Building a brand is no easy feat for any burgeoning company but such a crucial point of development for any business to remain relevant and competitive in any industry. A brand identity goes beyond a logo or brand style guide. It is the line in the sand that separates you from your competitors. The soul of your brand influences each consumer’s introduction and experience with your brand. It influences how they view you, how they receive your message and how they respond to your attempts at creating a connection.
There are two types of brands; Known, recognizable brands and brands you have never heard off
It is in every business’s key interest to elevate their brand from the latter to the former. The playing field is not even when big name brands have seemingly conquered the market. The pursuit of reaching household name status is elusive and daunting but always a challenge each company must aim for. Staying relevant is a process that has to be continually reassessed and examined, strategies must be made, edited and relaunched to maintain and generate a reliable consumer target market. Remaining connected to your consumers involves more than just pumping ads or printing flyers. A trust and bond have to be created in inspire customer loyalty and buoy your brand in a market that changes as quickly as trends change hands.
Building a brand identity – Assessing your brand
Discovering your identity as a whole involves a highly critical inspection of the core of your business to assess the foundation of your brand. You must have your hand on the pulse of what is working and what isn’t working for you. There has to be a clear idea of what your voice and persona as a brand is and could be. Questioning the strengths and weaknesses of your company as well as identifying the threats and possible opportunities that will come your way is crucial to understanding the mapping of your business strategy.
Recognizing your audience
How strong is the love for your brand? Would people miss your brand if it disappeared from the market? How is your brand tapping into the hearts and minds of your consumers? Understanding how your company presents itself and engages with its customers is the first step to understanding your value as a brand. Your primary audience is the lifeblood of who you are and what keeps your brand going.
Who are your consumers? Your solid insight of the requirements and desires of your audience, grasping the driving force of their wants and needs is the secret you will use to shape and build your brand around. It is not a matter of changing who you are as a brand, but knowing who you stand for as a brand identity. Your brand identity is the face that interacts with the entire world, an audience that will change and expand as continually as the potential of your brand. What you create must accurately reflect what your brand wants to say and what actions to take.
Identifying your Brand Ideal
What was the original inspiration for your brand? For what purpose does your brand serve? Your brand ideal can be articulated by knowing exactly why your brand exists, why it creates the products and services it offers. Its mission or brand purpose is the question affects the attractiveness of a brand.
A brand ideal can be articulated by what it believes in. A meaningful message of existence makes a difference to your consumer’s needs. Having an ideal and aspiration motivates people to believe in your brand as more than just a generator of a product. To inspire loyalty your brand must have substance.
How does your brand help achieve status or a higher order of needs people would seek. Is it exploration, creativity, morality or achievement? Do you aim to inspire confidence, respect, and acceptance or are you offering an important solution?
By knowing the answers to these questions you can better organize your goals to empower the people you’re aiming to attract.
Creating a Brand Promise
If a brand ideal is the reason for a brand to exist, the brand promise is how a brand would deliver on that ideal. It is not just a public statement, but an offering of what is unique to the brand. It is the ultimate core benefit a brand can deliver. Setting the expectations consumers will associate with the experience a brand can provide.
A brand’s position is the basis for brand communication between the builders of the brand. It is the guideline for executing marketing decisions, a well-crafted articulation of your brand promise sets you apart from the competition. Its aim is to develop consumer preference for the brand; staying relevant to your target by the persuasion of the strength and integrity of your brand promise.
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