Establishing Your Brand Identity  

Guest post by Heather Snyder, Heather Hearts Art

Establishing your brand identity is a crucial first step in ensuring your company’s success. Think of it as an elevator pitch. A brand needs to be appealing, easy to understand, and feature exactly what the business is about.

Brand identities may utilize a logo, specific colors, fonts, and other visual elements to be distinguishable, unique, and memorable to your market.

A successful brand identity creates an automatic reminder of your business in the mind of the consumer. It helps you to stand out from the crowd.

Think of the most successful businesses in the world. What comes to mind? Their logo, the name of their business, and  characteristics of their company, all working together to craft a positive brand image.

Create a Positive First Impression

Ensuring a positive first impression with your customer will help to differentiate you from other businesses. Incorporating a personal, memorable story will also help to define your brand while attracting customers who identify with your experience.

Specifying your brand identity and establishing yourself as an expert in your industry will help consumers select your company over another.

Principles to Establish Your Brand

Ready to define your brand? Consider starting with the following principles.

• Position – Defining a brand’s position through product and service.
• Promise – The promise a brand makes to separate it from competition.
• Personality – The visual and emotional personality traits appearing throughout a brand identity.
• Parable – The story behind the brand.
• Proprietary – The unique expression of the brand’s identity through colors, fonts, logo, icons, etc. definitive of your service and/or products.

Check out these free resources to start your brand identity exploration:

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Brand Workbook

Hubspot’s Brand Workbook

Whether you are starting new or rebranding, establishing a compelling brand identity will help your business succeed!