A Guide to Crafting Your Brand Identity

The world of business is all about creating a sense of identity. Brand recall, loyalty, voice, and personality are all central to setting yourself apart aesthetically. Still, even more crucially, your brand identity is the primary pathway a company can use to connect and relate to its audience. 

But what is brand identity at its core, why is it important, and how can any business, big or small, craft one that resonates with what makes it unique? From the branding experts at Accent Branding, here’s all you need to know about crafting your brand identity. 

What is brand identity?

Brand identity is a company’s essence. It manifests the company’s physically tangible dynamics and non-tangible aspects, building it into a unique entity. Various elements can be considered part of brand identity, including imagery, logos, color palettes, voice, values, personality, messaging, website design, user experience, mission, story, and more! 

Consider just how unique you are as an individual, all the parts, pieces, ideas, and experiences that make you who you are. Businesses can be just as unique, and brand identity is the formulation and establishment of that unique positioning relative to the rest of the business world. 

Importance of Brand Identity 

Brand identity is crucial to the success of any company. It is the lifeline of what makes individuals recognize one company from another, and it holistically represents a business regarding what it is, why it is there, and how it will impact those around it. Especially in the highly competitive modern business environment, brand identity is the primary way a company can stand out, build customer loyalty, and efficiently convey the values and essence of a brand. 

Business is all about relationships, and that’s precisely what brand identity does: it helps build relationships with others, primarily customers. Without brand identity and the ability to build relationships, a business will become irrelevant with a minimal customer base. 

Crafting Your Brand Identity

Creating a successful brand identity is not as simple as sketching up an interesting logo and calling it a day – it requires deep consideration of the company, its purpose, and its values and intentionally developing a fully-faceted and holistic representation of what you find. As you go through the following steps in crafting brand identity, be sure to always keep in mind the following core features: 

• Cohesive Imagery: brand name, colors, logo, and aesthetic design that all work together 
• Personality: how the brand relates and communicates with those around it 
• Purpose: what is the ultimate goal that the brand aims to achieve?

Step 1 – Evaluate the Company 

The first step is to dig deep into the outlined above, primarily the company’s overall purpose and goal. Finding a solid foundation to build the rest of the brand is critical, so consider starting with your Unique Selling Points (USPs) and working outwards from there. What makes your company unique? What is your company’s history and story? Values, purpose, goals, and distinguishing factors should all be outlined clearly. 

Step 2 – Determine Brand Positioning

Similarly to step 1, the next necessity is to establish how the brand will be positioned, or, in other words, leaders need to determine its objectives and how they will be realized. Brand positioning should be integrally connected with the business’s strategic goals, such as how it will approach the customer market and its competitors, which will be reflected in creating an identity that’s memorable, recognizable, and unique. This step should include investigating the company’s target market so that the brand can be formulated in the best way to enhance customer loyalty. 

Step 3 – Establish Brand Personality and Aesthetic 

Steps 1 and 2 help formulate the brand foundation and strategy, but the time has now come to begin manifesting it. In this step, leaders need to finalize the brand’s personality, including its voice, messaging, name, logo, colors, and other aesthetic or communication factors that are built around the findings in the original two steps. This is undoubtedly a time for creativity, but the main goal should be to create a personality and aesthetic that is comprehensive and unified, ultimately seeking to convey the brand in the most authentic way possible. 

Step 4 – Collect Feedback 

Step 4 is just as necessary as the rest, so don’t think this is an opportunity to cut corners and save time. Once the brand identity has been established, including its physical and aesthetic manifestation, collecting feedback from stakeholders, employees, and samples from your target audience is critical. With valuable feedback, leaders can iterate and adjust to optimize its reception.

Step 5 – Integrate Branding Into Business Activity 

With a complete brand identity, the time has come to integrate it into the rest of your business, its activities, and all of its assets. The brand is meant to be comprehensive so that all facets of the company are unified and recognizable, so the deployment of the brand identity should likewise be consistent. This may take time to adopt, but the sooner it is completed, the better. The new brand identity should refresh everything from brick-and-mortar locations to employee uniforms, branded merchandise, and more. 

Jumpstart Your Brand Identity 

Brand identity is core to a company’s success – if done poorly, the business will suffer, but if done correctly, the business will thrive. When it comes to integrating brand identity into the rest of the company, it can be overwhelming once the scale of it all is clear. But with the help of reputable branding professionals, such as Accent Branding, converting your company’s uniforms and merchandise has never been easier. Contact our team today to get started or to learn why our clients love working with us!