Do you have a personal brand? A business brand? Both? Building a brand takes time and effort. When you do it effectively, you will reap the dividends for years to come.
In this article, we’ll explain how to build a brand identity that is memorable, powerful, and unique. After all, why have a brand if it doesn’t distinguish you from all your competition?
We’ll begin by looking at brand identity and how it extends the brand concept into a broad range of associated qualities.
What Is Brand Identity?
A brand is an abstraction; it’s how people perceive you or your business. In contrast, brand identity is a brand’s tangible elements.
These include color scheme, design, typeface, and logo—among other attributes. A brand’s identifying elements allow consumers to distinguish and form a mental image of the brand.
How to Build a Brand Identity
Building a brand identity is a multi-faceted process. However, we can distill it into two fundamental parts. We’ll call these parts “corporate” and “creative.”
Corporate
The corporate part of brand identity-building should intertwine with your business plan.
One part of this is a brand audit. You do a thorough competitor analysis to determine your unique fit in the marketplace. You also analyze how consumers view or understand your prospective product or service.
Another part is establishing a unique value proposition and messaging statements. It’s your brand’s mission and vision statement, and it sets the path toward future brand development, marketing, and expansion.
Creative
The creative part is where the corporate vision is realized in assets consumers can experience and connect with. Developing brand identity should begin with a logo which is the cornerstone to the visual aspects of branding.
The creative part of building a brand includes selecting and integrating the various elements. Ideally, this phase will involve a designer. And remember that every aspect of these elements affects your brand’s public perception.
Once you’ve found your brand identity, it’s time to start building branding collateral. It comprises the materials and media for launching, building, and promoting your business.
The Importance of Brand Identity
The renowned Michael Eisner stated that “a brand is a living entity, and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.”
We see this as meaning that your brand and brand identity should be a combination of enduring qualities, resilience, and an ability to adapt to and reflect cultural trends.
Brand identity is something your clients and customers come to rely on over time. Historically, there has been outcry when any but the most well-established businesses strayed from their familiar market sectors.
Branding Tips to Get You Started
We hope this brief article has given you some good ideas about how to build a brand identity. Of course, the process has far more variations than we could account for here. But branding is about creativity and imagination, at least as much as following prescribed steps.
We’ll leave you with two branding tips we feel are essential:
- Your brand must be established and grounded before any experimentation
- Never lose track of your core clientele, or your brand will start to erode
All My Web Needs is just that: a comprehensive web design and internet marketing company. Reach out to us when you need help building a brand.
