This post is sponsored by DesignRush.
Branding is essential for the success of your business. Your products or services may be the best quality and your prices the most competitive. But when your branding is not on point, you’re losing on the customer front.
Branding is what makes you stand out. It’s what makes your business recognizable, therefore a strong brand identity is essential for success and growth. Working on it improves your sales and makes you well-known.
When you’re located in Trenton, it’s easy to get professional help locally from the best digital marketing companies in New Jersey, for example. Local and online options are ready to work with you for the best results, anywhere you and your business are.
If you want to know more about creating a brand identity and the psychology behind it, keep reading this article.
Why do you need a brand identity?
There’s more to brand identity than just a company name or a logo. The visuals are essential to your professional identity, but they aren’t exclusive.
The brand identity is a sum of all elements of visual appearance, communications, and all outward expression. Your brand identity is how others perceive you, how you look in their eyes, and how you speak to them.
In other words, your brand identity is your professional personality. Constituting elements include logos, colors, slogans, mottos, packaging, iconography, websites, and more. It’s what makes your brand unique and easily recognizable.
It’s essential to make your brand identity stand out. So, you must learn how to create your brand identity. It makes your business memorable and establishes your authority in the market. You build credibility faster and maintain consistency in your promotional content.
Key elements of successful brand identities
The first question you should ask yourself is what makes a brand identity? Some factors are more important than others when nailing it down. A strong strategy implies the following:
Make your brand distinctive. Getting your audience’s attention is key to standing apart from your competition.
Choose strong and memorable visuals. That way, people will instantly recognize your products or ads when they see them.
Be consistent with your brand identity on all platforms and channels. If you don’t have a clear and consistent identity, people may get confused about what your business stands for.
Make your brand identity scalable. Apart from being consistent, your brand identity should be flexible and evolve with your business.
Psychological factors of brand awareness and trust
Increase your brand awareness and use certain psychological factors to facilitate trust between your business and potential customers. People are more likely to recommend a brand they’re emotionally invested in. Here are some psychological factors to consider:
- Color: it influences how people perceive your brand and their purchasing behavior towards you. That’s why certain types of businesses use similar hues. For example, yellow means optimism and warmth, while red is exciting and bold. Blue incites feelings of trust and dependability. Orange is friendly and cheerful, and purple represents creativity and fantasy. Green reflects health and peacefulness.
- Social influence: engaging your audience facilitates conversion. A brand with an effective online presence can experience increased sales. That’s why it’s helpful to build a consistent social media strategy and exercise a sociable brand personality across all channels. Diversify the content you post across channels and use visuals to your advantage.
- Customer experience: good customer service helps your brand evolve and get known by more people. A happy customer is more likely to promote your services and products to others.
- Help your potential customers by personalizing their purchase experience. Work on building an emotional experience for your client and prove that you truly understand their needs. Make sure your customers feel safe when doing business with you.
- Transparency and consistency: they increase trust in your company, which translates to better sales. Make commitments you can keep and be honest about your products and services. Quickly address issues if they arise and share info about your products with your audience.
- Visual storytelling: visual aspects are crucially important nowadays. Try to illustrate what you believe in through branding. Create an intriguing story about your brand and company. Use your company values and history in your marketing efforts.
How emotions influence your client’s decision
You may think that customers choose a certain product because it’s the best value or has a specific ingredient. But even when you don’t know it yet, emotions play a part in the purchase.
Emotions influence customers’ behavior. Most times, they evaluate brands based on emotions, too, not just information. And, as a business, you should understand that emotions drive your client.
You must have noticed the hip music playing in clothing stores. It’s supposed to make you move faster while shopping, without decreasing sales. Supermarkets place flowers and produce at store entrances to induce feelings of freshness.
Companies can exaggerate product descriptions, especially features or benefits. But decisions are made with emotional input in mind. A better strategy for brands could be based on feelings.
Useful steps for creating a brand identity
You understand now what a brand identity needs. It’s time we learned how to build a brand identity from scratch.
1. Determine what purpose your brand has
You must start your brand identity creation process by answering a few questions. Understand your brand’s purpose. Why did you build your brand? What issues does your brand solve? How is your brand different from the competition?
The answers to these questions guide your strategy and allow you to develop a genuine motto and brand voice. Use benefits and qualities to accentuate how you’re unique from the competition. Make your brand focus clear from the get-go.
2. Conduct thorough research on your competition
It’s essential to know what your competition brings to the table. You’ll be able to differentiate yourself once you know them well enough. Branding is all about standing out from a sea of similar products and services.
Understand your competitive landscape, what it looks like and what the competition is doing in terms of strategy. If you don’t, you could easily look just like everyone else selling the same thing. And you don’t want that because it means fewer conversions.
Investigate how your competitors represent themselves. What is their brand personality? What symbols/ colors/ mottos do they use? You could use that to differentiate yourself by choosing different colors, symbols, or words.
3. Find out who your audience is
Learning more about your competition is good, but not enough. The ideal customer influences how you present yourself. Your brand identity may be shaped by how you want to be seen, but don’t forget what your clients want. Their preferences and expectations are important. They can help you build a trustworthy voice and identity for your business.
Be specific about who you want your ideal customer to be. You can get an idea of what appeals to them. Audit what colors or words they would resonate best with.
Let’s say you’re a B2B-oriented business looking for industry-leader clients. By researching, you could find that they prefer a friendlier and more casual tone instead of a stern professional one. By doing your homework, you know how to appeal to your ideal client.
4. Build your brand voice and personality
Now that you have all the pertinent info, work on developing your brand voice and personality. Of course, it all depends on what you’re selling and your targeted client.
B2C companies will have a friendlier approach, whereas B2B brands will work on a more professional and authoritative voice and personality. But your main audience can shift your plans. Learning what they prefer comes to your advantage.
Keep a fun, conversational, and friendly voice if need be. Or engage in a more technical and authoritative voice if your clientele is inclined this way. You can choose a spontaneous, reliable, or serious voice. Choose what you want as long as it resonates with what your target client identifies with.
5. Develop your visual identity
An essential step in creating your brand identity is to build its visuals. Visual elements influence your overall business image. Translate all the info you’ve gathered into visual cues and concepts.
Visualize all the most important adjectives that describe your brand. Work with them to find something unique and personal that resonates with your products and services or explains what they do. Use every possible cue to strengthen the idea that your product or service is reliable and essential for your client.
How to nurture brand loyalty
The most successful brands have a strong identity that customers support. Understanding the psychology behind it is important because it helps your brand connect with customers.
Famous brands stand out because they use mental strategies to appeal to large audiences, leaving their competition in the dust. Let’s learn a bit about how psychology helps you develop brand loyalty.
1. Change your customer’s mind and behavior
You can change your customer’s behavior and attitude toward your brand. First, make sure the customer breaks away from their old patterns. Then, make them feel comfortable with you and your products. They’ll start to be grateful for it.
Then, entice your customer with a new ideal. Work on changing their emotional responses so they’ll investigate your brand and find it superior. If anything negative comes up, be ready with answers to combat feelings of negativity. The final step is to increase your earnings and continue to shift clients from your competition.
2. Use psychology in your brand identity creation process
A successful marketing campaign is all about unconscious branding. When they see your products and services, customers should recall feelings and emotions connected to them. Marketers use this to build a brand identity for the masses.
Personality should include sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness to feel well-rounded.
Colors reflect individuality and charisma. Research what words customers prefer to get an idea of what you should name your products and services. Some may like sophisticated items while others prefer simpler names.
When your client feels accepted, he gets a sense of belonging with your brand. That ingrains the feeling that competition is the enemy. Make shopping an event he enjoys. Make him feel special.
3. Famous examples of brands earning customer loyalty
Famous companies around the world use strategy and psychology to achieve success.
Apple uses white in its branding, which reflects simplicity and elegance. It sells state-of-the-art items with a sense of luxury. Although Apple has many critics, the world accepts its image without issue.
Ford is a well-known brand in the automotive world. It sells long-lasting and rugged vehicles focusing on the impression of safety. It has a loyal fanbase where clients buy multiple vehicles.
Conclusions
Knowing how psychology aids in brand identity and loyalty development gives your business the upper hand over the competition. Learn all you can about your competitors and your ideal client. Successful businesses know their brands, purpose, and customers enough to inspire them to become loyal for years to come.
Travis Dillard is a business consultant and an organizational psychologist based in Arlington, Texas. Passionate about marketing, social networks, and business in general. In his spare time, he writes a lot about new business strategies and digital marketing for DigitalStrategyOne.
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