Too often, the mindset of business owners is that their brand will somehow make itself. Unfortunately, you are only making more problems for yourself in the future. Inconsistent messages and visuals will confuse your customers, leaving them wondering not only who you are but if you are reliable and reputable. In order for your business to succeed, you need to know how to build a strong online brand identity for your business. Not only will you be able to boost recognition of your brand, but you will also be able to coax customers away from your competitors.
Key Takeaways
- Brand identity serves as the face and personality of a business, ensuring instant recognition, trust, credibility, and fostering consumer loyalty.
- Develop a brand story addressing customer queries, including the brand’s mission, solutions, and business goals.
- Seek support from digital marketing experts to streamline brand development, content creation, and enhance online visibility.
What is Brand Identity?
Brand identity refers to the visual and conceptual representation of a brand. It encompasses the unique elements that distinguish a brand and make it easily recognizable to consumers. This includes visual elements such as logos, color schemes, and design aesthetics, as well as intangible elements such as brand values, messaging, and the overall personality associated with the brand.
Why is Brand Identity Important?
You can think of brand identity as the face and personality of your business, as if your brand was a person. A strong brand identity ensures instant recognition, allowing consumers to connect with the brand on a deeper level. Consistency in brand elements builds trust and credibility, fostering a sense of reliability. Moreover, it contributes to consumer loyalty by creating an emotional attachment and making the brand memorable.
Steps to Build a Strong Online Brand Identity
Now that you know more about brand identity, let’s look at some steps on how to build a strong one to support business growth:
1. Determine Your Ideal Customers
You can’t create a concrete brand identity without first understanding what resonates with your customers. Knowing what your customers want and expect will help you suss out elements of a brand that supports your products and services. To do this, you must research your primary, secondary, and tertiary target audiences and understand their likes, dislikes, values, and interests.
When you have a deep understanding of your customers, you know the elements and personalities that align with them the most. Once you have set up profiles for the ideal customers, you can move on to comparing these profiles to those of your competitors. Who are your competitors targeting? What language are they using? Which colors and themes do you see most often?
Consider all this and start developing a brand that is uniquely yours while still holding onto what your customers want to see.
2. Create Assets
With the research part of developing brand identity over, you can move on to the more interesting part: visualization of assets. Your assets are anything that has to do with the look and feel of your brand identity, such as:
- Logo
- Typography
- Color palettes
- Photography
- Graphics
- Iconography
When crafting these assets, keep the customer in your mind. You want a clear visual and message that is also consistent throughout every asset you create.
3. Develop a Story
Although the logo and the graphics and colors are important, another pivotal piece of the brand identity puzzle is your brand’s story. This is not necessarily the history of your brand—though that can play a role—but more about answering specific questions from your customers.
Those questions include:
- What is your brand’s mission?
- What pain points does your brand target?
- How can your products or services alleviate those pain points?
- Why did you decide to alleviate said pain points?
- What are the goals of your business?
4. Continuous Monitoring
Your brand is going to continuously evolve and grow as your business does. That’s normal. As such, you need to monitor your brand, the trends, and your customers. As moods and trends shift, so too should your brand. This doesn’t mean changing spontaneously and without warning. Instead, see what elements of your brand can gently shift to support a more positive influence on your customers.
5. Team Up With Digital Marketing Experts
Tackling all the steps needed to build a solid brand identity can be difficult when you are just starting out and need all hands on deck. That is where local digital marketing services can help. Digital marketing experts will know how to not only pinpoint your brand but also develop solid content that supports your story and identity. Plus, digital marketing is an ongoing process that effectively strengthens your brand as you grow. It can also scale with your business, expanding your reach as far as you need to go.
Through professionally written content to thought-out PPC advertising, digital marketing services can seamlessly tie everything about your brand together and do the labor required to get you noticed.
6. Hone Your Tone and Language
Once your brand has been established, it is time to think about building a community around it. One of the best ways to do that is to provide a continuous stream of high-quality content. Your content is a key element in the first impression you make. It is the opening message to new customers, the words of thanks to returning ones, and the way that you excite your target audience again and again.
In other words, you need to pin down the language that you use, the emotions you connect with, and the way you market your content. For example, if you are a bespoke interior designer, your language and tone may lean towards sophisticated and professional. For a laid-back coffee cafe, your tone may be more youthful or casual.
The tone will also evoke emotions. Returning to that cafe. You may use a conversational tone that is welcoming and warm, that attracts people who want a place to chat with their friends.
Contact Your Local Digital Marketing Specialists Today
Creating a strong online brand identity is all about finding cohesion with your ideal customer’s profile and your brand assets. This may sound simple, but it is going to take a little bit of research and some trial and error. It will be worth it, however, when customers are coming to you instead of the competition. Gain the advantage of solid brand identity faster by working with the digital marketing specialists of Digital Marketing Group, LLC. The team at DMG is professional, experienced, and innovative, pushing the limits of branding and SEO to get your business seen. Get in touch with us today by calling 1-800-969-4736 or by filling out the contact form.