How To Build a Strong Brand Identity for Your Business

Growing a business is an unavoidably multifaceted undertaking. As a new start-up entrepreneur, you end up wearing several hats in the building of your enterprise – from selling your potential to investors to building a powerhouse team from scratch to, of course, marketing your service to potential clients.

Building your brand is an essential part of building your business. Without it, there’s no visibility for your project, and no potential for anyone to leverage. Even without considering the outsized impact of digital presence on business success, it’s impossible for a business to stand out against its competition without actively contending with its brand. With all this in mind, how exactly do you build a strand brand identity for your business?

More Than a Logo

Before we get into the weeds with this one, let’s address a common misconception, easily held by new entrepreneurs who don’t have prior marketing experience: a brand is much more than just a fancy logo, or an austere colour palette for your website and correspondence stock. It goes to the core of your business proposition; it’s a full expression of what you stand for, how your present yourself, how you are perceived by your target audience.

In this way, your brand is a differentiating factor between your business and those of competitors. It enables you to clearly demonstrate your values and mission, making it easy for your future customers to find you.

Define Your Purpose, Values and Market Positioning

In order to build your brand, then, you’ll need to have an intrinsic understanding of what to build your brand around. This reflects your business’ core and needs to be thought-through accordingly. Start with the basics: why does your business exist? What are some core values your business will hold? What simple words would define your business’ market position and character?

Practice What You Preach

In acknowledging that your brand reflects other elements of your business, it follows that you might recognise this as a good time to get your figurative house in order. In order to convey that customer convenience is a core value for your business, you’ll need to practice what you preach – whether that means ensuring next-day delivery options are available for your products, or simply ensuring your customer service personnel are well-trained to manage difficult queries and situations.

Develop Visual and Verbal Identity Elements

With the philosophy part covered, you can turn to tangible elements and bring your brand to life. This is the part where a graphic design or marketing consultant can be a worthwhile investment, as not everyone has the same creative streak to realise their brand. For instance, certain colours are better at subliminally conveying certain values – colours which could underpin your visual branding across digital and physical media.

Everything matters logo, colour palette, typography, imagery and general visual style. Even outside of aesthetics, there are variables; tone of voice is key to creating consistency with respect to how your business is perceived. With the right register in web copy, in customer service scripts and in marketing materials, you can create a cohesive identity across forms and formats.

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