Brand identity is a bridge that emotionally connects over 64% of women and 68% of men with a business. Today, it’s not seen as a tool to make people choose you over the competition. However, that might happen anyway if you get your branding right.
A great branding strategy must result in the following:
- Convey your message or brand story clearly and concisely.
- Establish yourself as a credible brand.
- Connect you with your audience on an emotional level.
- Create brand loyalty.
- Compel the audience to buy your products/services.
Keep reading to know why you must take branding seriously by partnering with design services like The NetMen Corp.
Branding Makes You Unique
If you run a business, you’re bound to come across the term Unique Selling Proposition (USP). It’s the one—or more—thing that makes you better than the competition. First, think about what makes a product appealing to a potential customer. Second, think about the benefits of your products/services. Finally, find a middle ground between the two.
In other words:
- Ignore the benefits you share with the competition.
- Shortlist the benefits of making your products and services unique.
- Promote benefits that might pique your customers’ interest.
Following the above strategy can make all the difference between a one-of-a-kind brand and a dime-a-dozen brand. If there’s anything to take away from brand psychology, it’s that you applying the same strategies as your competitors will only blend you in, not help you stand out.
Branding Represents You
When we say branding represents you, we mean it doesn’t just represent your business. On the contrary, how you position your business will reflect your values, beliefs, and commitment to the products and services you’re trying to sell.
Branding is a way of showing how much you believe in your products and services. Thus, making half-hearted attempts or eschewing it entirely might be counterproductive. It could give your audience an implicitly negative message about how much you respect your brand.
The following aspects of your branding strategy have a voice, and you should tailor them in a certain way to give the right perception of your organization:
- Logo design
- Social media posts
- Packaging design
- Brochure design
- Business cards
- Website design
Branding Makes it Easy to Choose You
With the increasing focus on transparency, branding is no more one of the options for your business; it’s essential. Consumers need a reason to pick your product and service over the competition. They’ll pick whoever is clear and concise in what they provide and delivers on that promise.
You may gain widespread interest for your clear branding—customers might buy from you after reading the perks of your products and services—but they won’t stick around for long if your products and services don’t walk the talk. Remember: it’s not loyalty programs that build brand loyalty but your ability to consistently come through on your claims.
Take Red Bull, for instance. It was one of the first energy drinks in the world, but it certainly wasn’t the best. It has the same level of caffeine as a cup of coffee, so what’s the point of buying something you can find in every kitchen cabinet? There isn’t, which is why consumer interest has slowly shifted to its competitors.
Branding Improves Talent Acquisition
When you don’t sell any products, you must try extra hard to be approachable to your target audience. Many businesses ignore employee branding when acquiring brand identity services because they don’t believe it’s an option. Good employee branding represents your organization as a great workplace, reduces employee turnover, and improves your chances of attracting great talent.
Take Meta, for example. The company knows how to promote employee benefits, including health and wellness, professional development, or vacation days. They post them all over the search engines through graphic design, catchy slogans, and what have you to ensure maximum coverage. As a result, the company attracts talent from all over the world.
Branding Builds Trust
Now that we’ve established that branding isn’t just important for attracting customers, you can assume that anything we say from here applies to building trust with existing and potential customers, employees, and stakeholders. The latter includes more than just customers. It also constitutes investors, vendors, licensees, governing bodies, business partners, and other entities with a stake in your business.
You’ll automatically earn your stakeholders’ trust if you’re an established business. Fortunately, you don’t have to go out of your way and create a stakeholder engagement strategy if you’re starting out.
Smaller brands can build trust with their stakeholders through consumer engagement. If their branding efforts attract customers, build emotional connections with them, and show customer retention potential—if they’re proactive about collecting and acting on customer feedback—they’re more likely to earn the trust of their investors, partners, and vendors.
How to Get Your Branding Strategy Right
Now that you know how branding is the key to attracting and retaining customers, employees, and stakeholders, let’s get into how you can get your brand identity design right.
Get the Right Graphic Designers on Board
Every branding effort begins and ends with the right designer. Finding the right company for your branding can be tricky. Of course, the most reliable recommendations come from your friends and acquaintances (offline) and third-party reviews (online).
You can also downsize your choices to full-service design agencies, so you don’t have to spend your monetary resources on a different company or freelancer for every branding tactic.
Finally, trust a company with the most experience with your design needs. The NetMen Corp, for instance, has over two decades of experience in professional graphic design, meaning it’s the go-to for several established and small businesses.
Meet Face-to-Face to Discuss Your Brand Message
Even when your chosen design company operates in a different state or country, you must meet them at least once for a face-to-face meeting. It doesn’t have to be in-person; you can always arrange a video conference with the company’s designers to run them through your business side of things and brand story and how you’d like to convey it to an audience.
Be as clear with them as you want them to be about your brand identity design, ask them repeatedly if they have any questions to ask, and share ideas so they have a fair idea of what you expect.
Build a Strong Brand Identity
A strong brand identity brings all the various elements of your brand together. It starts with your logo, an important feature on business cards, stationery, online ads, and other branding services and materials.
Secondly, color enhances the brand identity you’re trying to establish. When you use the single or single set of colors across various designs, you keep it fun yet staid and diverse yet stable. Look at McDonald’s, for instance. The fast-food chain has grown exponentially while sticking to the same three colors—red, yellow, and black.
Some other aspects of strong brand identity include:
- Typeface design
- Templates
- Adaptability
Provide Constructive and Actionable Criticism
It’s unlikely for a first draft to pass muster with marketers. You may have some changes to make or hate the design so much that you want to scrap the whole thing and start from scratch.
However, it would help if you don’t let your inner thoughts bleed into your feedback because it doesn’t bode well for your business relationship. The first order of doing business with a design company: expect back and forth because that’s inevitable for everything involving creativity.
Second: stress and creativity affect and influence each other. You must never put undue pressure on a designer. Always strive to find the positive in everything and provide constructive feedback where you want to inspire change by:
- Looking at a design from a consumer’s perspective, not your own.
- Complimenting the good bits.
- Asking questions before assuming something is the way it seems to you.
- Attempting to understand the designer’s thought process.
Are You Ready to Work on Your Brand Identity with The NetMen Corp?
As one of the oldest design services in Miami, we offer brand identity design services and have much more to share about the importance of branding than meets your eye in this blog. Connect with our professional graphic and web designers to know why small businesses need branding more than larger corporations like Apple, Meta, Coca-Cola, et cetera.
As we mentioned in the second half of this update, touch base with our designers and share your brand message to create logos, digital ads, Amazon listings, web interfaces, stationery, print ads, digital illustrations, and other types of graphic designs.
Get in touch for a consultation on white label design services in Miami.
