How to Build and Improve Your Brand Identity

The world is over-flooded with startups and legacy firms striving to build or keep a reputation for themselves. As a result, a strong brand identity is not a luxury but rather a necessity for businesses to stand out from the crowd.

But successful brand identity is not only about gaining admirers. It reflects a brand's deeper intentions. Read on to discover the key visual components of a brand (brand messaging, design, color) and ways to build and improve your brand identity.

Table of contents

• What is brand identity?

• Why is brand identity important?

• Brand identity examples

  • 1. Mailmodo
  • 2. Frooti
  • 3. Chobani
  • 4. Starbucks
  • 5. Casper

• How to measure brand identity?

  • 1. Traffic
  • 2. Mentions
  • 3. Social engagement

• How to build brand identity?

  • 1. Analyze your brand positioning
  • 2. Select a typeface
  • 3. Develop your color scheme
  • 4. Choose on-brand images and design elements
  • 5. Craft your tone of voice

• 5 strategies to improve brand identity

  • 1. Have a consistent brand identity
  • 2. Use a brand kit to streamline your assets
  • 3. Create a language style guide
  • 4. Highlight your brand identity in your marketing materials
  • 5. Share your brand story

• Wrap up

What is brand identity?

Brand identity can be many things. It’s a customer’s opinion of a brand, made up of numerous associations with it and recollections of engaging with it. A company uses a set of elements to establish a brand’s social image. Your brand identity is impacted by your brand value proposition, market position, and relevance to the values and interests of the target audience.

But what does a brand identity include? The following are the most frequently agreed-upon characteristics:

• Brand name: A name that’s unique, catchy, and evokes positive emotions is a bestseller.

• Tagline: Use humor, rhythm, alliteration, or the rule of three for a tagline that sticks.

• Illustrations: The images should have a cohesive mood to create an engaging presence.

• Color scheme: Explore how color psychology affects behaviors and perceptions.

• Logo: A good logo is practical, distinctive, clean, and simple in form.

• Brand voice: Review your mission statement and current messaging to determine your brand voice.

• Fonts and typography: Explore the fundamentals of font psychology to choose a style that connects with your target audience.

We’ve established that your brand identity is your company's personality, but what role does it play in your users’ lives? Let’s dig into that.

Why is brand identity important?

The importance of brand identity can be summed up as follows:

• Stand out from the crowd

Your logo, typography, colors, packaging, and messaging contribute to your brand identity and help you beat your competitors because these elements are unique to your brand.

• Build a devoted customer base

Brand identity is how all businesses communicate their beliefs, whatever they may be, and it's crucial for anyone looking to attract or keep customers. For example, companies with a strong brand identity may generate buzz around a product introduction with significantly fewer resources than an unknown company would require to reach the same audience.

Related guide: How to Build Customer Journey Maps for Your Buyer Personas

• Strengthen customer loyalty

Brand identity must be consistent no matter where it is exhibited. Delivering the same message through verbal and visual cues shows consumers that you're a trustworthy authority, which builds trust, loyalty, and sales.

You can create an outstanding brand identity, just like our email marketing platform, if you understand how these pieces work together to produce a cohesive experience.

Brand identity examples

Here are 5 examples of upcoming and established businesses that pay great attention to their brand identity.

1. Mailmodo

• Our choice of Inter-typeface is driven by our intent to focus on high legibility and approachability.

• We use duotone to drive consistency across all properties and keep things minimalistic.

Related guide: How to Create Interactive Market Research Forms with Mailmodo

2. Frooti

Source: The Frooti Life

• Frooti uses quirky and fun fonts to strengthen its identity as a brand catering to the youth.

• The original color palette of the Indian brand was yellow, which was featured on its packaging, but it soon expanded to include green and purple.

3. Chobani

Source: Chobani

• Chobani began with a trademark green color that emphasized their products' non-GMO nature, which evolved into a variety of muted and understated tones once they expanded their product range to incorporate yogurts and creamers.

• Their use of a Custom typeface is another great aspect of their brand design.

4. Starbucks

Source: Starbucks

• The green circular emblem serves as the foundation of Starbucks' brand identity. Green is associated with nature, tranquility, and good health.

• The signature white cup feels premium, assuring loyal consumers that they’re getting their money’s worth.

5. Casper

Source: Casper

• Casper's logo's relaxing beige and dark blue are associated with a night of restful sleep.

• The mattress company also uses hand-drawn images on its website, social media platforms, and merchandise to add to the feeling of coziness.

How to measure brand identity?

Let’s dispel the notion that brand identity is a soft campaign goal that marketers can’t measure. Here are some metrics you can use to measure your brand identity.

1. Traffic

As the number of visitors to your website grows, your brand's awareness grows. You can measure the number of new people who come to your site by tracking new and direct traffic on Google Analytics. Your traffic may spike up suddenly if you’re riding a trend wave. But overall, traffic is a reliable indicator of whether your strategies to build your brand are working or not.

2. Mentions

Is your brand getting mentions on the news or social media? That’s a sign of a brand identity going strong. Mentions are crucial in tracking any brand awareness activity and can provide essential information for your future marketing efforts. You can use Google Alerts to see who is talking about your company and track what and how often they talk about you.

3. Social engagement

It’s a two-way street: social media generates brand awareness, and a boost in brand awareness benefits your social media engagement. You can monitor comments, likes, shares, retweets, and views on Facebook or LinkedIn using their Analytics tools to understand how people interact with your brand online.

Related guide: Creative Social Media Lead Generation Strategies That Convert

How to build brand identity?

Let’s find out what you need to build a brand identity that stands out.

1. Analyze your brand positioning

1. Identify What Makes You Different: The first step of building a #brandidentity is identifying a trait that sets you apart from your competition. Study your competition, How do they define their brands? How don’t they define their #brands? etc.#brandidentity #brandawareness

— Red Baton (@RedBatonStudio) January 24, 2022

Record your company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats with a SWOT analysis.

• Work on setting important business goals for what you want to achieve and where you want to take the brand.

• Figure out who your target market is and how you'll appeal to them visually: are you making something for high-end customers or something more accessible?

Lemonade, an AI-powered insurance company, grew from a modest startup with a revenue of $2 million to $94 million in three years. Lemonade's black and white cartoon drawings give off a cheerful and non-intimidating aura, and the brand’s visual design is unique. All these elements make it a memorable brand.

Related guide: Brand Positioning 101: How To Dominate The Market

2. Select a typeface

You should choose two typefaces for your brand and use them consistently across your materials.

• The font for headings should be the largest and most expressive.

• Fonts for subtitles and body text must be legible. Use the same font as your heading but in a lower size or a different style, such as bold or italic.

Take the case of Cartier, for example. Cartier's logo uses a handwritten oblique typeface. The typography in the Cartier logo is a one-of-a-kind inscription from the nineteenth century, which gives the jewelry brand a premium feel.

3. Develop your color scheme

Choose your colors in order of priority.

• Start with your primary palette i.e. the one you'll use the most, representing your brand's primary voice, and end with your secondary palette i.e. the ones you will use the least.

• Use visually appealing colors and make sure there are enough contrasting tones for text layering on flat-colored backgrounds.

Coca-Cola is known for its white text juxtaposed against a bright red background. Red is typically associated with power, excitement, energy, and passion in marketing.

4. Choose on-brand images and design elements

It's critical to understand what being on-brand means to you.

• How you edit your photographs and design components will also define the tone for your brand, whether it's with contrast, vibrancy, tints, brightness, or saturation.

• After that, you may use a style guide to guarantee that your assets and layout are consistent, dictating the sorts of hues, filters, and other pertinent specifications.

Gucci’s illustrations are spot on and a good case study for any upcoming luxury brand. Gucci conveys a perception of high-quality Italian items and craftsmanship with minimalistic and abstract drawings on its website and merchandise.

Related guide: How to Build, Measure and Improve Brand Image in 2022

5. Craft your tone of voice

Adopt a straightforward and approachable tone that draws customers in.

• However, you must first assess your target market to determine how they want to be handled.

• If most of your consumers are businesses, you should strike a healthy balance between a professional and playful tone.

Apple's brand voice, consistent for decades, conveys a sense of trust and closeness. Each person is made to feel welcome, and many feel spoiled because they own its products.

Related guide: Develop Your Brand Voice Using These 5 Super Effective Steps

5 strategies to improve brand identity

Every successful brand needs to evolve its brand strategy to stay relevant. By making these small or big changes, your brand identity will improve for the better.

1. Have a consistent brand identity

The brand personality your customers identify with you will mirror your brand's unique voice. It is no surprise then that a consistent brand image influences the perception of your brand. Creating clear standards for your visual materials is a significant first step toward establishing brand consistency.

Google is an all-time lesson of consistency and recognition. Its brand identity is friendly and interactive.

2. Use a brand kit to streamline your assets

Using a brand kit can help you manage your brand assets and keep you organized as your team expands. Your brand kit will also assist you and your team gain a better grasp of your visual brand identity and how assets should appear in various situations.

Canva's premium version includes a brand kit that allows you to design a brand from scratch or incorporate existing brand materials to keep your designs consistent.

3. Create a language style guide

A language style guide is an important part of your content marketing strategy as it can help you keep your communication with your users consistent. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Use first-person collective pronouns to demonstrate that a happy team supports your brand, and customers are more inclined to want to participate if the team is happy.

• Be careful about grammar and spelling to avoid landing in a soup with your clients or customers.

4. Highlight your brand identity in your marketing materials

In a world where the consumer interacts with many ads, products, and brands, you need to infuse your brand identity in your marketing materials to make your brand memorable.

Our branding video is one such asset.

It introduces our company to the public, highlights our key values, and helps our target audience trust us.

5. Share your brand story

We recently decided to build in public, which serves several important purposes. The most valuable one is that building in public produces greater transparency, which helps build trust in our brand. This, in turn, helps our business look more authentic and strengthens our brand identity.

Besides that, we also leverage our social media platforms to show our brand evolution. Social media campaigns are an excellent way to put your story across because they give you direct access to your audience.

Wrap up

It's important to nail your brand identity and produce content that conveys who you are to your clients, if you want your business to be seen positively.

Looking for more branding advice? Read our guide on brand awareness to discover actionable insights on increasing your company’s online and offline visibility.