A brand is ultimately a company’s identity. It represents the public image of an organization. There’s also a positive correlation between having a strong brand and being a high-value organization.

This article has the following sections:

  1. What is Brand Identity
  2. Why is branding important
  3. How to build a strong brand identity
  4. Challenges of building a strong brand

What Is Brand Identity?

It’s your brand image and perception. Whether you actively curate your brand or not, the world forms an opinion about your product which ultimately influences how they interact with it. Everything your business does reflects its identity.

What Makes Up a Brand?

There are five basic elements for building a brand:

  1. Name,
  2. Logo
  3. Slogan
  4. Design
  5. Voice

Name

The brand name is the name of the company, product, or service that embodies the brand. It should be memorable, distinct, and easy to say.

Logo

It’s a symbol. Sometimes, it means nothing but companies will go to great lengths to spin a story out of it. And of course, storytelling is essential for all organizations.

Slogan

The slogan is a short statement about the brand’s value proposition to customers. Nike’s “Just Do It” is arguably one of the most popular business slogans. Walmart’s “Save Money. Live Better” is also well known.

Design

This includes colours, typeface, and imagery used to represent the brand. It should be consistent across all marketing materials and media.

Voice

The tone, vocabulary, and style used to connect with customers.

Why Is Branding Important?

Trust and Credibility

A strong identity contributes to consumer trust and credibility which increases loyalty.

Brand Differentiation

Brand differentiation as the term implies, is the process of crafting a unique identity for a brand using storytelling and advertising.  Striving for differentiation is an act of competition. Each brand will identify a unique angle to capture its target market.

Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is built when brands consistently deliver on their promise. For example, Walmart’s slogan is “Save Money. Live Better”. This denotes a brand that promises affordability, therefore, customer loyalty hinges on affordability.

How to Build A Strong Brand Identity

You need to have a product or business before you can have a brand.

These are the building blocks of a strong brand.

  1. Understand Your Target Audience
  2. Define your brand values and mission
  3. Develop a personality
  4. Create a visual identity for your brand
  5. Communicate with customers
  6. Develop a brand Guide.

Understand Your Target Audience

Understanding the market is the foundation of building a brand. A market consists of other sellers and buyers, and you should focus on buyers.

To-do list:

  1. Know the demographics of your customers/buyers. Age plays a vital role in people’s thoughts and choices
  2. Interview your customers to understand them better.  It’s common practice to create a user persona for each product.  A user persona is a fictitious representation of your customer and that becomes a frame of reference when designing your branding and marketing strategies.
  3. Understudy competition. Reverse engineer their branding and marketing strategies to understand why they appeal to their customers.

Define Your Values and Mission

Mission and values are essential to crafting a brand story.

To-Do List:

  1. Have a mission statement. A mission statement is a brief description of your focus as a business. That is, “This is who we are, and what we are up to”. It’s not cast in stone since most companies will change their mission statement over time, as their focus shifts.
  2. Craft your value proposition, and that’s essentially what you alone can offer customers.
  3. Define your values as an organization. Values become evident as customers interact with the business.

Develop a Personality

To-Do List

  1. Choose a voice. Your communication should reflect your customers’ preferences, values, and the product type. For instance, a company that sells tractors will communicate differently from a fashion brand. While reliability and ruggedness are vital requirements for industrial machines, these requirements may be as important for clothes and other fashion items.
  2. Create a vocabulary of words associated with your brand and these should be incorporated into your marketing and advertising materials.

Create a Visual Identity

This includes your logo, color scheme, typography, and design style.

To-Do List:

  1. Learn more about colour theory, as different colours and combinations affect people differently. For example, Red is generally associated with anger, love, or passion.
  2. Develop a design system. This is like a toolbox of different design components or templates. Google, Apple, and IBM have their design system online to help developers and designers create public products.

Communicate with Customers

Ensure that your advertising is consistent with the image you want to portray.

To-Do List:

  1. Use consistent messaging across the various customer touchpoints. This includes the design and layout of your website. social media posts, the attitude of your social media account managers (response to DMs and comments on posts), and the ambience of any physical stores.
  2. Client-facing roles are mission-critical. Ensure people in these roles embody the organization’s values since they can leave impressions on the customers they interact with.

Develop a Brand Guide

Most corporate organizations have a brand guide (sometimes called a brand handbook or style guide) that outlines the rules for applying their different design elements.

  1. Images allowed on social media?
  2. How to combine design elements
  3. How to use logos and the company’s other design assets.

This guide is usually an internal reference for employees or vendors working with the company. Some companies like Asana have also published their branding guidelines.

Challenges of Building a Strong Brand Identity

  1. Inconsistent graphic elements
  2. Inconsistent messaging
  3. Inconsistent customer experience
  4. Inconsistent product quality
  5. Limited marketing budget
  6. Lack of patience

Inconsistent Graphic Elements

Logo, colour, text font, and the design layout. Companies like Nike and Apple keep these consistent to make it easier for customers to identify them.

Inconsistent Messaging

It’s important to keep the value messaging consistent over time. For example, IKEA is a lifestyle brand, and although its advertising themes are numerous, they always convey the art of living as a core message. This means their ADs are always relatable because they are based on human experiences or relations.

Also, customers will have a problem if there is a mismatch between what a company communicates as their values and their own experiences with them.

Inconsistent Customer Experience

For example, if a company provides excellent in-store customer service but terrible treatment online or over the phone, it can undermine its reputation and lead to customer turnover.

Inconsistent Product Quality

For example, if a corporation delivers high-quality products in some locations but lower-quality products in others, the brand’s reputation will suffer and sales will fall.

Limited Marketing Budget

Building a powerful identity requires a lot of time and a large marketing investment. As such, smaller organizations may find it difficult to devote adequate resources to branding and marketing activities.

Lack of Patience

It takes time and patience to develop a strong brand. It requires a long-term commitment to branding activities and good customer experience.