Many businesses nowadays develop a brand to help them stand out on the market. But, not every branding strategy works out in the end. The main reason is that there’s plenty more to a brand than designing a logo. Branding is a way to elevate one’s business and establish personal, as well as the long-lasting relationship with customers, which fosters loyalty and engagement. Consumers loyal to a brand won’t abandon it even if someone else’s brand has better offers.
The key is in emotional engagement brands build with their customers. However, in order to create such relationships, your brand needs a strong brand identity. A brand identity is a combination of various branding elements a business creates, in order to portray the best image of itself to its target audience and consumers. That being said, here are a few effective ways to create a strong brand identity.
Examine your brand’s status
Building a strong identity comes from understanding your surroundings. That includes understanding your customers, who they are, what they do and what they think of your brand, your products, and services. In addition, it includes conducting a competitive analysis to determine who you’re up against and how their branding strategy works.
The purpose of these activates is to help you understand how to make your brand truly unique, as well as how to be appealing to your audience and how to outrun your competition. Having a strong brand identity also includes incorporating your company’s core values, its mission and a promise you make to your customers. That’s why it’s important to evaluate your current brand positioning and make improvements that will help you establish a strong brand identity.
Focus on improving your visual identity
Visual identity is an important aspect of a brand identity. Visual hierarchy helps your brand become easily recognizable by your audience and it also appeals to their senses, as well as their preferences. When considering a visual identity for your brand, you must have your customer’s best interests in mind.
That means that, when you pick visual elements, such as colors, images, fonts, the tone of voice and visual design for your website among other things, you have to pick them in accordance with your audience’s likings and not your own. The main reason is that visual identity helps establish emotional connections between a brand and its audience, that’s why it needs to be done properly. If you don’t know how to do this on your own, you can always consult with experts, like this creative agency from Sydney, to help you out with your brand’s visuals.
Find your unique selling proposition
A unique selling proposition (USP) is an essential part of every successful brand and its identity. It’s what makes your brand stand out from other brands. Most importantly, it’s a unique value only your brand can deliver to its customers. Finding your USP is very important in building your brand identity. The main reason is that consumers everywhere will be able to recognize your brand through your USP.
However, a USP isn’t just something that makes your brand stand out, but also something that’s valuable and relevant to your audience. For example, a USP can be a unique product quality, return policy, customer support strategy and so on. In other words, something no other brand on the market possess, but also very valuable to your customers.
Define your personality
As mentioned before, a brand identity is a combination of elements used to portray the best image possible to the audience. That includes having a personality for your brand. Imagine your brand was a person and then imagine how would it engage with your audience if it was. This can help you establish consistency for your brand.
Simply put, you’ll establish an approach for which you publish content, communicate with the audience and deliver your brand promises. Consistent brands are successful ones because they do not move away from their original promise or their personality. Being able to deliver value constantly to your audience ensures your consistency. That being said, consistency is a crucial element of a strong brand identity your audience will be able to relate to.
A brand identity helps your business position itself on the market and attracts the attention of your audience. In addition, having a strong brand identity means you’re able to stand apart from your competitors and deliver value to your customers. Without a brand identity to highlight your core values and promises, your brand won’t be able to engage with its audience the way it’s supposed to.
Lauren Wiseman
Lauren Wiseman is marketing specialist, contributor to bizzmarkblog.com and entrepreneur. She helps clients grow their personal and professional brands in fast-changing and demanding market, strongly believing in a holistic approach to business.