When you think about your brand identity, what do you think about?
For many people they think no further than a logo. However, your logo—while important—is only one small piece of your overall business branding puzzle.
So, if branding is more than just your logo, what is it? Essentially, the reason why branding is important is that your brand identity encompasses every single one of your customer touchpoints. When you ask us here at CSQD to put together a logo branding package for you, we encourage you to incorporate all touchpoints into your branding strategy. Let’s explore some of the key aspects that have a big influence on your business branding.
Personality
When considering your brand identity, personality plays a vital role. This is something that you will (hopefully) have discussed and decided upon before you’ve engaged the services of a Gold Coast branding and design expert. It’s important that you have conceptualised your business personality so that your branding team can convey this through their design. Your brand identity “personality” includes both your philosophy and your tone.
Some vital personality brand identity questions to consider before you commence with a logo branding package:
- What does your company stand for?
- How can your company philosophy help your business to flourish? Green or give back initiatives, for example, positively influence brand identity perception.
- What kind of tone best represents your company? Tone is an important part of brand identity—not just because the voice your company has connects with different audiences, but because it also helps to direct other design decisions such as imagery and colours.
Colours
More than just about making something look pretty or “pop”, colour psychology is a real art. Colours illicit different feelings in us. So, you can emotively influence your customer’s experience of your business branding with your chosen colour scheme. As such, we highly recommend you don’t select a colour simply because you like it. Instead, use colour psychology to your advantage. For more on brand identity colours, check out this video where we explain how you can influence your customers with your colour scheme.
Website design
Think you can get away with hatcheting together your own Wix website? Think again. More often than not, your website is the first touchpoint a customer will have with your brand. The majority of people will jump online to explore social media pages or websites in order to learn more about you—before they take any other step. On top of that, Google tells us you’ve got 50 milliseconds to make a great first impression. That’s all! And if you don’t cut the mustard, you’ll lose that potential customer to a competitor. So, your website should build trust in your brand and is an integral brand identity touchpoint. We put together this video highlighting the most important points for you to consider when developing your website.
Content
Copy is more than just words on a page. Your content conveys not only your brand identity and personality, it’s the tool through which you convert browsers into buyers. It goes much further than making sure you don’t have spelling and grammar errors—although this is an important part of maintaining a professional position. Working alongside your website design, your copy is about directing your customers easily and efficiently through your products or services. Blogs, social posts and words on marketing collateral are also important brand identity touchpoints. They should be considered with care. Just like design, it’s always best to allow professionals to handle this for you or at least guide you to make the best decisions for your business.
General design
Think anything from digital to printed marketing materials such as business cards, packaging, advertisements, eDMS, brochures, social media pages and posts. To make a solid and memorable impression with your brand identity, you need to have consistency across the board. This will help to strengthen a positive perception and build trust. Of course, we can discuss all of this with you during your logo branding package consultation to ensure you tick all the most important boxes.
Typography
Similar to colours, the fonts you choose to convey your brand identity have a significant impact on brand perception. Using something floaty and whimsical for a medical clinic, for example, won’t convey the sense of professional authority required to ensure people feel that they’re putting their health in capable hands. Typography is an important part of your brand identity and something we guide you with when you sign up for a logo branding package.
Logo
Your logo is of course integral to your brand identity. It’s what identifies you as unique to other brands and is the visual representation of your company. A good logo can illicit trust from your target market while seamlessly communicating the personality of your company. Hopefully now, however, you understand that your business branding is about so much more than just a logo!
Any other point of customer interaction
Of course, your visual brand identity will only go so far if your service, support, customer care and service recovery operations (for example) fall flat. This is something you, your staff and general operating procedures will be responsible for. We mention it here simply so you can keep this in mind when considering your business branding on the whole.