Brand identity

Before starting to elaborate your brand identity you must first know what it is and how to differentiate it from the rest of your business efforts. Brand identity is the group of visible characteristics that delimit the mission and values of your business. Some examples can be: the type of design you use for your products, the logo of your business, the general style you use to show yourself to your public.

With all these characteristics what we try to achieve is to create a lasting and positive impression on our customers. Which give our products or services a unique quality that they do not find in any other. It conveys the identity of your business and the way you deal with problems. It also communicates the feelings and sensations you want your customers to have when they use your products or services.

To give you an example of a unique brand identity and the effect it has on consumer perception, what would you think of if I told you to think of a soft drink and the color red? I'm pretty sure you would think of Coca Cola, the iconic carbonated soft drink. A perfect example of a highly successful brand identity, which is almost instantly recognizable to anyone, even to those who are not regular consumers of the product.

With a recognizable, well-designed brand identity, you can attract and keep a loyal customer for a long time. It is one of the elements that elevates you above the rest of the competition and establishes you as a point of reference for the consumer.

Benefits of a good brand identity

Composing a good brand identity gives you many benefits, some that you will notice objectively and others that are more subtle, but very important. Here are some examples of these benefits:

• Customer loyalty: Think of creating a unique brand identity as starting a friendship with your customers, it's the way you let them see the way you think and that you understand how they think too. Most customers identify with a specific brand and stay loyal to it no matter how the market changes. Look at Apple or Samsung, both of which have extremely high customer loyalty.

• Differentiate yourself from the rest of the market: Brand identity is also another way in which you differentiate yourself and stand out from the competition in your market segment. With it, you convey the characteristics you want to be known for and attract the customers you know will want your products or services. This allows you to establish competitive prices and generate profits.

• Denotes quality: When you do a professional brand identity work, you let your customers understand that your company is of quality. That you have a good budget and therefore your products or services will be well done and will satisfy their needs. When your brand identity is of good quality, you will also be able to charge more for your products and your customers will be more willing to pay for them.

• You improve the perception of your brand: A good brand identity that is trusted by consumers will gradually become one of the pillars that will attract customers. You, as an entrepreneur, have no way to control all aspects of consumer interaction with your company, so it is your brand identity that carries that weight. Your satisfied and engaged customers become spokespeople for your products or services for others to try.

How to create a good brand identity?

Up to this point you have seen what brand identity is and its main benefits. I will then explain how to create a lasting and successful brand identity. I'll break it down into several steps to make it easier for you to understand.

Research

I would tell you that this is the most laborious phase of the process of creating your brand identity. It will require time, analysis and gathering people to assist you in the creative process, I don't recommend you to face this task alone. Before starting the creative process you must take into account and clarify several aspects:

• Target audience: You must delimit who your products or services are aimed at. You will differentiate your design depending on your audience, it is not the same if, for example, your niche market is teenage students between 12 and 16 years old or if they are working people over 30 years old.

• Differentiation from the competition: You must make it clear what defines you and your business from other similar businesses in the same market segment. Knowing these differences from the competition is essential to creating a unique brand identity. Learning from what competitors do will also allow you to know what works and what doesn't, so you can implement it later in your process.

• Style and personality: Although a company is not a person, it also has a perception of personality and style. With this you convey the value of your venture and how you want to be seen. Here you would define what kind of brand you want to be, a luxury one, an affordable one for any customer, an exclusive one, among many others. Always making sure that this tone fits the tone of your company and your products or services.

Ideation and Design of the visual components

In this step, after a good research that has given you as much useful data as possible, it is time to turn all this into a visual expression for your company. So far we already know the style we want to express, the type of customers we want to attract and how we want to do it. Now we must translate all that into images, shapes and colors.<