If your brand is the sum of what you represent as a business in the eyes of your customers, your brand identity is how those elements are expressed.

From visual aspects like colour palette and typography to the communication style guide and the core values you express, there are a range of palettes available for putting together an expression.

Everything else held equal, customers will always prefer a brand they identify with, because such a brand represents something they want to see in themselves.

Think of your brand identity as a signal, and your ideal customer base as only tuned to a few frequencies. By making sure your brand identity is well thought out and clearly expressed, you send a far stronger and clearer signal to your target market, creating a stronger feeling of identification between you and your customer.

To cut through the noise of the marketplace and broadcast your brand identity clearly, it's necessary first to define exactly what your brand stands for.

So how do you go about doing that?

Developing your Brand Identity

1. Determine your mission and core values
First, think about your mission, and the core values you want your business to represent.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

You probably have an intuitive sense of these already, but it can help to make it explicit by writing it all down.

2. Research your customers and competition
Learn as much as you can about your customer base to get a sense of how you want to create that emotional connection with your brand. What’s important to them, what do they care about? What are their pain points and desires?

Then do a bit of research into your competitors to see what’s already out there. Decide if you want to imitate and improve upon their brand and market positioning, or to set yourself apart as something totally new.

3. Identify your value proposition
Your value proposition lays out the clear, measurable, and demonstrable benefits that consumers receive when purchasing your product or service

Take some time to think about your own value proposition, and then write it out as clearly as you can.

Remember to keep your value proposition customer-centric. This part isn’t about what you want as a business - it’s about how you meet a customer’s needs.

4. Clarify your voice and personality
With the above in mind, think about some personality traits that align with your brand and business, and then note them down. People connect more easily with people than they do with faceless organizations. By giving your brand a personality, it becomes easier for customers to identify with you.

you choose, it’s important that you remain authentic to how your business is actually run, and that once you’ve chosen something, you stay consistent. A consistent brand voice and personality build recognition and trust with your audience, while hollow and dishonest messaging will only erode trust in the long run.

5. Define your brand’s visual identity
Your visual identity is a great way of reinforcing the more abstract and emotional elements of your brand and creating a sense of instant recognition with your customers. Your visual identity consists of your colour scheme, your font selection, your logo, and any other visual elements you might choose to associate with your brand.

There’s a bit of science to this stuff, so take the time to do some research. For instance, colour psychology tells us that cool colours will tend to evoke feelings of calm and peacefulness, while warm colours are generally associated with feelings of appetite, energy, and desire. When choosing your colours, make sure they align with the feelings you want to inspire in your audience.

Remember that sometimes, less is more. 

Part of what makes Nike and Apple’s brand identity so powerful is its simplicity. Nike is bold, challenging you to push yourself. Apple is sleek, minimalist, blending form and function.

Maintain consistency across channels

Once you’ve settled on the core elements of your brand identity, put everything together into a single document, known as your brand guidelines. This document should contain anything and everything you need to know about your brand identity, and should be kept up to date any time you make changes.

Not only is this useful as a reference document for your team, but it’s also helpful for training new hires, and making sure there’s one definitive encapsulation of your brand identity.

Once you’ve settled on your brand identity, stay consistent - if you want your customers to have a very clear mental image of your brand, you need to maintain a clear signal across channels.

While it’s fine to tweak your messaging a little to fit a given platform (LinkedIn and TikTok will have different audiences) it should still read as though it’s coming from the same person. This will help your messaging sink in, and create the impression of a put together, organized, and competent business.

You're brand is more then just a logo. Read more about that here!