Brand Identity 101
Kim Harper
Brand solutions.
Your company has a story to tell the world. How do you do it in a way that evokes emotion, encourages connection and leads to conversions?
It’s about your company’s brand identity. Why is a branding so important? Do people really notice or care? As you might have guessed the answer is quite simply yes. Having a cohesive, concise and compelling story about your company is crucial in the digital age. Ultimately, your brand is the way you emotionally engage with your customers. A brand strategy enables you to develop that emotion.
First Vital Step
Research. It’s vital to understand your target audience. A brand audit will break down the core essence of your business. A market analysis can better educate you on how your business stacks up to the competition. Together they can help you better understand your customer’s potential wants and needs to help you identify how you need to position your brand.
4 Step Brand Development Strategy
1. Develop your brand position strategy
2. Develop your brand voice
3. Develop your brand visuals
4. Inbound Marketing – content marketing strategy
1. Brand Position Strategy
A strategy is developed based on the research data. This stage is about determining the right approach for positioning your brand for success and a road map for achieving it. An effective branding process creates a unique identity that differentiates you from the competition. It’s the heart of a competitive strategy.
2. Brand Voice
A brand’s verbal language is just as important as its visual language. Determining the right tone to interact with your audience is key to ensure a successful campaign launch and a genuine relationship between your brand and the community. Consistently across all touchpoints, serves as a unifying element for all branded communications. Tagline, brand promise and mission statement.
3. Brand Visuals
Establishes the imagery that reflects the core values of your business. The visual aspects that form an overall brand can leave a strong impression, and first impressions are everything. This stage articulates a company’s visual identity, logo design, brand imagery, and custom iconography. The logo is the distinctive stamp and identifying force driving customers to your business. So, like all the imagery it needs to have a consistent color palette, font, and type that expresses the right personality. Choose images that address your audience and reflect your brand style.
4. Inbound Marketing
Content marketing strategy – So, once you have a great brand. Then what? Well, then you have to figure out a game plan for customers to see it. Back in the day, it was about making commercial or paying for print ads. That was called outbound marketing. But the buzz word today is all about Inbound Marketing. What’s that? Well, you might not realize it. But you see it all the time. It’s content-oriented marketing. According to Wikipedia, Inbound marketing is “a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and branding”. So, seeing your friends liking stuff on Facebook is a form of Inbound marketing. Not every social channel is right for every brand. Different target demographics frequent different social sites and use them for different things. It’s essential to have a game plan to maximize exposure without wasting resources.
Successful Brands
A great brand and marketing strategy are only successful if they are effective. Ultimately, standing out in the sea of sameness is about creating a brand identity that not only aligns with your core audience but is also something unique and memorable.
Bid Branding Boutique
Your company has a story to tell the world. How do you do it in a way that evokes emotion, encourages connection and leads to conversions? BID is here to help. If you’re ready to have your brand stand out from the crowd. Give us a shout.
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