How To Build A Strong Brand Identity For Your Business?
Creating a strong brand identity and image is almost everything in today’s competitive business environment. Irrespective of whatever industry you belong to, you need a brand which is like a rock solid foundation to help you stand out amidst competitors and gain customer attention.
A well-built organization always spends sufficient resources for working on its brand.That is the reason whytop brands are recognized easily, because their mission is to promote the reliability of customers.
A brand has to be built cautiously, for it to stand reliably and appropriately, thus complementing the business as a great asset.Building a brand is never a single hand attempt, but is a long drawn shared effort. Anyone and everyone who is interacting with the business, right from the readers of a company’sblog to customers and employees, play their role in creating the brand.
What is a brand identity?
According to the American Marketing Association, a brand is the ‘name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies a seller’s goods or service distinct from the others’. A brand identity serves to be the depiction of your company’s prominence through the attributes, values, prospects and strengths that are conveyed.
According to the world famous brand specialist Jean Noel Kapferer’s model of ‘Brand identity Prism’, there are 6 aspects which a brand identity illustrates; physique, personality, culture, relationship, reflection and self-image.
- Physique–This feature represents the external features such as packaging, logo, color scheme, shape of the packaging etc. For instance, if we think about dominoes, what comes to mind is the blue background, dotted logo, the pizza box etc.
- Personality – This attribute represents the brand’s character. Dominoes tries to represent fun, sharing, liveliness and so on.
- Culture – This represents the value and basic principles on which a brand establishes its personality. Considering the same example of dominoes, the culture is all about sharing, relaxing by taking a break from regular cooking chores and so on.
- Relationship – This aspect of a brand refers to the relationship which the brand can establish between its customers. Dominoes stands behind friendship and family values of sharing and caring.
- Reflection – This refers to the most stereotypical customer of the brand. For instance, even though Dominoes is loved by all and covers a broad spectrum of audience, its major customers are of the age group 18 to 25.
- Self-image–This is the persona which the audience obtain, by obtaining the service or consuming the product of a particular brand. In the case of Dominoes, a customer might get a complete satisfaction of eating a lip smacking pizza, an energetic feeling and self-confidence.
Now that you have understood what brand identity is, here comes some powerful tips on guiding you on strengthening your brand identity.
How to build a strong brand identity?
Starting and running a business can be one of the most empowering and challenging moves in the life of a businessman. It takes more than guts and a great idea to sustain a business though. To be successful in your business, building a strong brand identity has become more than important
1. Stand out with your identity
Branding is all about perception and how you are visible to the eyes of your customers. Create a unique, intriguing and enticing logo and a tagline which grasps the attention and stays on the minds of your customers. Also create your own website for a better which us updated and well-maintained, for a better online presence and increase in customer base.
2. Stay connected
A brand is all about connection. Social media serves to be the best platform for staying connected with your audience. Also create and establish compelling communication strategies, which strongly connect your customers emotionally and motivate them to love your brand and buy from you. For instance, body soap and body spray brands create documentaries on women empowerment and welfare filled with motivating scenes and dialogs just to empower you to buy from them.
3. Be consistent
Once you establish your brand identity, customers expect steadiness and even more, with respect to quality and service. You can ask yourself the following questions.
- Is your message on par with your level in business?
- Is your website serving as your business card and competent enough?
4. Consider endorsing a cause
Cause marketing can improve your business level tremendously. Giving back to the society by supporting a local charity or advertising that a part of the amount which the customer pays for a product goes to charity are all techniques which will take your business and brand to the next level.
5. Deliver what you promised
Strong brands possess credible promises which they have offered to their customers. If you are a new venture, then create a brand promise and offer an exceptional customer experience to audience. These will help in developing brand advocates who will endorse and spread your brand to others through word of the mouth technique.
Above all, always stay authentic. You have to live up to your brand, instead of just talking about it. After all, customers like to give business and take service from brands which they trust.