Summary
Your brand identity is your brand as a whole, and how it is represented to customers.
This includes visuals, such as your company logo design. It also means practical content considerations, like taglines and mottos. And as a whole it includes your brand personality, or the type of person your brand would be if it were a human.
It can be difficult to get off to a running start with a business, let alone keep your company going through a sophomore slump.
This could be because you’re operating in an oversaturated market.
Or maybe you haven’t really been able to impress on your clients exactly why your product is more valuable to them than your competition.
It could also be that your customers have slowly faded away, leaving your business in a downward spiral from lack of interest.
Maybe you’re still keeping your head above water, but you’d really like to see sales take off like never before.
Whatever the case, there’s a solution. And it’s probably been sitting under your nose this entire time.
We’re talking about your brand identity.
Brand Identity Design and Why It’s Important
Your brand identity is your brand as a whole, and how it is represented to customers.
This includes visuals, such as your company logo design. It also means practical content considerations, like taglines and mottos. And as a whole it includes your brand personality, or the type of person your brand would be if it were a human.
With that in mind, it’s pretty easy to see why your brand identity needs to be designed in a way so as to appeal to customers, both existing and new.
So let’s look at five ways that you can use your brand identity to give your business a leg up on success.
Shake It Up
If you’re facing a little bit of a slump, sometimes the best thing is to throw something new out there.
We’re not talking about completely changing everything about your brand identity.
But it could very well be that some aspect is due for an update.
Big companies do this all the time, investing thousands of dollars on a new “look,” which often isn’t much more than a redesigned logo. This can be a good idea for your brand identity, for a few reasons:
- It gives your brand a facelift.
- It can modernize your brand and put it in touch with a new audience.
- It’s a great marketing opportunity.
Keep in mind that it’s important to still stay true to your brand identity, even while updating aspects of your look. That allows for a continuity to your identity design, so people don’t get confused about who this new company is.
At the same time, don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Go back and look at what inspired your company to begin with, combine it with what you’ve done so far, add in your goals for the future, and use the whole shebang to reinvigorate your brand identity.
Connect With Your Audience
Staying connected with your audience is a big factor in how successful your business is. People like to bond with a brand, even following brands on social media.
It helps them to establish an identity, as well as conversing with others that they perceive as being similar.
Your brand identity can be one of those “others” that fits in and makes your audience feel connected.
Social media is a great tool for doing this. Not only is social media one of the most effective marketing tools out there, allowing you endless chances to promote your brand, it’s also one of the best ways to actually build your brand personality. Rather than just focusing on advertising, advertising, advertising, social media posts give you a chance to “inhabit” your brand identity, by facilitating conversation with your clients.
So it’s absolutely vital that your brand’s presence on social media be maintained regularly, to keep those connections strong.
Build Loyalty
Following on from connecting with your audience, you can use your brand identity design to boost your business by building loyalty among your customers.
There are time-honored ways to do this, such as reward systems.
Everyone loves to get a reward, especially if it’s a free product or service. And reward systems encourage loyalty from customers, linking their client loyalty to benefits to themselves.
Now, how you choose to do this really depends on what your brand identity actually is. There are all sorts of fun ways to offer incentives to customers, from punch cards to special sales to referral programs.
You can even use all of them, if it works for you!
Whatever you choose to do, reward systems have been proven over and over again to facilitate the growth of a business. And it adds appeal to your brand identity at the same time, establishing your company as a brand that cares about its customers.
Promote Your Brand Values
Brands are about more than what meets the eye. A good brand is imbued with values, and a good company is founded on something more solid than, “Make money at all costs.”
It’s recommended for any brand to be open and aboveboard with their core values. There are a few reasons for this.
It facilitates transparency.
It gives the customer insight into the company’s decisions.
It provides something for customers to connect with, a human element.
It promotes the brand’s personality.
As an example, consider large companies that are known for giving back to the community, such as Costco. Costco has donated millions of dollars over the years to a variety of charities and funds, and that clear demonstration of the company’s values sticks to the brand itself.
People like companies that are generous and giving, and so they are more likely to buy from those companies.
So be open about your core values, and those who identify with them will then identify with your brand.
Increase the Value of Your Products
This may sound easier said than done, but the fact is that the other four aspects of using your brand identity have all been building up to this one.
Increasing the value of any given product is done in a few ways:
- Showing the benefit of your product over what the competitor has to offer
- Introducing a limiting factor, such as a limited edition version of the product
- Establish yourself as a reputable brand, with a history of good customer service
Your brand identity design has a lot to do with all of these, since it involves how you interact with your customers.
And ultimately, the design of your brand can attach so much reflected value to your products that just the very fact that they have your brand name on them will increase their demand.
Overall, your brand identity design does not have to be static, and should be leveraged in order to attract new customers and keep existing ones. That can mean updating or altering various aspects, but it should always be in keeping with your core brand.
