Your brand identity reflects your vision and value; it helps build credibility and trust, making it a crucial aspect of any company. In the era of cut-throat competition, it’s your brand identity that’ll help you stay afloat and scale your business.
When we’re talking about brand identity, the first impression matters a great deal. Did you know that it only takes about 0.05 seconds for people to form an opinion about your website? Yes, you read that right!
So, to capture your visitors’ attention at first glance, you need to create a captivating brand identity for your website.
Why do you need to focus on your brand identity?
Purchasing from a website isn’t just about making a transaction. It’s about the entire customer experience; from the moment they land on your website to making the final decision of purchasing.
A brand identity is an amalgamation of all the aspects of building a company presence – brand logo, content, infographics, use cases, color palette, everything.
And that’s what sets your company apart from your competitors – the amount of effort you put into creating a brand identity.
How to create an impactful brand identity
To nurture your customers and build lasting relations, you need to follow the below-mentioned points and create an unforgettable brand identity.
Understand your brand
The first step towards creating a brand identity is to understand your brand inside out. As a founder of the company, you need to be aware of every aspect of your brand.
Get to know your brand and the people it serves. See it from your customers’ perspective and find out what things need to be added or changed. After all, you’re building a company for the people, so it should be based on their preferences and needs.
Therefore, work on the values that you are offering and make the message crisp and clear. Any person visiting your company website should get acquainted with your vision right away so they can know what to expect.
Logo and tonality
What’s the first thing that comes to mind is when we think about starting any new business? The name and business logo. Yes, after deciding upon the name, it’s the responsibility of the company logo to convey your brand’s vision.
It’s important to have a meaningful logo design that fits your brand perfectly. Even if you have been in the business for a long time, you can still revamp your logo to take a step towards building a memorable brand image.
Apart from that, tonality is also essential in brand designing and marketing. The tone of your company’s website, punchline, and entire content should complement the products or services.
Therefore, see to your brand’s tonality and ensure that it stays consistent throughout to deliver the right message across every channel.
Connect with emotions
Emotional branding plays a vital role in your business; connecting with people on an emotional level and generating the need to purchase is rare. So, it’s essential to create a strategy that brings out emotions.
This strategy will not only bring your more customers, but it’ll also remain as a memorable incident in the mind of your audience. For example, below is an image of Coca-Cola’s campaign, #choosehappiness in 2015. This was highly successful as it motivated their consumers to share their pleasant memories of that summer.
So, come up with something creative and add a punchline that will evoke emotions from your audience. This can help you get more exposure as such interactive and engaging campaigns often go viral.
Build visual identity
In order to have a compelling brand identity, visual elements are very crucial. From the color palette, visual elements and shapes, infographics, and CTAs need to be strategically placed. Below you can see how important a color is when it comes to brand recognition.
The color game in a brand plays with human psychology; that’s why companies choose colors based on their products; Starbucks has a green-colored logo, Coca-Cola is all red, Samsung has blue color as their brand image, and much more. These different colors evoke different emotions; from excitement to calm, you can use various colors for every emotion.
Moreover, also see that the image placement on your website is done perfectly. For instance, if you have a chat messenger option, keep the messenger widget on the bottom
right, as that’s where the customer’s attention will go when they need any assistance.
Leverage social media platforms
One of the best ways to increase your engagement and bring more visitors to your website it via social media platforms. As millennials take up the majority of the market as consumers, it’s essential to have a presence on the channel they’re accessing the most.
So, by posting consistently on social media platforms and engaging with your audience, you can spread brand awareness and build credibility. When your brand is constantly in the eyes of people, you’re bound to get more recognition, and people will start trusting the company more.
Know what’s working on social media platforms such as Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc and map out the social media strategy for your brand.
Consistently evolve your brand
You’ve established a compelling brand identity, now what? The key to scaling your business is consistently evolving your brand.
The above image shows how the most renowned brand, Apple, evolved over the decades. And this evolution isn’t just about the logo; it’s about how the vision and thought process of the company’s brand image evolved over the years, which impacted the logo of the brand.
Apple has shown what It’s like to grow with others; they’ve created campaigns and strategies based on current affairs and have always been a talk among people all around the globe.
Creating a brand identity is not a one-time thing; you need to scale it if you want to grow constantly.
Give back to the community
Let’s be honest, it’s easier to trust a brand that’s active and helps the community. Consumers are always watching every step of a brand, and they’re well aware of the social contributions your company makes.
When there’s a vast demographic supporting your brand, it’s only fair that you give back to the community. You can make donations during a social event, assist during natural calamities, or help people with your products. This enables you to build a loyal customer base and increase trust among other people.
Here’s why your brand identity matters
Brand awareness
One of the main reasons for creating a distinctive brand image is to spread awareness about your business. Whether it’s a form of content marketing, social media marketing, creating campaigns, every initiative helps you stay in front of the eyes of your visitors and customers.
Building a personality
A company’s brand image should reflect what they’re offering. For instance, a restaurant chain website will have bold and captivating elements that are fun and connects with every demographic. On the other hand, a software company will have professional and subtle elements, as they are targeting high-end clients.
Consistency across all platforms
A streamlined and well-structured brand identity helps people recognize your brand on any platform. By keeping your brand identity consistent on every channel, you are able to reach more people. Consistent branding puts your brand’s campaign in front of people’s eyes at every touchpoint, thus results in increased revenue.
Build a loyal customer base
The thing that matters most to every company is a loyal customer base. You need positive reviews and people who can speak for your brand, it’s really important when you’re operating at enterprise level. And by keeping your brand identity intact, you can increase customer retention, hence building loyal customers for your product/service. To do so, it is mandatory to think thoroughly about ways to continuously improve your customer experience in order to keep them engaged, loyal and satisfied.
Key components of a solid brand identity
Now that you know how crucial is the brand identity for a business, I am going to talk about the key components of a brand identity and what makes it an effective initiative for a business.
Vision board
Every company has a vision about how they want to go forward with their business. And in order to create a strong brand identity, you need to put forth your vision across your readers to convey the message. They should also know the thought process behind your business and how it can help them in the long run.
Focus on your targeted audience
Whenever you’re doing market research, you need to segment your target audience to create a brand that caters to their requirements. If your target audience is millennials, then your brand needs to have that quirky and captivating factor to engage more. Hence focusing on customer intelligence is vital for each and every brand.
Brand personality
Following up on the previous point, you need to create quality content that perfectly depicts your brand’s personality. Use adjectives and terms that your readers can connect with and ensure that they fit perfectly with your product/service.
Showcasing value
At the end, it all comes down to the value you’re offering. It doesn’t matter if you’ve excelled at marketing and other aspects, if your business value isn’t impactful, you won’t be able to connect with people. So, work on the value you’re offering to the community.
Conclusion
Brand identity is vital for creating a sustainable business, so ensure that you follow the above-mentioned tips and create a brand that will stay with people for a long time.
Every business has different needs and different types of audiences, so you need to figure out which strategies work best with your target audience and implement them.
