Strategy
How to Create a Strong Brand Identity

How to Create a Strong Brand Identity

August 16, 2018
4 min read

Increasingly, brands and branding are becoming ubiquitous themes for most businesses. Branding is becoming a necessary strategic tool for marketing strategists. It is not just used for large companies, but it has gained traction among small businesses, celebrities, events, and even non-profit organizations.  

What Exactly Is Brand Identity?

Brand identity refers to the collection of all brand elements created by a company or individual to espouse the right image of itself to its clients. There are visible elements of brand identity that play a significant role in portraying the correct image of a company. Notably, the name, logo, font, tonality, and choice of colours used in branding are the distinctive visible elements that illuminate the value a company seeks to provide to its consumers.

How is your brand perceived by its customers? Essentially, brand image seeks to answer the question. Brand image cannot just be built and left. No! It has to be reinforced through media coverage, customer reviews, customer experience, mission, vision, messaging, storytelling, and differentiating itself from competing brands.

Now you could be wondering, what exactly drives a strong brand identity? Well, a strong brand identity is the culmination of consistency in the use of all of its visible elements. Consistent use of your company logo from the dimension of the colours, consistent typeface across all online and offline channels, consistent customer service, and consistent use of the tonality-personality behind the brand – these all play a vital role in brand identity.

Which tools can I use to create a strong brand identity and build a brand community?

Visual Content

How can you stand out from your competitors? How can you build a brand identity that narrates a consistent story without uttering a word? Simple. Use visual branding! You can use Canva to generate very coherent and consistent visual content and brand elements that will keep you at the top.”

Simple to use with useful resources on its site, and offering a robust free model as well as paid-for subscription, means that this tool is a must if you are seeking to add the professional touch to your visual content.

Logo

Your customers want to get as much information about your brand in seconds. Therefore, your logo should be able to display all the information at first glance. A clever logo that is augmented with an exciting colour scheme can deliver a lot of information to your customers. Just don’t try too hard to be too clever with your logo – it needs to represent your brand and what you offer at a glance.

The good news is that you don’t have to worry about designing your own logo. Designhill’s logo maker is a free-to-use online logo generator that can relieve you the stress of designing the logo in just a few clicks. This simple yet powerful tool uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to create hundreds of unique designs within a minute, all from you inputting a few quick preferences.

Typography

Typography is a design element that, if strategically used, can add some personality to your brand. Typefaces can be used to bring some touch of softness, humour, robustness, and some character to your logo.

You can use the Cool Text Generator to generate text symbols and fancy fonts. However, the use of fonts has its fair share of dos and don’ts that you have to adhere to. Notably, the choice of fonts should always be guided by matching headline, subhead and body font.

Email Marketing

If you really want to establish direct links with your customers, then try email marketing. If set up properly, email marketing will deliver measurable ROI of your investment campaigns.

In fact, a 2015 report on a study by DMA established that for each $1 incurred, email had a $38 return on investment (ROI). Having been tested and tried for years with success, email marketing is a sure bet on your marketing campaigns. You only need to send personalized emails to your recipients while mentioning the brand accurately. You can use the likes of MailChimp to find the best template for any message.

Social Media

For marketers, brand management is a top priority. Close to 3.196 billion – nearly two-thirds of active Internet users – have social media accounts. Therefore, logically, social media is the best platform for brand identity development.

For your social media brand awareness strategies, Hootsuite is the best tool to employ. It is a great platform for discovering, scheduling, managing, and reporting on your social media content. Its social analytics capabilities enable you to measure the influence of your social media campaigns.

Website

Your website, as the first port of call for a customer or prospect, provides you with numerous opportunities to exert your brand identity strategy. Therefore, you must custom design it to accurately present your brand. Let anyone who visits your website see and hear your brand screaming. Let all the elements of your brand identity be in harmony and clear.

A custom design WordPress site can be ideal for building your brand identity. Make your brand identity stand out in your WordPress site by aligning your company’s image, goals, and values.

Presentations

Having a brand consistent website is a necessary but not sufficient consideration for your brand identity strategy. Your presentations should align with your brand to make a difference in the perception you receive. The consistency, quality, and custom-oriented content of your content must ooze the general theme of your brand.

Keynote and PowerPoint are great “go to” presentation tools, while Canva can greatly help you in preparing your presentation design. You only need to upload your image and use the design to set up a customised design.

If you use all the seven tools in a coherent and consistent manner, then be certain that your brand identity will greatly increase. Good luck as you start initiating the tools in your brand awareness strategy.

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Michael Brenner

Michael Brenner is an international keynote speaker, author of "Mean People Suck" and "The Content Formula", and Founder of Marketing Insider Group. Recognized as a Top Content Marketing expert and Digital Marketing Leader, Michael leverages his experience from roles in sales and marketing for global brands like SAP and Nielsen, as well as his leadership in leading teams and driving growth for thriving startups. Today, Michael delivers empowering keynotes on marketing and leadership, and facilitates actionable workshops on content marketing strategy. Connect with Michael today.

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