Establishing a brand can be a daunting task for any business owner, especially in today’s highly competitive markets. However, it is essential to have a strong brand identity to differentiate yourself from your competitors and establish a loyal customer base.
In this blog post, we will explore the basics of creating a strong brand identity and how creative workshops and establishing your brand essence can help bring your vision to life
Brand identity
To begin with, a brand identity is a combination of visual and verbal elements that represent your business. These elements include the logo, colour palette, typography, tone of voice, and overall brand personality. Your brand identity should be consistent across all platforms, including your website, social media, packaging and advertising. This consistency helps to establish trust with your audience and creates a strong brand image.
Creative workshops
One of the most effective ways to establish your brand identity is through creative workshops. These workshops bring together your team, including product managers, marketers, human resources and other stakeholders to brainstorm ideas and develop a cohesive brand strategy. Creative workshops can be (and should be) tailored to your specific needs, whether it’s developing a new brand or rebranding an existing one.
Establishing a brand essence
During these workshops, it is essential to establish your brand essence
Your brand essence is the sum of core values and personality traits that define your brand. It’s what sets you apart from your competitors and resonates with your target audience. Your brand essence should be consistent across all platforms and should be reflected in your visual and verbal elements.
Developing visual and verbal elements
Once your brand essence has been established, you can begin to develop your visual and verbal elements. Your logo should be simple, memorable, and reflect your brand essence. Your colour palette should be consistent and evoke the emotions and personality traits of your brand. Your typography should be easy to read and reflect the tone of voice of your brand.
Establishing a brand: tone of voice
Your tone of voice is also an essential element of your brand identity.
It should reflect the personality traits of your brand and be consistent across all platforms. Whether it’s social media, advertising, or customer service, your tone of voice should be recognisable and resonate with your audience
Branding takes effort, time, and money. This reality may make you question whether you should invest in developing your business’s brand, like an online shop. You should. Branding is critical to online marketing.
Here are some benefits of strong branding:
Branding builds customer loyalty
We like to meet people with which we identify. The same principle holds for companies. If people identify with your brand, they are more likely to become recurring clients. They may believe in a cause your business fights for, for example.
Establishing a brand builds a sense of purpose
Branding helps everyone, from board members to ground floor employees
It makes it easier for them to understand your company’s values and aims and stay focused on an agreed corporate strategy. They will be motivated to help your business reach its objectives, if these align with theirs.
Strong branding helps recruitment
Establishing a brand also helps you recruit people who are a good cultural match for your organisation. Finding people with the same values and sympathetic to your corporate culture becomes easier if your company has a strong identity.
Effective branding makes you stand out
The world becomes more competitive daily. A generic brand creating bland products is doomed to fade into obscurity. You have to stand out. Establishing a solid brand ensures your business and its products catch people’s attention.
Establishing a strong brand leads to increased sales
All these activities lead to more sales. When you create quality products or services and associate them with a memorable brand, you will see a boost in your revenue and the bottom line.
It is called brand equity
FAQ1: Should I do research before starting a branding process?
You should know your company’s standing before trying to improve it. Conduct as much research as you can afford to understand why people buy your products. Learn what they believe to be your business’s strengths and why they stood out to them (teaser… we can help you with the research part)
FAQ2: How far do I need to carry branding through?
Your business’s visuals and verbal output must match the brand you’re trying to portray. For example, if you want to brand a marketing agency as disruptive, creative and innovative, investing in a branding programme with vibrant colours and bold copy is a good start point
FAQ3: How should I involve my staff?
Your whole team represents your whole company, at all levels. So, familiarise them with the process you have gone through and the brand guidelines you have produced. For example, to create an elegant, upmarket restaurant, you must prepare your team to dress and behave in a way that represents its brand values. We’ve found that when organisations take a diagonal slice of their teams and involve colleagues from across the organisation in the early stages of the process, the buy-in is significantly higher – it also provides a unique point of view from those at the coal face
FAQ4: What about social media?
Using social media successfully in branding needs an understanding of how cultural branding works, a big subject. But, certainly, all workshops and branding processes should consider how branding assets can be used digitally and how the basic requirements of relevant social media platforms can be leveraged
Video is a key element of instant communication, friendly to search engines and should also be given due consideration
In conclusion, establishing a brand can be an intimidating process, but it doesn’t have to be. By using an experienced agency, like Hello Finch x Corr Blimey! to facilitate creative workshops and helping to establish your brand essence, you can develop a strong brand identity that resonates with your target audience.Remember to keep your brand identity consistent across all platforms, including your visual and verbal elements.
With a strong brand identity, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors and establish a loyal customer base.
And it starts with Listening Intelligently.
