Is it your logo? Your color palette? Your infographic style? It’s all that—and more.
Brand identity as “the outward expression of a brand, including its trademark, name, communications, and visual appearance.” To us, a brand identity is the sum total of how your brand looks, feels, and speaks to people.
Ultimately, a brand identity is a way to communicate with the world, differentiate yourself from your competition, and create a brand experience that encourages people to engage with you.
What Does a Brand Identity Include?
A logo and a color palette alone do not make a brand identity. When designing your identity, you need to create a comprehensive visual language that can be applied to everything from your website to your packaging. Depending on your brand (and the type of content you plan to create), your needs may be more expansive, but a basic brand identity includes:
Logo
Colors
Typography
Design System
Photography
Illustration
Iconography
Data visualization
Interactive elements
Video and motion
Web design
Remember: Your brand identity should translate across mediums, so include everything you need to make sure it does.
The Keys to a Strong Brand Identity
If people don’t know who you are, they can’t purchase your product or service. Brand awareness happens the second someone remembers your brand from previously seeing something like your logo or company name. When you build brand awareness you are building your reputation. This can help you to acquire new customers, retain old customers and stand out from your competition.
Let’s take brand awareness a step further with brand recognition. After your customer learns your business name the next goal you have is for them to have an in-depth knowledge of your products, services and overall feeling of your business.
For example, you can probably recognize the Starbucks logo from a mile away when you are driving down the highway. You know that the company is currently trying to find alternatives to their classic green straws. They have a point system that allows you to collect stars until you get a free drink. And you definitely have your go-to order memorized.
Before your customers can reach this state of brand recognition you will have to build brand awareness. This will allow you to target customers, generate leads, and close sales.
How can you build brand awareness for your business?
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is brand awareness. People are not going to automatically know your brand after seeing your logo/name once or twice. You have to work for it by building a strategy, earning customers’ trust, and making your presence known on multiple channels. This strategy should be unique and creative so that you can beat out your competitors.
On the surface level, you will need to build a strong brand awareness strategy targeting highly specific audiences and focusing on brand recall and customer engagement.
If you are just starting out you will need to define your target market and develop buyer personas because you can’t target everyone. The more focused your audience is, the better. You want people who will actually engage with your brand. Quality over quantity.
Focusing on brand recall is the core of building brand awareness. The key to brand recall is being consistent on all platforms. There are so many ways you can engage your customers online – from advertising on social media to blogging. Make sure you know which marketing tactics you should use and which to avoid.
Components to add to your branding strategy
You can probably guess at least one reason why it’s important to be consistent. Obviously, it helps people remember your brand if they have seen the same logo on every platform. But consistency can also aid in SEO. If you have a Google My Business (which you should) you will notice that your “NAP” also known as your name, address and phone number is displayed when you search for your business. This should be the same across all platforms.
If you as a brand are consistent in everything you do you will become a trusted and reliable source for customers to return to again and again. And you will have a higher chance of ranking in search.