The Importance of Brand Identity

Without delving into a deep thesis on the basis of human interaction, I think it’s safe to say that people want to feel a sense of community. We, as consumers, tend to define ourselves based on what groups we belong to and what products we buy. Are you a Mac or a PC? Do you drink Coke or Pepsi?  Any big fan of Coke will have plenty of reasons as to why they won’t drink Pepsi and vice-versa. We tend to find ourselves segmented into niches of things that we like.

Enter: Brand Identity

Creating an identity for your brand is an extremely important piece of building a consumer base. Do you want people to perceive you as cool, young and hip? Or do you want them to see you as a knowledgeable expert? What kind of customers do you want to draw in, and how do you want your customers to define your brand?

Again, we want to identify with our brands, and you want customers to see themselves as part of your community.

Well, how do we do this?

This starts with figuring out what we want our brand identity to be. A good tactic is to start by taking a blank sheet of paper and finishing these statements:

MY COMPANY NAME= _________

What does my  company do?
What is my office’s culture?
Who do we serve?
Why do customers want to do business with us?

This answers the questions of the “how” and the “why” of a business. If you don’t get this part of the process right, you can very easily try to use the wrong tactics to reach the wrong audience and you’ll come off looking like this:

However, if you can answer those questions effectively for your audience, you’ll start yourself down the path of getting reactions from your fans like this:

Some other things that will factor into this excitement about your brand is to be mindful of the ways that you’re connecting with your audiences.

Yes, a company blog is fine, but what else can we be doing?

  • Instill an office culture that allows your employees to be proud of where they work and what they do. This leads to them projecting their pride and invites customers to also be proud.

  • Incentivize your customers to do the same. Get them excited about your company and what you do by posting and sharing about the cool projects your team is cooking up.

This is how a company like Apple does what it does, without social media marketing. They let their fans speak for them. The fans are the channel of communication for Apple on social, and it works because every one their fans are constantly connected to what’s going on, and they’ll be the first to share whatever they find interesting.

So yes, clear Brand Identity is one of the most important things that your company can do to help its growth. Some of the ways that you want to do this is to really know who you are and who you’re trying to connect with. As well as getting as many people involved in the conversation as possible.