How to Build your Brand Identity - The 3 Key Building Blocks

How to Build your Brand Identity - The 3 Key Building Blocks

It’s an exciting time – you’re getting ready to launch a new website and take your business to the next level. But before you can launch a new website, you need to build a brand that represents your products and ethos. 

Your website should be an extension of your brand identity – if you’re not confident in your branding, your website’s messaging will be muddled and confusing for potential clients.

Today, we’re breaking down branding into three key building blocks to help you choose the best direction for your business: Mission, Design, and Voice.

1. Mission – Mission is the purpose behind your business. What are you creating or selling? Why are you doing it? Who is it for? What is your positioning statement?
2. Design - Design is all about your logo, colours, fonts/typography, and photography. What are you doing for each of these, and how do you create them? Are you using Canva or another programme or hiring a professional?
3. Voice – Voice is the tone of voice for your copywriting. It’s all about the language you use and how you want to speak to your customers.

What is a Brand Identity?

Your brand distinguishes you from other businesses in your sphere. Not only does it include and define who you are, but it also helps you choose who to advertise to and attract.

Before you do anything else, you need to determine your brand’s identity. Your brand identity includes:

• Who are your customers?
• How you communicate your goods and services to them
• How do you want your customers to feel?
• Your core values - what your brand believes in and promotes

 Think of it as your ‘personality’ – if your brand was a person, who would they be? Thinking about it from this perspective can help you choose your name, logo, motto, design elements, brand voice, and social media presence. It can also help you determine your pricing structure and target demographic.

Mission – The heart of your brand

Now that you’ve thought about your brand identity, it’s time to determine your specific brand mission. A brand mission clearly states your purpose and objectives and gives your potential customers a specific idea of what they can expect from you and your products. It should tell your audience why you exist, and ideally form an emotional connection with them.

It’s not just about your audience. Your mission should also speak to potential employees and let them know what they can expect from your company. It’s crucial that you honour the ethos of your brand mission – don’t include anything you aren’t prepared to focus on.

To create your mission, start by writing a brief summary of your brand’s goals and the impact you want to have, and then hone that down into just a few sentences. Don’t stop editing and improving – take a few days away from what you’ve written and come back to it. Does it still sound good? Is it missing anything? Perfection rarely comes with a first draft!

These few sentences will form the backbone of your brand mission, which will in turn inform every aspect of your branding going forward. Over time, you might edit and change this statement as you redefine your goals and objectives.

Think about the following prompts when drafting your mission:

• How do you add value to your customers?
• What impact do you want to have on the world?
• Why is this important to you personally?
• Is it actually feasible to embody this mission in all aspects of your business?

What are the differences between brand mission, brand design, and brand voice?

It can be easy to mix up brand mission, brand voice, and brand identity. Here’s how they differ: 

• Brand mission: Tells your audience why you are in business and creates an emotional connection.
• Brand design: Your brand design includes stylistic and visual elements, such as your font, logo, motto, and colours. It can also include the videos and memes you share on social media, and the sounds and songs you choose.
• Brand voice: This is the way you speak to your audience – it can be cheeky, serious, or humorous. Ideally, this is also how your audience speaks to each other.
  

Design – The visual and stylistic elements of your brand

Now that you have ideas about your brand identity and you’ve drafted a mission, it’s time to think about design. This can be a daunting task when you’re just starting out, because hiring a designer can be expensive and time-consuming. However, it’s super important to get this right, because your visual elements are usually your only chance at a first impression.

Here are some of the most important parts of any brand design.

• Logo – Your logo represents who you are and what you do, and helps customers identify you in an instant. The right logo builds trust and lets a client know they are in the right hands with someone who is a good stylistic match.
  
  Your logo should align with your industry, your ethos, and your offerings. You can (and should) hire a designer for your logo, but if money is especially tight, you can also use Canva's Logo Maker or a similar programme.
  
• Colour palette – Did you know that colours are scientifically proven to change our moods and evoke an emotional response? That's why they’re so important in branding. Certain colours can motivate customers to select or brand or a product, so it's vital that your colour scheme reflect who you are and who you want to attract.
  

Think carefully about how you want your customers to feel before you select a colour scheme. Some of the most common colour associations include:

• Red – love, passion, anger, and excitement
• Pink – calming and soothing
• Orange – vibrancy and warmth
• Yellow – energy
• Green – learning, relaxation, and motivation
• Blue – calmness and serenity
• Purple – wealth and royalty
• Brown – nature, strength, and trust
• White – purity and positivity
• Black – sophistication and elegance

• Fonts – In addition to the colour of your text, its typography also conveys different emotions and ideas. Certain fonts are funky and artsy, while others are clean and elegant or traditional and formal. When you are selecting your font, pay special attention to the serif (or lack thereof). Serif fonts are typically seen as more traditional or formal, while sans serif fonts are seen as modern and clean.
  
  No matter what, make sure your logo and all communications are legible. If your customers can’t read your messaging, all of your branding could be for nought.
  
• Photography – If you spend money on just one branding element, it should be your photography. High-quality photos are crucial for your brand identity – without them, your business will look tawdry and cheap compared to the competition. Your product photography is important for your website and print media, but don’t forget the lifestyle photos you use on your social media. It is also extremely important to your overall brand, as many of today’s customers will find you through these channels.
  
  

Each of these branding design elements is equally important – don’t devalue your brand or your products by neglecting one or more of them.

Voice – It’s all about consistency

The third element of building your brand is your brand voice. This helps your customers get a good feel for your mission, identity, and values, and it helps you stand out from the crowd and get remembered. Your brand’s tone of voice is the way you write and speak about your products and services, and it should always be both unique and true to your mission. It should also be consistent, regardless of the channel.

Even if you plan to write all of your own content yourself, it’s important to create a brand voice ‘bible’ - a detailed set of guidelines that helps you write the content for your brand. It will ensure that your content is always “you” so that your customers never read a product description or tweet and think, “wait a second, that doesn’t sound like X…” 

Some people create their Tone of Voice Bible in a simple Word document, while others find a set of Powerpoint slides or a short video works better for them. This is all about your unique brand, so do what works best for you.

Your brand voice guidelines should include:

1. Your tone of voice and tonal values – How do you want to sound and be perceived at all times, and how does this relate to and support your brand mission?
2. Practical and detailed advice about achieving this tone – If someone other than you needs to take the communication reins, this document should provide clear instructions on how to write for social media, website content, customer emails, and more.

Your brand communications bible should include information about the following:

• What communications channels do you use? Make a detailed list of every form of communication you have with customers and potential customers. Of course, this includes social media channels, and advertising, but can also include call scripts, website error messages, auto-reply emails, hold music and messaging, voicemail greetings, and so much more.
• What tone and style do you want to apply to each channel? Every channel requires slightly different practical and tonal styles – not every value is appropriate for every channel. For instance, customer complaints must be dealt with in a different tone than an Instagram post. Start thinking about how you want to communicate in each channel.
• Provide examples of each – Now that you have your channels and your tonal values for each, it's time to write a ‘best-practice’ example that both you and your employees can follow. Always get feedback from others on these examples – this allows you to see how your tone of voice could come across to potential customers.

This branding bible will quickly become one of the most valuable tools in your arsenal, and it will help you and others keep on-brand no matter which communication channel you are using. 

It’s time to get out there and build your brand

Now that you understand the three main building blocks for building your brand – mission, design, and voice, it's time to get started. There’s nothing worse than seeing what could be a brilliant product or company end up sabotaged by bad branding – or even just a lack of branding strategy.

While you can do a majority of these things on your own, you may find it helpful to hire a professional to help you get started. A branding expert can guide you down the right paths and ensure that you are on the right track. So, get out there and get started!