Most often the terms ‘Logo’ and ‘Brand’ are used interchangeably. But these are two different things. The logo is just a symbol which represents your brand. Creating a logo is a step for building a strong brand identity.
As we say, the business ocean is very big and the competition is very tough. If You wish to stand a chance, differentiate yourself from your competition and be a shark. Everyone is trying to make their name then how you will be different?
It is not easy as to just give a name and decorate it. You need to understand your brand, what took to create this, what are your values, and how you want to present it in front of your consumers and also what impression you want to make out of it. The impression of your brand stays in people’s mind even after you made the sale.
Your brand, a vital part of your brand identity, is defined as a name or a type of product manufactured by a particular business.
Examples of strong brand identity
- Pepsi
- Lululemon
- MacDonalds’
Why is brand identity important?
A strong brand identity can help the business to grow more. It is an important part of your branding strategy. A brand identity allows you to spread awareness about your brand and communicates with your consumers by sending consistent messages. It creates a persona of your brand. An effective brand identity can help you to build customers loyalty and trust. Brand identity helps you to position yourself in the market and differentiate from others.
The FACE of your business
As you can already see in day to day life, the logo plays an effective part when it comes to brand identity. Basically, the logo means if you see this image then it means this company. It also sets a mindset that by just seeing an image people can tell the name of the brand and what brand is all about.
Trust and Loyalty
The brand identity makes your brand more authoritative in the market. It makes an impression on potential customers. It provides liability to existing customers and gains their loyalty. It allows the customer to make the connection between product and company.
Advertising Impressions
Your brand identity creates an impression which you can easily use in your advertisement campaigns. Eventually, it becomes a template for everything. Promotion of your brand will become very easy when brand identity is strong.
Your Company’s Mission
Your brand identity must be based on what you all about. It will promote your brand as well as your company. It will give identification to your company. You can attach a tag line to the logo and give a mission statement of your company. It will define your company.
Generating new customers and Delighting existing ones
Great brand identity will fascinate people. It will create a mindset in customer and then eventually they will promote for you and this will then attract more customers. Brand identity deals with human emotions consistently and if you are relevant to them then you are in a good position to connect with potential customers.
We are giving you 5 easy steps to follow which will help you to build your brand identity and make it better:
- Research your audience, value proposition and competition
- Design the logo and template
- Integrate language you can use to connect, advertise and embody on social media.
- Know what to avoid
- Monitor your brand and maintain its brand identity
Research your audience, value proposition and competition:
Before jumping into the water, you must measure its depth. It will decide your survival. Same applies for business. You need to do research on everything in the market.
Below are five things you should focus on while researching:
Audience
There exist different types of people who have a different perspective. They want different things. You cannot use the same strategy for people with different age group. To know your audience, witness external social habits. Monitor reader comments and engagement with your post on social media. Send out feedback surveys and look for trends in online customer feedback. Try to know the perspective of your audience about your brand.
Value proposition and competition
As your brand identity and logo is unique, you need to differentiate your business with values you are following. What makes you different is very important in building brand identity. Keeping an eye on competition would help you decide your branding strategies. You should attend professional conferences and analyze industry reports on a regular basis.
Mission
You should define your mission statement without any ambiguity. Your mission statement will show the purpose of your business, what your business is all about. It will describe your vision and goals.
Personality
Creating a persona of your brand will help you to enter into peoples mind. What people always remember is personality and what they felt while interacting with your brand even after the long time you made a sale. You should use your type, colours and image to represent who brand is. Show your confidence.
The more you know about all the above things, the more you will increase your chances to survive and be a boss.
SWOT Analysis:
Swot analysis is used to understand your brand better. It is a fantastic process of testing out your ideas. Swot analysis stands for;
- Strengths: Your positive but strong points which will help you overpower your competition.
- Weaknesses: your negative points which can be used against you and are disadvantages to your business.
- Opportunities: Changes, trends and external positive factors offer opportunities for your business.
- Threats: External negative factors that may cause problems for your business.
Design the Logo and Template for it:
People are drawn to interesting colour, images, templates, designs etc. It will make a long-lasting impression on the customer. You must do it to bring your brand to life.
Logo
The logo is the symbol that customer use to recognize your brand. While promoting your brand it would be on everything. A logo is a combination of text and visual imagery. A logo should be relevant, memorable, timeless, versatile and unique. It should be simple but should give a high impact.
Interesting Form
The logo is not the only element for your brand identity. You should focus on the way you represent your product or services, packaging etc plays an important role in building brand identity.
Colour and type
In this world, colours also possess different properties. So, colours are used to enhance your identity. There are so many different shades and patterns you can use to make unique designs.
Type shows your consistency. Whatever method, you use to promote your brand, there should be consistent use of typography.
Templates
Creating templates gives your business a unified, credible and professional look. You can use your templates while sending newsletters, emails to potential customers.
Consistency
You need to show consistency at every step. Using consistent templates and colours could show your harmony. Maintain a type which will show your consistency. Follow your choice of design everywhere while promoting the brand.
Flexibility
Consistency is hard to maintain. Flexibility provides you with the ability to make changes according to your need in the consistent formats. It allows you to do adjustments in your tag lines, ad campaigns etc
Document
In every business, documentation needs to be done. You can create a guide book, in which you can write guidelines you follow, Do’s and Don’t of your business and rules you made etc. This is the most effective way to ensure you are strictly following branding rules.
Integrate language you can use to connect, advertise and embody on social media:
After all the above steps, now, you are ready to integrate your brand within your community. On social media and other platforms, you can publish your content. The key to success while integrating is Quality Content. If your content is of great interest and quality then your brand is great but if your content is boring then your brand may seem boring.
Language
You have to choose your language according to the edge of your brand. If your brand is of high-edge then you should use professional language. But, if your brand is of a local edge then maybe you should use a conversational language and local language. Use your language tone carefully and try to match it with your brand personality.
Connection and Emotion
People will become your customer only if they could connect to your brand. If you have built a strong brand identity then you can attract the people. But, to form a connection with them, you need to build stories, specifically the stories that are emotional and can inspire them to be your consumer.
Advertise
Nowadays, the advertising world has become more competitive than ever. Advertising is the most efficient way to introduce and promote your brand. Ads can be traditional as well as digital. It is the best way to reach more people, target potential customers and deliver a message.
Social Media
Social media is another way to publish your content and build a bond with your audience. It will create an affinity for your brand. If you get mentioned in the post, story or status then you must reply to them as soon as possible with positive statements. Make sure you will give your brand a good reputation while answering any queries.
Know What to Avoid
There are some practices you should definitely avoid. They could become pitfalls for your business.
- Don’t give your customers mixed messages
- Don’t copy your customers
- Don’t lose consistency between online and offline
You should be clear with what you want to say and what message you want to convey to your audience. Use appropriate language, images and quotations. Always remember if you are seeing it correctly, does not mean the audience will see it the same way. Try to put it according to the audience perspective.
Your competition is providing the same service or product. You also want to do what you know and importantly what works. But it will be the same as others. You can copy the account procedures but you need to add your unique pinch of twists to make it different but better than others.
As we discussed earlier, you should maintain consistency in your format, colour, design, type etc. If your online content looks different than your print material but you should maintain consistency in colour, type, pattern, theme, message etc.
Monitor your brand to maintain its brand identity:
It is difficult to determine what you are doing right and what is not so suitable for your business without tracking and consistently checking records. You can use Google Analytics, surveys, comments, social media etc to monitor your brand. By studying them deeply you can make appropriate changes to grow more.
The impact of your brand should be great. It should set the mindset and emotionally connect of your consumers. From brand name to logo, everything should be memorable and simple that customers would be able to connect very easily. Then only consumers will recognize who you are and what you stand for.