Let’s face it, setting up a start-up company in just about any industry is already a huge hurdle in itself. How much more if you’re faced with the inevitable step of determining your brand’s identity? As a start-up company, it is crucial to make your mark right away to stand out from your long list of competitors. But what if branding is the one challenge you simply can’t get right? Do you pray to some marketing gods and hope that everything will be okay? Do you summon a fairy god marketer to help you sort your branding crisis and help you establish your company as smooth as butter? Of course not.

            Creating a brand, whether for yourself or for an organization, is not rocket science. However, it is imperative to understand that branding is not something that you come up with overnight. Branding covers the overall voice, tone, identity, and how your potential customers will feel towards your brand.   

What Is Brand Identity

According to Hubspot, brand identity can be broken down into the following factors:

• what your brand says
• what your values are
• how you communicate your product
• what you want people to feel when they interact with it

To sum it up, your brand identity is important because it represents “the personality of your business and a promise to your customers.”

3 Tips To Get It Right For Your Business

1. Do a complete market research.

Target Audience

Determining your target audience by breaking them down into demographics and interests is one of the important steps in finding your brand identity. Ask questions like: “How do we communicate our message to this type of audience?” or “How do we catch their attention?”

Knowing the answer to these questions will save you a lot of time while also ensuring that you now have the edge to build a brand that your potential customers will love.

Value Proposition & Competitor Scanning

Launching a new product/service? Determine what makes your brand unique among your competitors. Otherwise, your target audience will ignore your presence right off the bat if you can’t prove to them your brand is worth the try.

Make sure you also go through a deep dive competitor scan to determine your strengths and weaknesses in the industry you’re trying to penetrate. This way, you can easily do some tweaks and adjust the necessary elements of your branding strategy.

1. Nail your logo

When people say, “Design a  logo,” don’t perceive it as just “a logo.” Instead, remind yourself that this logo should be “the logo” which will be the face of your company representing your values and creativity among others.  It may seem like it is just an icon, but this branding element can actually unlock a lot of opportunities for your company.

Not a creative person? No worries. You may always acquire the services of a digital marketing agency to help you develop a winning and memorable logo.

Hiring experts in this field may lessen your stress as they can help you visualize, develop and select your brand’s look and feel that represents your company’s overall values and principles.

1. Connect and invest in social media

When connecting to your target audience and related communities in social media like Facebook and Instagram, it is important to understand the value of telling a story. This way you can connect to them on an emotional level and eventually establish a solid foundation.  

As you create meaningful relationships with your organic social media followers, remember to also expand your reach by investing in Facebook ads. According to the latest stats report, the social media juggernaut has an advertising audience of 2.14 billion users. With that data, any business has the opportunity to knock at people’s feeds online and make an introduction for themselves.    

Conclusion

            Don’t get intimidated with all the long to do list and the chaos. It is common for startups to experience this. The key to determining your brand identity is by creating a structured plan and ultimately providing quality content in the long run.

Hiring a digital marketing agency is also beneficial to make sure that everyone in your internal team knows your brand and creates material and acts in accordance to the brand identity to further reinforce it.

As Hubspot Channel Marketing Manager Patrick Shea explained: “In every way, your content is your brand online. It’s your salesperson, your store, your marketing department; it’s your story, and every piece of content you publish reflects on, and defines, your brand. So, great content, great brand. Boring content, boring brand.”

Let’s brainstorm together!

If you need a team who can provide insights by illuminating your brand lane and help you determine whether or not your values align with the current trends and status of the market, contact the Xiklab Digital team today.

For inquiries, feel free to fill out our contact form and we will get back to you the soonest!

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