How to Build a Strong Brand Identity

Including a Downloadable Brand Identity Questionnaire Checklist

What is brand identity? & how do you define yours?

Brand identity is what makes you instantly recognizable to your customers, it’s the visible elements of your brand. These elements include color, aesthetic, design, fonts, personality, and logo variations that help identify and distinguish your brand in consumers’ minds.

Your brand identity starts with knowing who you are as a brand:

What is your mission or your why?
What are your values? What beliefs drive your business?
How would you define your brand personality?
What is your unique positioning? How do you differentiate yourself from your competition?
What does your brand voice look like? If your brand was a person, how would it communicate?

Developing a brand identity that is unique to your business and goals while being memorable to your audience is something we all aim for.

But how do you create a successful brand identity? Get started with the steps below.

Identify your industry, your competition, and your target audience. Understanding these key components will help you establish your place within the market you’re entering.
Being authentic is important. You want to create a logo and brand personality that express the mission and unique style of your business.
Generate content ideas and marketing strategies that match your established brand identity. Keep in mind your style, colors, logo variations, target audience, and overall goal with your content creation.
Apply this branding across your organic and paid business strategies. Utilize your brand identity & guidelines to keep a consistent message between your website, social media, advertising, and other marketing initiatives.
Monitor your metrics on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis to track progress and maintain your brand identity. Evolving and changing your brand every so often is a necessary part of your business growth to continuously fit your brand’s vision and goals.

Now that you have answered each of these questions, let’s see what your brand identity essentials include.

Your branding begins the process of shaping the impression that your audience has of your business. Create a branding kit to gain a better understanding of what your brand looks like.

Branding Kit Essentials:

Fonts, Colors, & Guidelines
Logo Variations
Mission, Vision, and Goals
Personality & Aesthetic
Brand Design & Consistency

One of the first steps in establishing your brand identity is creating your brand palette and colors. The colors that you pick to represent your business are one of the first things your target market sees and play a significant role in consumer behavior.

Your colors set the mood of your brand expression and have the ability to drive decision-making from your target audience. Each color you pick has meaning behind it and connects with specific emotions.

WHAT DOES YOUR BRAND COLOR WHEEL LOOK LIKE?

For example.. our cooler neutral tones emphasize the trust, open mind, and balance that you can expect from our team. The touches of green represent the growth, stability, optimism, and refreshed feeling you get when working with us. While our dark blue shows our professionalism, the sense of security we give our clients, and our team’s formality.

SO WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LOGO AND A BRAND?

A logo can be made up of an icon, font, and/or a symbol

A brand is made up of a logo, strategy, design elements, and more

A logo identifies a business in its simplest form

A brand identifies a product, service, or organization as a whole

A logo encourages brand awareness and recognition from your audience

A brand represents your company’s identity and personality

A logo is an illustration, a visual representation of your company

A brand is a precise and strategic vision of your company

Having a consistent brand identity is important for establishing authenticity and building trust with your audience.

It creates a strong base for your marketing strategy, provides clarity on who your brand is, and it offers internal direction for your team members to stay aligned with core values and positioning.

What are the steps of consistency?

Understand your Brand Value, Mission, Aesthetic, & Goals
Establish Brand Guidelines with a Branding Kit and Maintain them Across Each Channel
Create a Content Calendar with Monthly Topics and a Posting Schedule to Follow
Communicate your Brand Identity and Guidelines with your Internal Team Members so that each piece of External Communication is Consistent
Make sure your Products and Services are Relevant to your Brand Identity & Guidelines

There are three keys to a consistent brand identity.

STRATEGY

Your brand strategy is probably the most important part of building a successful brand. It will guide all your messaging and creative executions.

STORY

Develop your brand’s story. What do you want to tell your audience about your brand? What is unique about your brand? Your story should come through in all content & messaging.

SYSTEM

This is where your strategy and story come together to create your brand system, which includes all the visual and verbal elements that communicate what your brand is all about. All of the branding elements come together to form a cohesive brand identity and process.

The Rosace brand puts a high priority on building meaningful connections – staying relatable through our content & services – having an adaptable team & strategies in place – being dynamic with a positive attitude full of new ideas – intentional with every action we take – and natural in our messaging & client approach.