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A memorable and impactful brand identity takes time to build. There’s more to it than picking a name, choosing a few colors and throwing together a logo. Your design needs to be thought out strategically and it needs to be consistent with your purpose as a business. An in-depth understanding of your target audience is paramount, in addition to solid communication and creative design skills. At its core, brand identity is a means of telling your story to the world, differentiating your business from your competitors, and creating brand experiences that inspire people to be drawn to you.
This article will help you begin to think about how to create a meaningful brand identity. If you’re just starting a new business or thinking of redesigning your existing logo, you’ll get practical tips, some simple steps to get going, and how to connect with your target market in a productive and profitable way.
Before you make your own logo and proceed with developing your brand identity system, you must first identify your target customers. To be successful, you need to connect with your prospective customers authentically, but to do that you need to know them ahead of time.
But to really make your brand identity memorable, make sure you know that answers to the following questions about your audience:
Do a little secondary research on the internet to find out what people are saying about the industry in which you compete. Additionally, you can conduct some primary research and gain data by reaching out to people directly with a questionnaire.
Your brand story represents a detailed outline of the goals of your business and the process you’ll use to achieve them. It’s more than just a tagline, it’s a narrative that defines your purpose and compels your target audience to want to be a part of your story. The most compelling brand stories do the following.
Ensure that your brand name is easily spelled, pronounced, and remembered. You should be able to repeat a great business name after hearing it just once. You don’t want the name to be used elsewhere. You may wish to use a translator to ensure that the text does not translate to something misleading, improper or rude in foreign languages. The story of the Chevy Nova launch in Mexico may just be urban legend, but you get the point!
If you do business in a particular location, you can add that to your name. However, a name can be derived from many things other than your business location. Also extremely important: check whether the website domain is available. It’s not hard and it may save you lots of trouble or money or both. Go to domain registrars to do it quickly and easily.
The next step is to decide which graphic representation to use for your brand once you have chosen a good and creative name. A unique and distinct logo is essential. You need to make sure the colors are meaningful and that the design reflects the values your firm represents.
To create a powerful brand identity for your business, these four tips will help guide you and keep you on track for success. They probably seem straightforward, but the “devil is in the details” as they say. Great brands, from Apple to Zappos, have a compelling story, a clear strategy and a ruthlessly consistent identity system that helps them connect authentically with their target audience. You have an incredible opportunity at your fingertips, a chance to create something uniquely yours, the face that will represent your brand to the world. Please make the most of it, do your market research, and remember, you only have six seconds to give people a reason to care, listen, engage, buy, and finally a reason to stay.
Thanks for reading. Sign up for our upcoming webinar event on storytelling, and then join our blog! You can learn more about how to harness the power of brand identity by following me on Twitter, connecting with me on LinkedIn, subscribing to the TopRight blog, and buying copies of my latest books, Strategic Analytics and Marketing, Interrupted.