What to Know About Developing Brand Identity
[fusion_text]Do you take advantage of all the benefits content marketing can provide, including increasing brand identity? If you’re a small to mid-size business trying to develop brand identity or gain an online presence, you should be! There are still may businesses that have not taken advantage of the benefits content marketing has to offer. One of those benefits includes improving brand identity and your online presence.
What is Brand Identity & Why is it Important?
The term ‘Brand Identity’ refers to physical attributes of a company, such as hearing the company name or seeing their logo. Some companies have a unique smell. These are all aspects of brand identity.
Brand identity has several benefits, including:
• Helps the company get noticed.
• Makes the company recognizable
• Increases the chance of being remembered
• Makes it possible for customers to accumulate experience
• Encourages the implementation of brand strategy
Basically, brand identity means “who you really are” and it will be a customer’s first impression towards your company. It becomes the persona of your company.
When done efficiently brand identity can raise brand awareness, and even influence potential customers into purchasing your product or service. The following will explain the process for building a strong brand identity.
What to Know About Developing Brand Identity
Sell the Brand, Not the Product
In the past, product marketing was a large factor. However, this is the digital age. Research and statistics have shown companies only have 5 to 20 seconds to leave a lasting impression on the audience. This limited amount of time.
Instead of attempting to highlight a product, you want to highlight your brand. If people do not find your brand valuable or entertaining, they will quickly move on.
It is the audiences’ impression towards your brand that will have the biggest impact on customer purchase behavior. By getting people excited about your brand, you will be able to convert leads into sales.
Brand Identity Reflects Your Company
Focusing on what customers want and need are important factors, but so is knowing who you are as a business. Once this is determined, it should be reflected in company branding and marketing strategies. This stage helps build authentic and favorable relations between the business and customer. By doing so, it creates more time before customers go to a competitor.
For example, the type of font your website uses can make a difference. When selling a more modern product, fonts such as Helvetica provide better results than an older Serif font.
Areas to Assess
Entrepreneurs often question the best methods for accurately determining and increasing their position. Although different business tools and software are available, many business owners believe in the SWOT analysis approach.
SWOT analysis refers to:
Strengths: It is important to assess your strengths from an internal perspective, but also from the perspective of your potential customers.
Weaknesses: No business owner enjoys knowing they have weaknesses. Being honest here is important, as the list indicates areas to improve.
Opportunities: Assessing the current position of the market and target audience, you can determine potential opportunities for services or products.
Threats: Assess and list any internal or external factors that could become a threat to business growth. Internal factors are anything in your business that may limit growth. Whereas, external factors include changes in technology, new government regulations, economic changes, and competition.
A simplified approach to the SWOT analysis, according to Tony Robbins is simply creating a 2×2 grid. Using paper or and Excel spreadsheet, create two columns with. In the left column, place strengths and opportunities. On the right column, place weaknesses and threats.
Implement Content Marketing Practices
Many times brand identity fails due to a lack of content marketing. It is important that content is also a focus point, as it helps represent and impress customers.
For example, the landing page for a content marketing agency has several misspelled words. When people click on the landing page and see grammar issues, they will not want to contact you and go to a competitor.
Landing pages or Home pages should provide potential customer with descriptive content that people may relate too.
Re-branding
After progressing through the stages of brand identity development, suddenly you have the urge to re-brand. The good news, there is nothing wrong with needing to re-brand, especially when the company perception needs changing. Even large companies do it to appear more modern.
However, before re-branding a strategy should be created and implemented to avoid scaring off any customers or leads.
Avoid Shortcuts & Gimmicks
This should be obvious, but do not use gimmicks instead of hard work. When brand identity is lacking, it greatly reduces the potential of content marketing, including eBooks and SEO strategy.[/fusion_text]