Brand Identity: The Foundation Of Your Business
A true pillar of your business, brand identity is the solid foundation that will guide you to success. Brand identity allows you to define the permanent and evolving elements of your brand. It allows you to remain consistent between all communication channels over time. Brand identity is what your business and your company really is. It is built on your history, your mission, your values and your target. It is through this that you will create notoriety and visibility with your target audience. Brand identity is also fundamental if you want to stand out from your competition, and this infographics presents the different elements that make up a complete brand identity.
Brand identity begins with your story
The design of your brand identity begins with the basis, the history of the company. Your company is born from a history, a lived experience, or simply from a desire. It is important to start your brand identity from the very beginning of your business. As the foundation of your company, history has made who you are today and influenced your development choices.
Ask yourself the right questions:
- Who the hell are you?
- What is the founder’s background?
- How did you get here today?
- What made you want to start your own business?
The finding
The creation of your company came from an observation, what is it? What made you want to start your own company? A need? A specific request? What was the deal before you arrived? What did you bring differently following this observation? The observation is essential at this stage of the brand identity, indeed, it allows to justify the creation of your company and also to put forward the needs of your market that you will be able to fill.
The questions to ask you:
What was the situation when the company was founded?
Your mission
Your company’s mission is nothing more than its reason for being. It’s about describing best and concisely what you do and why. This will allow you to unite your employees, partners and community around a common goal and mission.
Here are some lines of thought:
- The mission should not be too broad and vague, nor too limiting.
- The mission must be clear and easy to understand.
- Above all, it must be inspiring, motivating and distinctive.
Your short, medium and long term vision
The vision of your company is nothing other than the expression of the mission in the form of short, medium and long term ambitions and objectives. Expressing the vision and therefore your ambitions will allow you to make choices and motivate you to move forward.
The questions to ask you:
- Where do you see your company in 2 years? 5 years?
- Do you have any development ideas?
The values of your company
By defining your mission and vision, your company’s values are derived. The values of a company are the principles on which it bases itself to evolve in its activity and within its sector but also to take its strategic decisions. In a few words, values are the foundation of your company’s culture.
The questions to ask you:
- What values do you defend through your brand?
The panel of offers
Once your mission, your vision and your values have been defined, you must list the offers you propose in order to meet the needs of your target group. Be as clear and precise as possible.
The questions to ask you:
- What services will be offered? His interests? Customer benefit?
Your buyer personas for a brand identity that matches your target
This step is essential in developing a strong brand identity. Identifying the personality and profile of its clients helps to put in place a truly targeted and relevant communication strategy. We will therefore proceed step by step to help you define your buyer profiles.
1. Identify your 3 or 4 profiles
The first step consists in selecting 3 or 4 profiles representative of your customers. Give each one a name, the more detailed you go, the easier it will be for you to understand your target precisely. These 3-4 profiles must, of course, be different in the way they work and interact with your brand. They each have distinct interests and needs.
2. Establish the personality of your buyer personas
Imagine each of these people, their character, their way of life, their work, etc.. Imagine their story and their buying journey and then be able to fully answer them.
3. Define the interests and problems of your buyer personas
Once you have impregnated yourself with your buyer personas, try to identify their interests and understand their issues.
Tools such as Xtensio or Make My Persona will help you create your target profiles in detail.
From there follows your brand image
Once your buyer personas created, you need to design a strong and recognizable brand image with these different profiles. There are three different ways to reach your targets with your communication.
The cognitive stage
The cognitive stage represents the awareness of the brand and what it offers. This stage will allow you to develop the notoriety of your brand.
The emotional stage
The emotional stage will develop the sympathy capital of your brand in the mind of your target. It is a question here of appealing to sensitivity and emotion.
The cognate stage
This stage creates the transition between the desire and the act of purchase. It is a question here of increasing the motivation of your visitors in order to push them to buy and to reduce this barrier which slows them down.
To reinforce your brand identity and image, it is also important to appropriate one or two archetypes that will enhance your company and strengthen the brand image you want to spread.
Archetypes for a strong brand identity
This archetype idea was developed by psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and defined standards of universal representations within each. In communication, these archetypes are found under the number of 12 and are often used by brands that wish to be part of the collective unconscious and create a strong and memorable image. If you want to know more about these 12 archetypes and identify which ones are best suited for your brand, I invite you to read our article The 12 Archetypes : Greek mythology at the service of your brand image.
The style to adopt
It is important, in editorial style, to show clearly what you do and what you offer to your potential customers. The message must be positive and easy to understand. It is therefore important to avoid overly cumbersome vocabulary that will point the client in the right direction and to use positive and reassuring words.
Several steps must then be followed to define a good editorial line
First, the definition of objectives
What is the purpose of your website, blog, etc? What exactly is it for? To disseminate information about your company, your offers? Do you want to gain visibility and notoriety? These are all questions that you will have to answer in order to define a style and an editorial line that suits you.
Then define the themes to be treated
Which subject do you wish to address or which themes do you wish to address? This applies for example to the blog that accompanies your website. You are going to deal with your favorites, the life of the company, technical questions or your sector of activity?
I mean, who are you talking to?
Depending on the target audience and their expectations, your tone will have to be adapted: you want to speak in an institutional or freer way. It is important here to refer to your buyer personas!
The vocabulary to use
This part of your brand identity aims to include vocabulary words specific to your business and the message you want to convey.
Hook
Once you have defined your identity and brand image, you can start thinking about a catch phrase, a baseline that characterizes your company.
Conclusion : A strong brand identity is the guarantee of a strong reputation
As you will have understood, brand identity is an indispensable process that will help you lay the foundations of your business. You can refer to it as often as necessary and communicate it to your associates in order to facilitate exchanges and work while respecting your identity. Brand identity will also help you stay consistent and uniform across all your communication channels. Crux Creative Solutions is one of the best corporate branding agency in India which provide services for creating a good brand identity for our clients. To know more about our offer, call at +91-124-4207905 or email us at reachout@cruxcreativesolutions.com.