Now maybe more than ever, it is essential for business owners and marketers to create a strong identity for their brand, but this is no easy task. Building and maintaining a cohesive and meaningful brand identity takes time, coordination, constant attention, and adjustment. Today we’re sharing our best tips to help you develop or strengthen your own unique brand identity!

“Brand Identity” really is the sum of many smaller parts that, when put together, form an overall image or impression. Hubspot summarizes the concept of brand identity as “...what your brand says, what your values are, how you communicate your product, and what you want people to feel when they interact with your company.” A strong brand identity will help you to stand out from your competitors, build trust with your customers, and increase brand loyalty. So, how can you get started on developing a strong brand identity?

1. Try brand personification (no, seriously.)

You can think of ‘brand identity’ as the unique personality of your brand. A common exercise done by marketers is to imagine that their business was a person. What would this person be like? What would be their interests? Their values? How old would they be? What would they wear? Would they be outgoing? Quiet? Funny? Adventurous? The goal is to create a ‘personality’ that reflects the core values of your brand, and it can help you to position yourself in terms of your target audience, your competition, and your value proposition. By completing this first step, you will have a vision to guide you as you sculpt your brand.

2. Develop consistent visuals

Logo design is tricky, and it can be a good idea to get professional help with developing an effective logo design. The ideal logo is simple, memorable, and easily recognizable. It also needs to be scalable, so that it’ll look good printed on anything from large billboards to smaller business cards or clothing tags.

While your logo is the ‘face’ of your brand, everything from the fonts you use to the colour scheme of your store and your ads contribute to your brand’s visual identity. For this reason, the visuals used by your brand must be always consistent, not only with each other but with your brand’s overall persona and values. The goal is for your audience to instantly recognize your company when they see one of your ads or drive by your location.

Create your brand messaging

Just like with visuals, your brand needs to have unified and consistent messaging. “Messaging” includes everything from your tagline to your brand story and any other messages that are used in your brand communications. Keep your target audience in mind when developing your messaging- what are their interests? What problems do they have that your business can help them solve? What will catch their attention?

Check-in regularly

Your work is not done after you’ve developed your initial brand identity–it’s vital to monitor your brand’s performance and adjust accordingly! You may find that your chosen message or visuals are not resonating with your audience the way you want them to, or your business might grow and change and need updated visuals, messaging, and positioning.

Hopefully, these steps will have you well on your way to building a brand image that is memorable, recognizable, and consistent across your various marketing channels. For more information and examples of successful brand identities in action, take a peek at this article from Hubspot.