Sometimes businesses need to redefine themselves in order to survive in a competitive market or to gain better traction and higher profits. The best way to do that is to create a fresh brand identity that will make your business more appealing, engaging, and memorable to customers.
Perhaps your business is new and doesn’t have a fully developed brand yet, or perhaps your existing business just needs a little sprucing up to appear current. Either way, you can create a compelling visual brand by following these 4 steps:
1. Understand the Meaning and Scope of Your Brand Identity
Brand identity is far more than your company’s name and logo. It has to do with your Unique Selling Point (USP) and approach to business, as well as the overall stance your business takes towards the issues and challenges it faces.
The totality of these elements make up your business’ overall identity, which is then expressed visually through through your advertising materials, social media, signage, packaging, content publishing and even the overall environment of your business.
Before shifting to a new brand identity, you have to fully understand the essence of your old one and why you need to change it. That will help you learn more about how to make your first steps.
2. Know Your Audience
To create a new brand identity, it’s not enough to just brainstorm ideas and go with what feels best to you. You will need to do a lot of research to find out more about your competitors and your audience. See how well your current brand identity works and why certain aspects of it are more appealing to your audience than others.
The main key is to learn as much as possible about who your audience, prospects and clients are, as well as what they like and dislike. This information will set you on the path to create an awesome new brand identity that will not only push your company towards a fresher perspective within your vision, but also use your target audience’s approval as a literal launching pad to greater success.
3. Define Your Business’ Persona and Visual Look
Start with a brainstorming session with your staff to find out which an approach that best fits the demographic and the population segment you’re catering to. Young people and teenagers might need something more engaging, colorful and dynamic, while men and women over the age of 30-35 might be more interested in a focus on stability and a pragmatic outlook.
Fashion your business’ new branding and personal look and feel based on what your audience likes the most about what you can offer. Even if other population segments would find it boring or over the top, it doesn’t matter too much as long as you’re getting more customers from among your targeted segment.
4. Integrate Your New Brand Identity Into Your Business
What means are you using to get the message across to your customers regarding what your business can do? To fully integrate your new brand identity into your business, you have to use all those means to reshape your brand identity entirely.
Sometimes you have to go slow and build a gradual change. Other times building a striking new look for your promotional materials, online website, product packaging and all other visual elements you rely on, should be done all at once. It will differ from one business to the other, but the principles a
