With millions of companies striving to get their names out there, a strong and recognizable brand identity can set your business apart from others. If you wish to develop a brand identity for yourself or are doing it for a client, rushing it is not ideal. It is important to understand what it is and why it is so important for a business to succeed.
Your brand identity can be summed up as the unique personality of your business and how you wish to portray it to your customers. It is more than a simple logo and can consist of numerous marketing materials. Typically, your brand identity may include your business’ name, a unique logo, the type of graphics or imagery you use, and even the tone of voice you use.
Why is Brand Identity Important To Your Business?
When you create an effective branding strategy, the most important part is developing a professional and recognizable brand identity. Establishing a good brand identity comes with many benefits that all businesses can enjoy. Some of these benefits include:
Adds A Personality To Your Business
For any business, a brand identity defines the values and personality of your brand. The design and colors you choose can set the tone for your brand and convey the message you wish to deliver to your audience.
For example, a brand that focuses on health care should always have clean designs and simple neutral colors to convey a sense of sophistication and trustworthiness. On the other hand, a brand that deals with video games will usually use bright and popping colors to be taken as fun and be more attractive to a younger audience.
Helps To Convey Consistent Message
Developing a cohesive brand identity helps you deliver consistent messages to your audience across all marketing channels. In every piece, you are using basic style, colors, and design elements. Thus, you can create a unified branding package.
Gain Customer Loyalty
A strong and recognizable brand identity translates to building a good relationship with your customers. If your customers feel like they share the same values as you, they feel more comfortable choosing your brand over your competition. If this connection can develop into a long-term relationship, this eventually leads to better trust and customer loyalty.
Creates Awareness
A well-established brand identity package is the key to ensuring your brand is stamped across all your marketing channels. This results in increased brand awareness for your business. The more your brand gets featured everywhere, the more customers recognize it and the longer it lingers in their memories.
Brand Differentiation
A unique brand identity differentiates your business in a crowded marketplace. If you want your product or services to stand out among others on a shelf, brand identity plays a critical role.
If you are a fan of the Simpsons, I’m sure you’ve wondered at least once why all the characters are yellow. Whatever the lore behind it is, the creators initially planned this so that their characters are easily distinguishable from the hundreds of other shows that air from TV. And that could have played a role behind their massive success.
How Can You Develop A Solid Brand Identity?
Just because you have a brand identity on paper does not mean it is effective enough to bring in amazing results. Even if you have designed out all the elements with much effort, it may fail to achieve all your long-term objectives. To succeed with your goals, your brand identity should be-
- Unique: It should stand out among all your competitors when put on the shelf.
- Easy-to-remember: It should easily catch everyone’s attention and make enough visual impact to linger in their memory.
- Cohesive: Each element should be unified and complement each other.
- Flexible and Scalable: It can be used in different marketing channels and grows with your brand.
- Easily Applicable: All the elements are clear enough so that designers can use them anywhere with ease.
What Does A Brand Identity Include?
A brand identity is the visual and verbal representation of your brand. A brand identity does not mean a mere logo. When you are developing a brand identity, you are unifying several visual elements to communicate with your customers effectively.
Depending on the needs of your brand, your brand identity can be either basic or extensive. More often than not, it comprises of the following components:
Logo
No doubt, a unique logo is essential for every brand and it is the key element of branding. Through a logo, a brand’s entire personality can be represented in the form of an image, shape, or text.
The more easy-to-recognize and unique a logo is, the more it lingers in our minds. So it is important to create a logo that captures everything you wish to convey about your brand.
Font
Another key element of branding is the signature font a brand uses. If you think brands use a randomly selected font for text in their logo or website, you are gravely mistaken.
Every well-established brand uses a carefully selected font in its logo, website, and even in its email template. The font is used to express a brand’s unique personality and values.
Color Palette
Colors are a vital component of any brand identity. Colors have the power to express a brand’s key values and personality. As long as you know about color psychology and what emotion certain colors express, you should be able to choose the right one for your brand.
It is such an important component of brand identity that many companies have gone far enough to trademark their signature color palettes.
Shape And Form
Shapes and forms that represent your brand can help customers easily recognize your products. These shapes and forms don’t simply include any used in your logo.
But it also shapes your website background, packaging, business cards, and other marketing channels. It is important to choose a unique and interesting shape and form on your packaging to make sure it is memorable to your audience.
Final Thoughts
You cannot expect to build a strong brand identity overnight or without enough effort. You need to understand what brand identity actually entails and why it is so important for your business. In this article, I have addressed everything about brand identity and more. I hope the article was easy to understand for you and overall helpful. Thank you for sticking around till the end!
