How to discover your brand identity | how to determine your brand personality
A brand identity is a statement of who you are and what you stand for. We all want to be known for something, and so we want to take care of that from day one.
It’s much easier when you start with a brand identity and then expand on it later on. The more you know about what people think about and how they perceive your brand, the more relevant your brand identity will be in the future.
The problem is, the internet is full of marketing-driven information, but most of it is really bad. So how do you find your brand identity?
What is Brand Identity?
You’re probably wondering what brand identity is and why you should care about it. The truth is that we have a lot of other things to worry about — like building a business, finding new customers, and expanding our base — so it’s perhaps surprising that we’d spend so much time obsessing over whether our branding works for us.
But here’s the thing: branding is everything. It is what makes your company unique (or not). Without good brand identity, your company will always be different from the crowd; but it won’t be very exciting or interesting either. So, do yourself a favor, and just take a look at this amazing infographic from Brandwatch, which summarizes all the research on consumer brand understanding (from Nielsen, P&G, and AARP) as well as all of its major findings (which should make it easy to spot the differences between your own company and others).
How to Find Your Brand Identity
This is a very important topic. Branding — the way you label your products, services, people, and locations — is a critical part of marketing. What you do with it can have an enormous impact on the success or failure of your business.
As I mentioned in my last post, I am currently in the process of building some kind of branding tool for myself and my company. It will be used by me as well as my business partners to help us communicate what we do and why we do it. This means that it has to be something that we can use ourselves (and wouldn’t mind someone else using) so that others can find us easier.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while because I want it to be an exercise in learning (and not just learning how to use Adobe Illustrator). And it also needs to be something that goes beyond “product design” (which is often only tangential to branding).
The main things I want out of this are:
• A good branding platform (it needs to be modular so that other people can add their own branding ideas)
• A good place where other people can learn more about the project and its goals
• A place where other people can sign up and send feedback on their ideas (perhaps a way of giving them a formal chance to get involved with the project)
Based on these three things alone, I feel like I have pretty good answers to all three questions but more research would certainly help. So if anyone has suggestions on what they think would be good, please let me know! Also note: if you’re going through this yourself, don’t worry too much about having all these answers already — at least not yet. A lot of this stuff is still new even though there are several resources already available on the subject.
How to Use Your Brand Identity in Social Media Marketing
The most powerful tool we’ve been given is our brand. As I wrote in the last post, it’s a repository of values and beliefs that we can use to help us navigate our business and market.
It’s a set of symbols and symbols alone that does this — and it has nothing to do with “product-market fit.” As you probably know, branding is about creating a unique identity for your business. It lets people know who you are, your products and services, and how you will help them achieve their goals.
This is what drives customers to buy from you; it’s what drives them to refer their friends or colleagues; it’s what keeps your competitors from being able to steal all of your customers away while they simply continue doing what they do best. You may be tempted here to say, “But my product or service isn’t a brand! It doesn’t have any of the above attributes! What makes me different? How am I different? Is this really important enough? Seriously — I can’t believe they actually think my product or service isn’t a brand!
This is the mistake that many startups make when trying to develop an image online: they try too hard for that first impression.
Brand identity takes time: every day for years, if not decades (or longer). Be patient with your social media marketing; it needs time too. But don’t let yourself get put off by this advice; when people see you on social media it just means more people are already aware of who you are and how well you do things (and therefore how much value they get from them). Remember that not everyone sees social media as an extension of your business; some things just aren’t appropriate for sharing in this medium (like personal photos or ads). Be thoughtful about what kind of content belongs were on social media too (I write more about this in my next post).
Conclusion
In a state of flux and in an industry that’s moving at a very, very fast pace, brand identity is the one thing that can help you stay on top of your game.
The best way to do this is to research your competitors and pick an image you like and find out more about who they are. Remember that brand is what your audience thinks of you (so really don’t be afraid to spend some time figuring out what they think of you).
The second best way is to make a list of selling points for yourself (or, if you are already in that space, the most important ones), and create a visual representation that tells the story of how your product or service solves the problem or does something better than its competition.
