Brand Identity is the identity of your business needs. Just like you as an individual have an identity that helps people to recognize, be familiar with and differentiate you, your brand identity helps your customer do the same in the case of your business.
What Is Brand Identity?
Let’s start by defining and explaining what brand identity actually is. A Brand Identity is all the elements a company uses as tools to create the right image for them.You may have also heard the terms “Brand” “Brand Image” and “Branding”, but most of the time they are perceived as equivalent to Brand Identity because of their similarities in name. But they’re not similar to the term “Branding” which is the marketing practice of how a company distinguishes its brand. The term “Brand” refers to how the world perceives the company and the term “brand image” is the reputation of a brand. Things might seem complicated right? Well, let’s dive deep into an explanation that’ll help you to easily understand what brand identity is.
For example, let’s say that you got admitted to a new school and you don’t want to be seen as an awkward young person, instead you want your classmates and teachers to recognize you as a cool and bright person. In order to do that you start making an effort to develop the way you look. You got that new cool haircut that makes you look smart, you practiced speaking in a manner that will make you look smart in front of people, and you started exercising and working to improve your soccer skills. You bought that cool NIKE soccer shoe and finally join the soccer team so that more people know about you and finally your classmates started noticing you, they respect the way you presented yourself, your expertise in soccer, and so on.
Now all the effort that you’ve put to achieve the result from getting that cool haircut to, learning to speak in a very smart manner, learning to play soccer and buying cool NIKE shoes to joining the soccer team, all these elements that you’ve used to build your personal brand, that’s brand identity.
All these elements helped the people at your school instantly recognize you. That’s what brand identity is. It helps the customers of a particular business to instantly recognize them. Now that you got a clear picture of what brand identity is, it’s about time for you to know how to create a strong brand identity for your business keeping the modern-day customers in mind.
How To Create A Strong Brand Identity For The Modern Customers
The first you need to know is what your business is. To be more specific you need to know and have a clear understanding of all the intangible elements of your business, in other words, you need to know what your business is as a brand.
There are few key elements put together makes a brand, and these are the followings
- The Mission
- The Values
- The Personality
- Uniqueness
- The Voice
If you’re having a hard time figuring out all of these, don’t sweat it. Sometimes you just need simple brayou need to ask yourself questions like,
- instorming to figure things out. To get a better understanding of all these non-tangible elements What was the purpose that you started the business? – The Mission
- What are the beliefs and values that your company goes by? – The Values
- What are the traits that your company has? – The Personality
- What makes your company standout? – Uniqueness
- According to the traits of the company in what tone does your company communicate with its customers? – The Voice
Once you’ve figured it out, now you have to finally decide upon the visual identity of your brand. Simply the visual identity of a brand is all the visual elements that a brand uses to represent their business in front of the customers. To learn more you can read How to Create Visual Identity For Your Business
Once you have figured out the visual identity of your brand the next thing you need to do is start developing your brand’s design using the visual identity.
Developing Brands Design
Once you figure out the visual identity of your brand, you’ll find the building blocks that you’ll use to develop your brand’s design to bring your brand’s identity to life and convert it into tangible design assets. There are plenty of elements that can be used to express your brand’s identity to your customers. For instance, if you look at the restaurants you’ll see they put a lot effort making their menu and the venue visually desirable, on the other hand an eCommerce business spends a lot of designing their website and social media so that all the design assets that they put out there can be visually desirable to their customers.
Depending on the particular industry the components may vary but there are some common elements and they are
The Logo
The logo of your business is the centerston of your brand’s identity. Lets say your favorite fried chicken brand is KFC, so what is the first that comes to your mind when you think about KFC other than fried chicken itself? Probably, Colonel’s legendary smiling face right? There are plenty of fried chicken places out there but that one single component of their brand differentiates KFC from the rest. Now you know having a logo for your business is not an option, its a must.
The Website
In today’s technologically advanced world having a website for your business is just as important as having a logo. You want to make sure that your brand exists out there in the digital world as well, so that your customers can easily find you online when they’re searching for the products or the service that you provide. You must have to realize that your website is your digital sales person. If your prospect gets a good experience while browsing your website they are more likely to convert.
The Packaging
If the product you serve is a physical one then the package you wrap it with is itself is kind of a non-living salesperson. Whether it’s a bottle of cold drink or a package of the clothing product, the package is no longer something that you wrap around your product to protect. Its a letter that you can use to communicate with your customers and making visually appealing has the potential to attract the right prospects who’ll end up becoming customers.
Business Cards
To make that prospect who took your business card and make him/her use it to reach back and eventually turn into a recurring client or customer you need to make sure that your business card is attractive enough that delivers a positive vibe about yourself and your business.
The Emails
Another great way to communicate with your customers with bothering them with a phone call, but most people’s inbox is overloaded with messages so you need to be proactive and design your email in such a way so that first of all they open your email and secondly they experience visually attractive and easy to understand message.
The End Note
That’s how you can create the brand identity for your business and successfully communicate with your prospects in every possible aspects
