What is a brand identity?
Brand identity is what your brand says, what your values are, and what you want your audience to perceive about your business.
Consider it as a collection of elements to portray the message of your business, including logo, colours, typography, and iconography.
In addition, it helps forge a memorable relationship with your audience. Take it as a chance to tell them an engaging story behind the brand to differentiate from your competitors.
That is to say, it is imperative to create a strong brand identity. Lucky for you, here we have a quick lesson on it. You may find it useful to understand and implement the knowledge for your business.
Why is brand identity important?
It takes 5 to 7 impressions for consumers to remember your business. Having a concrete brand identity promotes faster brand awareness.
You face probably a dozen brands on a daily basis. What comes to mind when you think of Coca Cola? McDonald’s? Nike? Apple?
We bet you could recall their logos or slogans. Those are under brand identity. Those companies spend big bucks on creating a successful brand identity to evoke a particular perception from an audience.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 89% of B2B marketers say that brand awareness is the most important goal in digital marketing. So, you should invest in an effort to execute a strategy.
How do you create a brand identity?
To best wrap your head around the branding process, think of your brand as a living entity. You should nurture it well.
Creating a brand identity may be intimating for sure. However, we will provide you with some guiding questions to allow for self-reflection.
Firstly, describe your company culture, conduct market research and competitor analysis, and define your brand positioning. Here are the following elements to lay down your business core identity:
- Mission
- Why did you start your business?
- Ex. passion or purpose.
- Core Values
- What core values are important to you?
- Ex. trust, benevolence, transparency, accountability.
- Brand Personality
- What words would you describe your business?
- Ex. authoritative, playful, creative, elegant.
- Target Market
- What are the demographics of your consumers?
- Ex. age, gender, location, occupation.
- Value Proposition
- What differentiates you from your competitors?
- Ex. customer service or products.
Lastly, develop your brand identity assets. Here are the following elements that you may consider for the strategy creation:
- Logo
- It is like the face of your company. Your audience would associate your brand with your logo and transfer all of their perceptions onto it.
- What elements would you like to be included?
- Logo styles include pictorial, abstract, mascot and more!
- Colours
- It is like the attitude of your company. Colours have qualities that can evoke certain emotions. Pick two or three colours.
- What emotions would you like to portray?
- Here are the colour meanings:
- Red: energy, action, passion, love
- Orange: enthusiasm, balance, success, creativity
- Yellow: optimism, happiness, clarity, honour
- Green: growth, harmony, fertility, generosity
- Blue: tranquillity, sincerity, stability, loyalty
- Purple: power, nobility, luxury, wealth
- White: innocence, purity, cleanliness, humility
- Black: elegance, strength, authority, mystery
- Typography
- It is the tone of your company’s visual branding.
- Typography styles include serif, serif sans, script, display.
- What font category speaks most to you?
- Below provides the associations of each category:
- Serif: Tradition, respectable
- Sans serif: Stability, clean
- Script: Elegant, creative
- Display: Friendly, fun
- Iconography
- It is like the accessories of your company. It is a great visual way to highlight key content on your website, social media, etc.
- What type of icons aligns with your brand aesthetic?
- Icon styles include an outline, flat, or fill.
Ultimately, remember to the 3 C’s when creating a brand identity: concise, cohesive, consistent.
They should be reflected from proposal templates to the email signatures for professionalism which helps build customer trust and loyalty.
If you would like any assistance, we are always here to help with your business!
Best of luck!
