The Unconventional Guide to Brand Identity

Brand identity is an important factor to the success of your business. It's exactly how the audience differentiates you from your competitor – in more ways than the quality of your products and/or services.

I've compiled a few tips to establishing your brand identity – all of which you probably won't find on your typical Google search:

TIP #1: TAKING A LOOK IN THE MIRROR

As the King of Pop famously sang, "take a look at yourself, and then make a change", and right he was. The most common mistake that business owners commit is not going through a self-inventory before establishing their brand identity.

Always look in the mirror and do a self-assessment. Image source: GIPHY

The first step to creating a brand identity is to establish a solid marketing strategy. Not sure how to get one started? Check out this 3-Step Marketing Strategy I so graciously created for you!

You need to be able to answer the following questions:

• Who is my ideal target audience?

• What products/services do I provide to solve their problems?

• How much can I afford to make my target audience aware of my products/services?

Now, you're ready to move on and choose your brand identity!

TIP #2: CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY

There's a spectrum of personas you can take on as a business. You can choose to be different from your competitors, or you can choose to be similar – regardless, the choice you make must serve the purpose of why you're doing this in the first place!

Decide on who your audience needs you to be. Image source: GIPHY

Remember your marketing strategy? This is where that comes in handy.

Understanding (1) who your target audience will respond to; (2) how to convince them your business is exactly what they need; and (3) what means and channels can you afford to accomplish (1) and (2) will all bring about exactly who your business needs to become.

A perfect example would be Wendy's. Heard of them lately?

Unless you've thrown away all screens and renounced the modern world, you probably noticed that Wendy's has become sort of the bad*ss of the fast food industry. Pardon my french.

The previously 11th ranking fast-food franchise in the US decided to become the industry disruptor by directly antagonizing the head honcho itself. You know the one... big yellow arches, red hair, smelly play places.

By assuming their new brand identity, Wendy's has jumped to the 4th spot within 5 years. Quite a jump for simply sending a few mean tweets here and there.

Speaking of tweets, let's move on to the next step: selecting the channels by which you can reach your audience.

TIP #3: SELECTING YOUR RIGHT CHANNELS

I hate to sound like a broken record, but tell me again: who is your audience? Are they elderly males from the ages of 50+ struggling with performance issues? Perhaps young adults between the ages of 18-26 with small incomes and large appetites?

Understanding your demographics is key to this step because you need to understand where you can find your ideal audience. Find out exactly what channels effectively and efficiently reach your masses and start to put yourself out there! Don't be shy.

Choose wisely to avoid wasting time, money and labor. Image source: GIPHY

As a general rule of thumb, it's safe to know that certain demographics can be reached better through social media (and to dig even deeper, each social media platform has its own demographic advantages and draws within them), while others can be reached better through traditional means (generally more expensive).

Remember that third question about how much you're willing to spend? Well, this is mostly where that comes into play. The same question also pertains to the next step...

TIP #4: CONSISTENCY IS KEY

Now that you have your identity chosen and your channels selected, it's time to saddle up and pump out as much quality content as possible.

Your budget determines how you can approach this step. Are you willing and able to sit down and create meaningful and relevant content to your audience? If so, then more power to you! This is probably the most affordable means to do so, but understand that consistency is key. You can't assume an identity like Wendy's and suddenly become the timid twitter account.

Find your guns and stick to them! Consistency is key. Image source: GIPHY

The same rules apply when you're spending money for someone else to create content for you. Whether it's a writer for your blog or a videographer for your commercials, it's important to keep your brand identity in the center of all content – assuming you did the legwork of creating your brand identity with your audience in mind. But if you followed these tips so far, then I suppose you would be safe from that problem!

TIP #5: INTERACTION > VIEWS

This one probably applies mostly for digital channels, but I can imagine the general idea of this working just as well for traditional methods.

Know that it's more important for your content to be talked about by ten people than to be seen and ignored by a hundred people. Generally speaking, if this content is on a platform on social media, you're more likely to appear more on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn if you're creating a buzz of interaction. And on another note, you're also more likely to convert these conversations into sales! Isn't that the point of all this hullabaloo to begin with? The correct answer is yes, in case you were wondering!

Stir the pot, but don't step on any toes! Image source: GIPHY