Whether you’re launching a new business or you’re undergoing a rebrand, building a brand identity is a mammoth project. Regardless of your market, it can be a real challenge to come up with an identity that is entirely unique to your specific business, while also neatly fitting in with the market’s status quo.
There are a multitude of steps involved, and in today’s guide, we’re going to be breaking down just about every single one of them, including:
- The difference between brand identity and brand image
- Defining your target audience
- Deciding on your brand values
- Formulating your tone of voice
- Establishing your USP
- Social listening
What is brand identity?
So, what actually is brand identity? It’s essentially the personality of your business. It’s the toolkit you use to differentiate your brand from competitors, and ultimately, it’s the way you’d like your brand to be seen.
Difference between brand identity and brand image
If brand identity is how you’d like your brand to be seen, then brand image is how your brand is actually seen. It’s how you view your business versus how the public views your business. Naturally, you have a lot less control over the latter, which will typically manifest in customer reviews and word-of-mouth.
Target audience
Before you get into the fine details of your branding, it’s important to first define your target audience. If you’re creatively minded, it can be tempting to jump ahead, but you need to know who you’re trying to appeal to. One of the risks of failing to define your target audience is genericism; if, wittingly or unwittingly, your brand is designed to appeal to everyone, then it’s very unlikely to stand out from the crowd.
One of the other reasons it’s so important is because when it comes to something like a colour scheme, certain visual cues can be interpreted entirely differently depending on the demographic. The colour scheme you have in your head might not gel at all with your ideal customer or client, so start by defining that customer or client.
Brand values
Next, you need to firm up your brand values. What does your brand actually stand for? Your values should be a set of non-negotiable principles that dictate how you operate. Clients are far more likely to buy into what you’re selling if they believe in the same things you believe in (even if that’s subconscious).
Consistent brand values don’t just attract customers, either - they can also help with employee retention. When someone sees their own values reflected in the company they work for, they’re more likely to remain both loyal and motivated.
Brand positioning
Brand positioning is the process of finding your niche, and making your brand stand out from the competition. By effectively conveying your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), you’re giving customers and clients a concrete reason to choose your brand, rather than choose an alternative.
Here are a few tips for successfully positioning your brand:
- Identify the exact problem your product or service is designed to solve. It’s a lot easier to stick in a client’s mind if your brand addresses a specific pain point.
- Identify gaps in the market. Use social listening to track what clients and customers are saying about your competitors (particularly the negatives).
- Carry out in-depth competitor analysis. It’s impossible to know where you might fit in any given market without having a full understanding of how that market currently operates.
- Be realistic. Your brand doesn’t have to change the world; it just needs to address some pain points in a way they’ve never been addressed before.
Tone of voice
If brand identity is the personality of your brand, your tone of voice is the way in which you express that personality. While your tone of voice will naturally differ slightly depending on context (a lighthearted social media post versus a press release, for example), an underlying consistency is vital. This will help to build both trust and authority.
Colour psychology
Colours are known to subconsciously influence human behaviours and emotions. Red stimulates our appetite, for example (think McDonald’s), while blue evokes trust (think banks, like Barclays or Halifax). Colour psychology is effectively just a way to increase the chances that your brand will ‘feel’ right to prospective clients.
Brand name
Choosing a name for your brand can be a painstaking process; it’s one of the most vital decisions you’ll make, after all. The key is striking the balance between strategy and creativity. Your name needs to make sense for your particular market, but it also needs to be unique and memorable. To get started, spend some time writing down a list of words that spring to mind when you think of your brand, or when you think of the pain points that your brand intends to address.
Tell a story with your branding
Your brand should offer more than just a simple transaction; it should tell a story. You need to be weaving a narrative that will resonate on an emotional level. It won’t resonate with everyone, of course, but that’s exactly why it’s important to nail down your target audience early on. By giving your brand a story, you’re humanising it; without any sort of human element, brands can feel faceless.
Be consistent
Consistency is what glues your brand together. It can be incredibly jarring if certain aspects of your branding don’t mesh with other aspects, and that can apply to just about anything, whether it’s tone of voice, colour schemes, or imagery.
Some pieces of your brand identity are things you likely haven’t even labeled as 'branding' yet. But even the wording of something as seemingly trivial as an error message should be consistent with the rest of your voice.
Don’t dwell on every detail
Brand identity is obviously something you want to spend a lot of time on. But it’s very easy to get bogged down in every single little detail.
There’s no use overthinking any one particular element. If you find yourself going round in circles, move onto something else. Take colours, for example. It’s definitely important to do a lot of research when it comes to picking your colour scheme, but if you’re basing your decision solely on psychology, you could be inadvertently detracting from the uniqueness of your brand. Relying exclusively on theory implies that there’s one exact answer for what makes a good brand - and if that were true, every brand in any given market would look the same. So, yes, when it comes to choosing colours you should use theory to guide you, but you should also choose colours that you think would look good!
Social listening
Once you’ve launched your brand, social listening is the process of analysing the conversations people are having about your brand on the internet, as well as conversations about your market in general. By keeping track of this discourse, you’ll be getting valuable insights into your target market, and insights into how the public is perceiving your brand.
Conclusion: the complete guide to building your brand identity
Building a strong brand identity can be a huge undertaking, but committing to the process can be the difference between letting the market decide who you are, and taking the lead yourself. By defining your values, voice, and visuals early on, you can create a consistent experience that makes it much easier for customers to trust you, and also for employees to get behind your mission.
