Brand Identity

What Is Brand Identity?

Brand identity is the face and personality of your brand. It encompasses everything from how you speak, to how you look, to what you sell and even how you make people feel. Within your brand identity, there is also a focus on brand culture, brand voice and brand image. Even the smallest details down to your logo, tagline, color scheme and design are all a part of this identity. 

To put it simply, your brand identity is your brand DNA. Without a clear identity, there is no brand at all.

Why Is Having A Strong Brand Identity Important?

A strong brand identity is one of the most, if not the most important element of a brand's strategy and its success. But why is that the case? As previously mentioned, the brand identity is the face of the brand. By having a strong brand identity, you’re immediately recognizable, trustworthy and establishing brand awareness. A strong brand identity is also essential when it comes to branding on social media. Although it may seem obvious that you own all of your accounts, it may not be so clear to an onlooker if you have varying taglines, logos and content across different platforms. True consistency is key.

How To Establish Your Brand Identity 

The importance of a brand identity has been covered, but how does one get started? The pressure of creating the perfect identity is often harder than creating the identity itself. In fact, the likelihood of you already having the answers to the questions is pretty high considering you’ve made it this far. If you’re still unsure where to go from here, we recommend the following steps as a starting point.

Learn Your Audience

This is the most crucial step in your brand identity journey. If you don’t deeply understand your target audience, then what is it all for? Make sure you research everything there is to know about your target demographic and even create buyer personas. What they like, what they don’t, what their age range is and where they’re from are just a few of the things you will want to know before diving into the fun stuff.

Design Your Assets

This is really what we were referring to when we mentioned the fun stuff. Getting to pick your color scheme, design your logo and anything other relevant assets for your brand may take some trial and error, but don’t give up. Try different shapes, colors and symbols until you find what feels right. Be meticulous about even the smallest details as these assets are what will define your brand and help you stand out from the rest of your competitors.

Construct Your Brand Voice

Once you’ve nailed down how your brand is going to look, it’s time to build how your brand is going to talk. Although assets and aesthetics are what people often see first, the words and content that follow are what keep people around and engaged. Establish a brand voice that sounds like how your brand looks. While this may sound confusing, all you have to do is test out different ways of conveying the same message. Serious, casual, relaxed, informative, friendly, direct, inspirational or objective are all very different tones that will reflect a different voice onto your brand. Try each of them out and see what makes the most sense based on what brand assets you have.

Discover What Fits Your Brand (And What Doesn’t)

Now it’s time to start creating content. While it may feel like you want to do everything, everywhere, all at once, take a step back and really consider what types of content make sense with your newly established look and voice. Not every trend or content idea is going to fit your identity and that’s okay. Sometimes it’s just as important to identify what you don’t create versus what you do. If you are on the fence about a certain type of asset, it may be better to err on the side of caution and not create that type of content until you’re more confident in your identity.

Monitor To Ensure Consistency

Unfortunately, brand identity is not something you can just set and forget. It requires constant monitoring and check-ins to ensure everything is up to standard. This is especially important to keep an eye on when onboarding new staff, beginning to use a new platform or even launching a timely campaign. Remember to keep your brand identity and voice at the forefront of all of your plans.

Take Your Brand Identity to the Next Level

If you’ve completed everything above, you’ve done the hardest part. Now it’s time to take your brand identity. This can be done in a couple of different ways: 

• Create templates: To keep things consistent, create ready-to-fill templates for all of your assets so team members can drag and drop content and stay on brand. 
• Experiment with content: Once you’ve had time to establish your brand and its identity, and get an idea of what your target audience responds to, try different types of content that you maybe wouldn’t have before. You may be surprised at the results. 
• Focus on your community: A happy and engaged community offers valuable feedback and acts as an advocate for your brand and its identity.

To take your brand identity a step further on social, invest in a social media marketing tool like Dash Hudson that makes maintaining your identity and voice, simple.