The reason why branding is important is because branding builds a strong brand image or brand identity.

Brand identity is a very important component in any organization that intends to differentiate itself from the other organizations as well as establish rapport with the consumers. Brand image includes logo, colors, font, tagline, brand personality and much more. Where the brand name is not unique or very small, customers are likely to struggle to recall your business or the services you provide.

Fortunately, there are many deliberate approaches that you can take to create a distinguished and powerful brand image that appeals to your target consumers.

Define Your Target Audience

The first step towards the process is identifying the target market accurately, with as much clarity as possible. It becomes counterproductive to start pampering every client because this clouding of the brand message weakens its impact. Develop the marketing personas that provide specific information about your key consumers including demographics, problems, objectives and beliefs. This will help you in your branding strategy in aspects like message, image, and even the tenor and others.

Understand Your Competition

Conduct extensive market analysis on direct competitors as well as those operating in related industries. Read their websites, their printed material, and any other available literature. Where do they stand? How do they speak? What sets them apart? Where are they vulnerable in their brands that you can capitalize on? It is important to define the opportunities to find your distinctive position among the competitors and to recognize the weaknesses in their strategies.

Communicate Your Brand Narrative

People today not only purchase the product but also the image which the brand represents. Purpose, meaning and values are what they yearn for in their working environment. Provide a genuine background and statement of purpose, vision, passion, and principles for your brand. Insert the ‘why’- the vision of your business and the motivation of changing the world for the better. This adds meaning to branding that is not centered on the financial gains that come with marketing a product.

Select Your Attitude and Temperament 

Your brand voice and personality are a major component of your identity. Are you funny? Intellectual? Helpful? Formal or casual? Hip? Optimistic or matter-of-fact? This should be done through voice exercises that describe your brand as a person. Repeating these personality traits in every aspect of your branding, your content, product descriptions, social media, advertising, and customer engagement will make your message stick.

Choose Your Colors Carefully
 
Whether vibrant, formal, classy, or contemporary — your color palette produces a significant image-branding effect. To achieve this, one should look at direct and indirect competitors in order to make sure that the specific hues hold their ground in the given niche. Every main color must complement each other in order to support the brand personality. Ensure that when you have adopted a shade, you give it specific connotations that you will use across branding points. 

Create a framework of strong visual brand assets

Ensure that you hire a good graphic designer to come up with the following branding assets: the logo, font package, stylistic graphic elements, and image style. Explain the rationale behind each visual element and the guidelines as to how assets have to be represented in different media to ensure the greatest degree of harmony. When used together, they provide a form or a style that is easily identifiable with your brand’s identity.

Create Templates 

Starting from the colors, fonts, logo lockups, graphic elements and the types of images you want to use — create branding templates for all your branding collaterals ranging from PowerPoint slides, brochures, advertisements, product one-page flyer, to email newsletters. The new visual system also applies to web assets such as social media banners and graphics. This makes it much more professional immediately and enables employees to create professional, branded material on their own.   

Focus Brand Personality On Your Website
 
Your website design and content should closely align with the personality and tone that you would like to exude. Closely integrate color scheme, ornamentation, language, photo or illustration style throughout. Using the tone of voice developed in the previous step, write simple, clear and interesting text. Ensure that the images you upload depict your brand vision and ensure that your story is portrayed prominently. This results in building trust and relationship with the value customers hold.

Showcase Humanization Cues 

Customers still want to feel a connection to the human element from the companies they are loyal to even with the existence of advanced technology. Ensure that your “About Us” page displays real team members. Post any images that are associated with organizational culture from events or retreats. Spotlight any brand mascots. Use actual photos that have been provided by the users or customers in that particular business whenever possible. Share visuals of operations and processes that occur behind closed doors on social media platforms. This makes it easier for the customers to connect with the actual people behind your brand.  

Convey Brand Through Packaging

If you are selling a tangible item, then the packaging design is an excellent place to advertise your brand. It is used deliberately on the labels to influence the perception of the characteristics that you want your product to be associated with: color scheme, fonts, logo placement. Other inserts such as photos, stories or quotes add more humanity into your brand. These packs create shelf appeal as consumers are able to associate with consistent packs leading to impulse buying.

Integrate Branding into the Organizational Culture

Your tangible brand image on the outside is a reflection of the internal culture, the values and the leadership within your company. Ensure that the employees you hire fit into your brand personality and support your overall organizational vision. Provide the training on your target voice, messaging principles, and the visual branding guidelines. Link rewards to effective embedding of core brand identity aspects within their work. Offer guidelines and samples that will ensure compliance across the company. One might argue that every employee interface impacts the consumer impression.  

Monitor and Refine KPIs

Continuously measure and monitor factors that indicate the extent to which the audience recognizes your brand and aligns with your awareness, consideration, conversion and loyalty objectives. Use surveys and feedback to find out what customers are saying about the products. Make sure to adjust such parts or campaigns as necessary if certain statistics slip below the anticipated levels. Consumers’ needs are changing, and to address them, you may have to tweak your identity while keeping the essence of it.

An effectively developed brand identity inherently positions you uniquely while communicating with the buyer on an emotional level beyond the actual product. Consistency in strategic visual and messaging themes helps create brand awareness and credibility in the market. It may take time and a lot of discipline to build a good brand but once done you will reap the benefits of loyal customers and good profits for many years to come. Consider these 12 tips as the plan to create a unique and effective image of your business that will be successful in attracting customers and developing the company.