6 Strategies for Building a Strong Brand Identity Online

Your brand identity refers to how you represent your brand to the public. It’s just like human self-presentation. There are ways you speak, styles you adopt, and mannerisms unique to you, and your loved ones have come to associate those things with you.

When it comes to the business world, not much is different. Your brand is not just the name you or your business bears; it also includes visual elements, messaging, the overall tone of communication, etc.

These elements are essential to helping you stand out from the competition, attract and retain customers, and build trust and credibility.

Millions of new businesses are established everywhere in the crowded marketplace of businesses worldwide. You cannot achieve much if you don’t know how to distinguish your brand from others.

Define your Brand

The obvious first step in building a strong brand identity is determining what you want your brand to represent. This seems like you have to come up with a bunch of random catchy words and call them your ‘mission’ or ‘vision’ and whatnot. But there is a whole lot of effort that goes into it.

For one, your business has an audience, and it is their perception that you want to influence through your distinct brand identity. So, you must know the range of people most likely interested in your products and services. Having determined their needs, you can tailor your brand identity to their appeal.

This is not the same thing as pandering to the audience, though. Your research into the audience and market should produce a set of values through which your brand will be represented based on your objectives.

This will also lead you toward keywords associated with your brand, and you can research this using the Eye10 Keyword Planner tool.

Create a Consistent Visual Identity

Many entrepreneurs stumble on this point because they don’t think highly of the visual elements and don’t consider it as ‘hard work.’ For many people, creating a visual identity for their brand means setting a logo, selecting colors, and so on.

Indeed, that’s what you are trying to achieve. But it is not just about the end product; it’s also about what goes into developing the end product. So, your logo should not be a shabby ‘quick job.’ Rather, it should be simple, memorable, and reflective of your brand values.

The same goes for color schemes and typography, which should be chosen to evoke the emotions you want your audience to associate with your brand. Ensure that this visual identity is consistent across all platforms to achieve cohesion.

Build your Online Presence

Having a business without an online presence is almost as good as not having a business at all. A website and social media presence are among the minimum expected requirements for most businesses. Therefore, you must also invest your brand identity in your online platforms.

First, your website is often the first point of contact between your business and potential customers. So, it should be well-designed with your brand colors, easy to navigate, and user-friendly. Also, use the Eye10 On-Page SEO tool to ensure that elements such as headings and tags are properly optimized.

Similarly, social media platforms provide an immense opportunity to connect with your target audience and build a strong community around your brand. Choose the social media platforms that are most popular with this audience and regularly engage your followers in a way that reflects well upon your brand.

Engage with your Audience

Your brand identity is not restricted to decisions made in board rooms and conference offices. Ultimately, you must engage with your audience; your identity is critical to determining how this shapes up.

For example, non-profits often try to develop a community of concerned people around the causes they are promoting. This is not accidental. It is because of how the feeling of belongingness can enhance empathy.

Similarly, it would be best to determine how you’ll engage with your audience, perhaps through events, webinars, videos, podcasts, ebooks, courses, etc. All these are also a way to achieve brand representation.

Communicate your Brand Voice

What does it mean to engage with your ‘target audience’? Does it mean simply dumping updates upon them as they come? This is hardly the case; frankly, nothing is engaging about that.

To engage your audience properly, you need to determine what tone and style of communication you will use to connect with them. This is particularly important for social media interactions, where the informal nature of conversations makes it easy to go off-script.

Therefore, it could help to develop content guidelines for all manner of communication from your brand to ensure consistency in tone and style. Of course, your brand voice should be authentic and align with your brand personality.

Monitor and Adapt

Think about all the big brands you know. There is a good chance that they have tweaked their brand identities multiple times over several years to represent a new age or vision for their business.

Nothing says the brand identity you set now must be permanent forever. Rather, you want to leave room for some dynamism, monitoring how people respond to your brand representation and using that to optimize your marketing efforts.

However, that doesn’t mean your brand identity should change every other week. That defeats the point. Rather, always ensure that your marketing efforts are not static and that you stay on top of trends in consumer behavior and your industry or niche.

Conclusion

Competition is high for businesses, and constructing a strong brand identity is a way to sell your value proposition and build a loyal customer base.

Of course, you cannot divorce your brand’s online identity from your SEO strategies. So, it’s important to have reliable SEO tools at hand. Eye10 fills this gap, providing various SEO tools for keyword research, backlink monitoring, industry analysis, competition research, and more. Sign up now for this experience.