Having a company means you can get lost in a sea of millions of other companies. You need to turn your company into a brand to secure some footing in the market.
But, what separates a company from a brand?
As per Forbes, there are 5 components of a strong brand:
- Brand Identity
- Brand Purpose, Mission, And Values
- Brand Messaging
- Brand Differentiation
- Brand Experience
And 55% of brand first impressions are visual. This means you need to bring your A-game when it comes to design.
In this article, we will cover 5 ways you can use design to establish brand identity.
1. Design a unique brand identity
When you think of branding, you immediately think of brand identity.
This is what will be your visible image, the face of your company. Your logo, brand colors, and website, for instance, are just a few components that make up your brand identity.
In simpler words, your brand identity is how your company “looks and feels.”
Design agency services can help you with the aspects that contribute to the “look and feel” of your company. They can:
- Design a unique logo
- Create email templates exclusive to your brand
- Design an effective custom website tailored to your needs
Customers remember brand identity. Hence, you have to create a good impression. In fact, consumers are 81% more likely to recall a brand’s color than remember its name.
Your brand identity must be distinctive enough to stand out from a sea of competitors in addition to being on-trend and in-line with client expectations.
2. Communicate what your stand for
Although your brand’s purpose, mission, and values are each distinct elements, they should all work together to convey a comprehensive picture of who you are and what you do.
Your mission is the bigger aim you aspire to achieve through doing business, your values are what your brand stands for, and your purpose is what you do and what you can guarantee your clients.
These elements together create the persona of your brand.
For instance, if your business offers a CRM that is focused on mobile customers, one of your goals might be to improve their management experience. Your beliefs may be to provide first-rate service at an affordable charge, and your purpose may be to assist mobile professionals thrive in hectic situations.
It is an art to take abstract elements like purpose and values and convert it into a visual form. An art that can be executed well by professionals.
Design agency services will create a design that will reinforce the brand’s offering in the minds of the audience. With imagery, colors, and fonts, it can help attract customers to your brand’s image.
For example, if you are a sustainable company whose motto is to coexist in peace with nature, a design agency will use neutral, earthy tones for your website and products. Even the designs used will be nature-akin.
Hence, customers will already know what to expect from your company with just the visuals.
3. Deliver a strong message
Your brand should deliver a message that has a lasting impact. It is the voice of your brand.
Just like the brand identity, brand messaging helps connect with your consumer base to provide a good experience. It refers to the words you use while interacting with clients, posting on social media, and on your website. No matter who the customer is speaking to, consistent brand messaging is crucial. Everyone who interacts with consumers, including your sales staff, customer service representatives, and other employees, needs to be trained to speak to them in the same language and tone.
The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report found that people trust a brand’s message when they have heard it repeated across three different channels.
Which means you need to find a consistent voice and message.
There are quite a few problems you can run into after you have decided on a voice that suits your brand. You have to worry about incorporating it into visuals and you have to maintain consistency across platforms.
After you decide on that voice, design agency services can take over for you. The team of professionals will decide on the balance between text and visuals for your brand, the font which best communicates the tone taken up by your employees.
4. Create a distinct brand
What separates you from rivals is your brand distinctiveness. In other words, you need to explicitly communicate what you have to offer that other companies don’t.
Price can be a means of brand distinctiveness, however, doing so might lead to market exclusion. Instead, you should provide a feature or special value that your clients can’t duplicate or duplicate. For long-term brand success, identify a truly distinctive differentiator.
The easiest way to create a distinct brand is through design. A great design doesn’t just improve visuals but it can improve the overall consumer experience.
Think about two similar applications. They could offer the exact same features however if it’s easier to navigate one app or it has a more user-friendly interface, customers would naturally prefer it over the other one.
5. Create the best brand experience
The brand experience is how people relate to or engage with your company’s connections points, including your employees, services, and your social media.
The brand experience includes everything from a customer’s interactions with a salesperson to their use of your goods.
We cannot stress how important your brand design is to your brand experience. Design agency services through brand experience design can put customers in awe with creativity and trust-building strategies.
The professionals can create:
- An experience storyboard that can create a visual representation of the BX design process. This will help you understand how the brand experience will be delivered to the customer.
- Journey mapping so that you can see a visual representation of each stage of the customer’s brand experience journey.
- Materials and tools utilized in brand experience
- The final pieces used in the brand experience, could be visual, audio, multimedia, interactive, motion design, etc.
Consumers are more than twice as likely to buy first, stay loyal, and advocate for brands they trust.
If your customers have a good experience with your brand, you can maintain relationships with repeat consumers and continue to promote your brand. Even better, happy consumers will recommend your business to their friends and family, which will expand your customer base. When a company becomes a brand, it gains the trust of its consumers. 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer found that trust impacts buying. 67% of the consumers said that unless they came to trust the company behind the product, they will soon stop buying it.
This means you have to pull out all the stops and create a brand that people can trust.
Use design agency services to make that happen. The service can provide you with a team of professionals that can deliver the results you need and improve your brand’s sales.
Sources:
https://institute.uschamber.com/what-makes-a-good-first-impression/
https://explodingtopics.com/blog/branding-stats
https://www.manypixels.co/blog/post/what-is-brand-experience-design
https://lexiconthai.com/blog/the-role-of-design-in-branding/
https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2019-07/2019_edelman_trust_barometer_special_report_in_brands_we_trust.pdf
