Does your brand identity appeal to your desired audience?
Whether business owners or key stakeholders realise it or not, your brand identity is what helps determine the perception your customers have of the organisation, and ultimately aids to inform their decision on whether to engage, buy, or use your services.
A brand identity has many components, such as marketing, design, internal and external communications, and human resources. Collectively, these must all work together to help customers begin to identify, trust, and become loyal to a brand.
The four contributing factors to a brand’s overall personality are: product or service (what the business sells or the service it provides), environment (the physical home of the brand), communication (how it talks to people) and behaviour (how it treats people). Wherever a company interacts with an audience, it needs to look, feel, or behave like itself, and do this in a consistent manner.
Your brand identity will also help you to stand out from your competitors. This is becoming increasingly more important as consumers are getting exposed to new brands every day, especially on social media.
Plus, it’s a great way to build a positive team culture too. For example, shared ethos, values, and interests, provide a sense of unity within your business.
Events over the last couple of years have meant that companies have had to adapt to survive more than ever before, now seeking to use new ways to reach their customers. This includes, diversifying into new markets, altering their range of services and products, as well as how they sell to customers and promote themselves.
Companies have also had to adapt to more online interactions, rather than face-to-face. All these changes may have altered how the company operates, how it communicates with its customers, and the buying profile of the ideal customer it now wishes to attract.
As a result, the perceptions of your company’s brand identity could be very different now compared to before – and more importantly, how it wants to be viewed today and in the future.
At Purpose Media, we are finding that many businesses are now reflecting on their brand identity to ensure it is still perfectly aligned with the image they wish to convey, and in tune with perceptions from their ideal customer.
If your brand identity is not consistent or in-line with your personality, ethos and goals, this could lead to dissatisfaction from current customers. Building trust through shared values is essential as this will lead to audience loyalty.
Inconsistency could also reduce effectiveness of marketing to new customers, and lead to a decrease in sales and profitability.
We’ve rounded up our top 3 tips for assessing and refreshing your branding:
As strategic brand consultants, we work with clients to establish whether their current brand is positioned correctly, so that they can engage the right audience to meet their purpose.
We begin with an initial discovery session to seek answers to some of the following questions:
From these questions, we are able to determine if the brand identity, messaging, and positioning need to be updated, or completely overhauled.
Only then can you build a brand that encompasses the core values and offer a competitive advantage.
Successful brands develop a consistent and compelling brand identity for both internal and external audiences that they believe in. It becomes the channel through which the organisation presents itself internally, and to its various external audiences. It influences every part and every audience of the business – all the time, everywhere.
If you would like to improve the perception of your company, build the trust of your customers and employees, outshine your competitors, and increase conversions with a consistent brand identity that reflects where you are as a business today – maybe we should talk?
Together we can create a brand identity that engages your audience and inspires new customers.
Don’t hesitate to give us a call to see how we can help your business.