one is often easier said than done. In an effort to help, this blog post is going to go over some tips and tricks for creating and designing a strong brand identity.
Have a Great Logo, Packaging and Product Design
Arguably the most crucial element of your brand identity is your logo, packaging and product. These are what your customer will interact with, see and buy, so it needs to be on point. It should look good, be unique and memorable and fit with the overall image of your brand.
You can get as creative as you want for everything from your products, to how your logo looks, to the style of packaging you use. For example, some companies may want to laser engrave their logo on each package or product. If you need some more inspiration, be sure to check out these ponoko ideas.
Whatever you decide to do, the way you design your logo, packaging and product, will have a big impact on how well you can grow or establish your brand identity. In most cases, keeping it simple is a good idea, as well.
Keep Things Consistent
Among the most important things for a good brand identity is to keep things consistent. If your company has one kind of an image on social media, and a different one in your commercials, it can be quite confusing for customers. You spent all this time building a brand, you need to be sure people can recognize it.
All of your content and posts, whether on your Facebook page or website, should be consistent with the voice of your business. When delivering messages, customers should know what to expect from you. If your brand voice changes on a regular basis, or a particular marketing campaign is way off from your normal approach, growing as a business and sticking out to customers can be a challenge.
Know Your Customers/Audience
If you try to create an identity for your business before you learn about your customers or audience, you will be in for a difficult journey. You need to take time to learn all you can about who will be buying your product or service. Know their age, their hobbies, where they live, their wants and the problems they encounter in life.
Using this, you can build a brand identity and voice that will appeal to them. Your branding and identity need to be able to capture their attention and they need to be able to relate or at least be interested in it. Everything about your brand, from the colors to the tone of social media posts, need to be relevant to your customers and audience.
Use Social Media
Social media is currently used by more than half of the people on the planet, and is one of the most valuable tools for helping your business succeed. Social media can help you to establish your brand in the first place, and get your name and messaging out there. It can offer you a great way to engage with the public in a very personal way.
Ensure that all content is consistent with your brand voice, and don’t limit yourself to a single platform. By being active on different platforms (but still keeping your identity in mind), you have the potential to reach whole new audiences.
Use Emotions to Your Advantage
There are few better ways to reach and connect with your audience or customers than using emotions. Your brand should tell a story that touches the emotions of the audience. Your brand should directly target your customers, and either excite them, motivate them or make them happy.
If you can connect emotionally with a person, whether they become a customer or not, they will generally remember your brand or messaging. Now, do it tastefully of course, but create content, ads and even packaging or a logo, that will stick in their minds.
Utilize the Right Colors
Oftentimes, people will associate a certain color with a brand. For example, the color red will often come into your head when thinking about Coca-Cola, similar to how Home Depot might come to mind when thinking about orange. Using the right colors throughout your brand can have a powerful impact on how strong your brand identity is.
You need to use colors in everything from your products, to your logo, to your website, that can help reinforce your brand identity. Choose colors that you think fit well with your brand voice. Many colors can evoke different meanings (such as red evoking passion and blue evoking calmness), so keep these in mind when choosing colors, too.
It might take some experimentation before you land on a color palette that you feel fits, but taking the time to get it right is a good idea.
Monitor Your Brand and Make Changes If Needed
In order to truly know whether your brand identity is working as intended, you need to monitor your brand. You need to do some research into not only what people are saying about your brand, but how they interact with it.
This can be done by looking at comments, browsing analytics, asking questions, providing surveys and more. If you notice some people are confused or upset with a particular part of your brand, don’t hesitate to consider implementing changes.
Avoid Common Brand Identity Mistakes
Of course, if you want to create a strong brand identity that has some legs, you need to avoid some of the most common mistakes. A common mistake is sending mixed messages. A customer should never be confused about what you are saying or doing, so always make things clear in your ads or posts.
You also want to refrain from copying your competition. You may take inspiration from some of their moves or content, but if you simply do exactly what they do, it can be a bad look. But it is important to remember that no one is perfect. Mistakes may happen at times, but simply do your best to keep them to a minimum, and fix the issue as quickly as possible.
In conclusion, we hope this article has been able to help you learn some great tips for creating and building a brand identity.