Your Brand Identity is the bread and butter of what makes your brand unique. It’s more than just your logo, color palette, font kit, and photo themes. It goes far beyond your Brand Kit or assets; your brand voice, ideal client, mission, vision, and values make your brand unique. This is why your brand identity isn’t something to be taken lightly when launching or re-launching your brand. To begin creating content, a product, signing clients, selling a service, or whatever your brand offers, you have to know exactly what your brand is, who it’s for, and why it will stand out.
As mentioned in the previous Entrepreneurship blog, 5 Things to Know About Launching a Successful Business, your brand identity is one of the first things you need to clarify when launching a brand. In tone with a similar structure to that post, today I’ll be guiding you through the three most important things you need to do/ know when launching a brand. Follow these steps and answer these questions to put your best foot forward when launching your brand.
3 Critical Keys to Building Your Brand Identity
ONE | build your brand kit
The visual representation of your brand identity is just as (if not more important) than the literature or message of your brand. Your brand’s visual identity is most often the first thing someone will notice when they find you. Does the brand visually match its mission? Does this brand visually fit my (the clients’) aesthetic? Now I know people say don’t judge a book by its cover. But to be quite honest, we all do that without even meaning to. So if your brand isn’t put together visually, you’re likely not going to keep people there or coming back.
I am currently in the process of re-branding the La.Rue brand itself. Under La.Rue are two fully functioning businesses: La.Rue the lifestyle brand (which is where you are) and the La.Rue Creative Studio. In this re-brand, I’m attempting to articulate my brand voice even further and create on cohesive La.Rue Brand, in which two businesses run successfully. The brand kit itself is pretty self-explanatory. Your brand kit needs one set of cohesive assets, including your logo, color palette, font kit, and photo themes that visually match the literature of your brand. Creating this first has helped my re-brand process move so smoothly.
Two | Establish your brand voice
Several elements contribute to your brand voice. Your mission, vision, and values are laid out throughout all copy you use. And what’s copy? Copy is the literature throughout a brand’s website, marketing packets, social media bios and captions, product/ service descriptions, podcasts, and anywhere else you can think of where copy goes that represents your brand. A brand’s copy establishes trust with a reader, listener, viewer, and potential client/ customer that is built over time, eventually leading them to invest in your brand. This concept is also known as the “like, know, trust” factor. There is one crucial thing to note as your write and create your brand voice.
Your brand is NOT for everyone.
This is so important to keep in mind as you establish your brand. At the beginning of this journey, we’re hungry for consumers, clients, readers, followers, etc. And at this time, we’re more lenient in accepting anyone as a client. But as your business grows, you will understand why it’s so important to narrow down so you reach your ideal client. Your ideal client is the type of person you’d like to “ideally” work with each time you sign someone as a client. The reason it’s so important to understand why you’re not for everyone is for your copy. Each piece of copy you write needs to embody your brand and resonate with your ideal client successfully. When you’re writing something out that describes or represents your brand, you need to be using the right vocabulary as an attraction to WHO your product, service, or content is for.
Three | Marry Your Brand Voice and Visuals
What better place to illustrate one cohesive brand than a website that embodies your brand identity? I can’t think of anything. Because here’s the thing about growth in other areas, like social media. We do not “own” anything about our social media. If someone hacks it or it just simply starts performing poorly, we don’t own any rights to those followers even though we’ve dedicated so much time to that growth. You know what we do own? The rights and property of our websites and email lists. And this is precisely why having a brand website is so important. With the presence of social media as it is today, it doesn’t seem important to have a brand website. But if you’re someone selling any sort of service or product, a website does two things for you.
One: gives you the security of ownership over all content and visitors. And two: establishes strong authority in your niche that visually illustrates your brand as a whole. Although many offer visual and literature copy within social media, it can be hard to create a brand solely on something like Instagram, where the two are limited. Social media should be a place to expand your brand. It’s smaller bits and pieces of the whole that easily illustrate your authority and skill within your niche.
Your Brand Is apart of you
Every successful brand is almost always built on the concept that you’re creating a product, service, or content that someone couldn’t offer you (the creator). Your brand should embody your energy. It should emulate you, your values, and what gives you passion in your life. When you start with that single thought in mind, things like your brand kit and brand voice begin to fill themselves in.
Ready to start branding but want help or guidance? The La.Rue Creative Studio, offers complete in-house luxury branding, marketing, and business coaching. We will help you visually establish your brand with a stunning website and brand kit that you can use for all marketing materials. Or, if you want marketing materials handed over to you, we also develop social media campaigns to take more work off your plate. And if you’re someone feeling overwhelmed with all of this business jargon, we offer business coaching. This coaching can and will take you through a step-by-step process to launch a successful business and brand.
