9 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Brand Identity
Creating a strong brand identity is not a small task, but it is an important one. Your brand impacts how consumers see you and can make a lasting impact on your customers or clients. Not only this, but it’s how people recognise you, your products or your work and distinguish you from your key competitors.
There are several aspects that make up your brand identity, including logos, visuals, packaging, social media and more. With so much to take into account, lots of businesses don’t get this right straight away – and that’s OK.
But if you’re hoping to drive your business forward this year, you need to put some thought and care into your branding. In the guide below, we’ll teach you how to improve your brand identity for business success!
1. Review your current identity and materials
The first thing you can do is review everything you have so far. It doesn’t matter what state it’s in, you will be able to improve or evolve your current designs.
Go through every aspect of your brand identity and all the marketing collateral that goes along with it. Remember, your identity is made up of colours, visuals, words and even audio and video, so there’s a lot to consider at this stage.
These key aspects might include your business name, logo, slogan and colour scheme, as well as images, graphic designs and typography. You should also pull together any marketing materials, sales collateral and social media content that feature the above.
While this might feel like a lot, the more you can gather at this stage, the more equipped you’ll be to identify areas of improvement and move forward.
2. Understand what elements make up a strong brand
The only way to improve your brand identity is to understand what elements are considered most important and what makes a strong brand. To help you with this, we’ve put together a list of some of the key elements. Your branding should be:
- Purpose-driven
- Strong and unique
- Attention-grabbing and memorable
- Visually powerful
- Personal and authentic
- Consistent
- Aimed at your target market
You should have these key elements at the forefront of your mind at all times as you work to improve your brand identity.
3. Identify the areas that need improving
Now you’ve gathered everything and you understand what elements make up a strong brand, you can begin to identify the areas that need improving. Once you’ve done this, you can begin to set budgets and timelines and determine which areas you’re going to focus on first.
Creating a strategy to improve your branding will give you a clear path for moving forward and making positive changes.
4. Conduct some research
Before you begin implementing changes and redesigning visual elements, it’s a good idea to conduct some research or run some tests.
You can ask for feedback from your existing customer base and social media followers. You can also analyse the market to identify the top trends, opportunities and competitors.
You should also think about your unique selling point (USP) and what it is that makes you stand out. This will arm you with better knowledge and ideas that you can move forward with.
5. Hire the professionals
If you’re not confident in your abilities, it might be worth taking your research and ideas to the relevant professional service providers. For example, you might wish to employ the services of individuals such as a graphic design company, copywriter or web designer.
Alternatively, you could choose to use a branding agency that will take on every aspect of your project for you. This will very much depend on how much work needs to be done, your budget and any time constraints.
6. Redesign your visuals
From your logo to your website, there are so many visual elements that make up your branding. As such, this is likely to be one of the key improvements you need to make for your company.
Whether you’re updating your logo, producing new graphic design elements for social media or updating the photos on your business website, these visuals can improve your branding quickly and effectively.
This also includes any colours, shapes or graphics you use, as well as fonts and typography. You need to ensure that all of these are consistent across your media, products, services and more.
7. Perfect your copy
As well as the visuals, you also need to make sure that any copy you use reflects your brand. This is also the perfect way to inject some more personality into your branding.
You should take this opportunity to review elements such as your tone of voice, slogan, website copy, social media posts and any other written content. You can then re-write and improve any content you think needs updating.
Whatever you produce, it’s vital that your content is also consistent in tone of voice and the language used. It should also reflect your brand and your customers.
For example, if you sell a fun B2C product you can afford to be more fun and less formal with your language (and visual elements). Whereas, more corporate businesses or those selling B2B, might need to use more formal language, including industry terminology.
8. Roll it out or relaunch your brand
As you begin to update and improve each element, you’ll start to see your brand identity really coming together. This gives you the perfect opportunity to roll out your new visuals or content, and possibly even to relaunch your business.
There are several ways you can do this, such as social media, your website, industry events and advertising.
Choose the mediums that are going to be most beneficial and budget-friendly for your brand and start there.
9. Keep reviewing your branding
Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day and perfecting your branding takes time. The important thing to do is to keep gathering feedback and looking at data wherever possible.
You should also be sure not to rush any new visuals or content. Make sure that you and the team are happy with everything before putting these out into the world.
By continually reviewing your branding and making small but important improvements, you can fine-tune those important elements to create a brand and a business you’re proud of.
