Chapter 2: Brand Identity
Having a specific and unique brand identity is crucial to building a loyal following on social media and abroad. On a base level, brand identity refers to how your brand looks, sounds, and feels to the average person.
While brand identity has been a central concept in marketing for decades, its importance has been revitalized through the world of social media and digital advertising. When people are scrolling through their social media feeds, attention spans are at an all time low. The idea behind a well flushed-out brand identity is that your customers will start to automatically associate a certain product, offer, look, or general vibe with your brand each time they see your company’s name (for example, in an Instagram post).
The way you’re able to associate your brand with different emotions, products, or offers is dependent upon your ability to condition your potential customers. The process is actually strikingly similar to Ivan Pavlov’s famous experiments on classical conditioning. The basic idea is to condition your audience to associate different positive triggers (products, color combinations, phrases, offers, etc.) with your brand, creating a continuing mental connection and subconscious awareness of your business and products. In order to do this effectively, it’s important to sit down and think about your company values:
What message do you want to send?
Consider your competition, then look to differentiate yourself.
Consider your logo and primary colors, your editing style and video end screens.
Is everything reflective of the message you’re trying to convey?
Think about your company taglines, tone, and phraseology.
What are your biggest selling points? Push them to the front of your brand.
Think about colors, phrasing, word choice, and types of content that your ideal customer would enjoy.
In order to succeed, your brand identity should focus around a singular compelling offer aimed towards a focused demographic. The Pavlovian conditioning of your customers will only work if your brand identity is pushed consistently, over time, and across all platforms.
We will dive into each of these components in detail as we progress through the Branding Course.