Introduction
In the competitive digital landscape, it is imperative to stand out of the competition. The best way to achieve a competitive edge is by creating a powerful brand identity. A distinct brand identity sets you apart from your rivals, boosts organic traffic, and helps you climb the search engine results page ladder.
Your business’ brand identity is a key tool to help companies establish them as successful market players with authoritative sites. Hence, it is pertinent to maintain a consistent brand identity that resonates with your target audience and converts them into paying customers.
In this blog, we’ll examine brand identity, its relevance in the business world, and some strategies for improving it.
What is Brand Identity?
Your brand identity is the way your audience perceives you.
Think of this situation: When you meet someone new, you tend to develop a perception about them based on first impressions. All future interactions depend on this perception and how you behave with this person.
Your business’s brand identity is pretty much the same. It is your brand’s personality, which reflects the way the business is positioned, the ways it interacts with customers, and its visual identity.
Remember that a ‘good’ brand identity does not develop overnight. It is carefully planned as a brand strategy. A brand strategy includes in-depth research into the market and target audience. It also allows you to reflect a strong and high-authority personality to your audience.
In this blog post, we have compiled the best strategies to help you improve your brand identity. But first, let’s answer an important question.
Why is Brand Identity Important for Your Business?
Brand identity is the embodiment of everything your business does and is. Your brand’s identity dictates your positioning in the market and can inspire customers to interact more with your brand.
Hence, brand identity is crucial for your business to thrive in the competitive era. Here are the top reasons why brand identity is crucial for your business.
Build Credibility and Trust
Brand identity helps businesses become more credible by making them more visible on the market and giving them a distinct identity. A Nielson survey shows that 59 % of consumers are willing to buy products or services from brands and companies they already know about. One of the best ways to stand out from the crowd is through high-quality and professional visuals.
Stand Out Against Competition
In order to leave a lasting impression on the minds of your target audience, you must have a unique brand identity. It’s going to help you get out of the way of your competition.
Maintaining a consistent brand is also a way of building customer loyalty. A good product can generate customers, but a good brand is what’s going to get advocates.
Sets Tone for Advertisements
Once you have identified a strong brand identity, this can be used as an example for the rest of your advertising campaigns, whether printed or online.
With the creation of an instantly recognisable image for your brand and the establishment of industry credibility, you will be more ready to support yourself and make an indelible impression on your target audience.
Generating New Leads and Converting Them
A brand identity with a face, trust and mission attracts people who share what your brand is offering. Once these prospects become customers, your business’ brand identity provides them with a sense of togetherness.
A good product attracts customers, but a good brand advocates leads. However, generating leads is mostly dependent on your search engine optimization tactics. Well, the understanding of appropriate search engine optimisation meaning will lead you towards your target audience while converting them into your customers.
Making your business famous and popular will take some work. The following steps can help you create a strong brand identity.
How to Create a Powerful Brand Identity?
Building a brand is not something that should be done hastily. Beyond the creation of a logo and selection of certain key colours, there’s much more to it than that. The following will be required for the creation of a brand identity:
In-Depth Market Research
The initial stage of creating a brand identity is to identify your ideal audience by conducting in-depth market research. If you don’t know who you’re selling to, you’re probably not going to succeed in growing your business.
Know Your Audience
You can give your brand a voice that speaks directly to the audience when you identify their identity.
Here are some of the questions you may have asked them while investigating your audience:
- What do you do for a living?
- What are your goals, pain points, interests, and motivations?
- Where do you spend time?
- What’s the reason for this, and when will you buy it?
- What’s your budget like?
It’s worth keeping in touch, even if it feels like you have created an audience.
There are a number of ways in which you can communicate with them to make sure your brand position is where it has to be, such as conducting surveys and polls or following up comments on Social Media.
Conduct Thorough Competitor Analysis
Your competitors’ brand positioning should also be analysed in your market research.
This will give you an idea of what makes your business stand out in the industry and how to offer customers something they’re not going to find elsewhere.
By keeping an eye on your competitors, you’ll learn which branding techniques work best and which don’t, and you’ll come up with your own brand. However, your competitor’s marketing strategies must not be copied.
There are a few things to consider:
- Their logo, slogan, brand mission, and value proposition
- The marketing channels they use are their website, social media channels, and events.
- What their customers have to say about them
- Their communication’s tone and voice.
- Visualities that they use and whether their visual identity is consistent
Have a Clear and Distinct Mission
Establishing what your company does is the most crucial step in the initial stages of creating a distinct brand identity. Hence, to effectively conduct this you must write a clear mission statement that highlights your goals and objectives along with your unique selling points.
It is interesting to note that very few businesses take the step to express their excitement in terms of a brand launch. However, it is difficult to create a brand personality without knowing the vision or purpose of your brand.
Conduct a SWOT Analysis
By completing a SWOT analysis, you will be one step closer to understanding your brand.
A SWOT is as follows:
- Strengths: The positive characteristics of your business that make it an advantage over its competitors.
- Weaknesses: characteristics that prove to be a handicap for your business.
- Opportunities: Changes and trends in your industry that give you opportunities to do business.
- Threats: Elements in the environment or industry that can have negative effects on your business.
You can improve the development of business objectives and strategies to achieve them through SWOT analysis. This will help you to address weaknesses, deter threats or capitalize on opportunities.
It is, however, important to remember that this is only one part of the business planning process. You may need to do more detailed research before making a decision on complex issues.
Develop Your Brand’s Voice
When you are talking to your target audience and clients, the voice of your brand is going to be used. It is therefore essential to be aligned with your brand, as the design elements of that brand are.
Your brand’s voice creates a lasting impression with your audience, and sets the tone of what you do. When it comes to your brand’s voice, whether it’s informal or friendly, the important thing is that it allows you to talk to your customers in a way that makes them feel valued.
Ensure that you are using the language which matches your brand’s personality, in addition to taking into account its voice tone. Professional language is better if your brand identity is at the upper end. You could be more conversational if it’s a developing small business. It also needs to be consistent with your brand’s message.
For instance, if the ‘About Us’ page talks about being committed to sustainable products, then all of your messages should focus on this. It would send mixed signals to your audience if you worked with a brand where the products are manufactured solely from unrecyclable plastic.
Assess and Refine The Brand Identity
It’s hard to know what you’re doing right and what you’re not doing right without tracking key performance indicators, as with other aspects of your marketing.
To keep an eye on your brand and get a sense of what people are talking about and how they’re interacting with you, Google Analytics, surveys, comments, etc. can be used.
This will give you the opportunity to change your brand as necessary, whether to correct an error or improve its identity.
Develop a Lasting Brand Identity
In order for any business to stand out and make a lasting impression, it is essential to create a unique brand identity.
This aim’s main components are the development of a coherent image language and the creation of differentiated messages that appeal to our customers.
You can create a strong, recognisable brand identity by using the best tools, connecting with your audience, and sticking to your mission.
