1. Define your brand purpose
What’s the reason for your brand existence beyond making money? To succeed with your branding process, it is essential that you define the core purpose of your brand.
Find out who you are and what you stand for. You need to do some proper research for this to stick. What associations do you want people to have when they engage with your brand? We recommend that you do a series of interviews to clearly define your vision, values, and goals. How would your employees describe your brand? What was the main selling point for your customers when they chose your brand? What was the main pain point that you solved?
Doing these types of interviews will allow you to take a look under the hood, and locate what works, and what needs to be changed. The output will be the ground pillars for:
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Who you are
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Why you exist
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Your unique selling points
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Your target audience
Also read: How to use brand identity guides for proper brand management
2. Define your brand identity
Your brand identity is the visible brand elements that people interact with when faced with your brand. These are the elements that separate your brand from the others creating the look and feel of your brand.
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Logo
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Colors
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Design
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Images and icons
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And much more
Take Nike for example. Their logo is maybe the biggest part of their brand identity, and is recognized by billions every day, no matter the context or if it’s placed with the brand name or not.
So why has Nike become so successful with their branding? We would argue that part of it is their remarkable brand consistency. A consistent brand is a strong brand and keeping your brand consistent is an essential and constant reminder to your audience about who you are and what you do. Which takes us to our third and final point in what we believe is essential in a branding process.
Also read: What you need to establish proper branding processes
3. Manage your brand assets
When you have defined and created your brand identity, your brand will consist of hundreds of elements. Images and icons alone, and how they are being used with the logo, is cause for brand disruption. To make sure your branding processes is a success, you need to manage your brand assets correctly. This is a big, but not impossible, task.
Also read: This is how you structure your brand and marketing assets
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Brand identity guidelines: We recommend that you create brand identity guidelines as a first step, making sure all your colleagues know how they should use your brand assets at all times. However, brand guidelines in itself won’t be enough. You need to make them available and accessible for everyone.
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Give your brand assets a home: If all employees can easily access your brand guidelines, and all your brand assets, preferably from the same place, you won’t be faced with the risk of people creating their own assets in lack of something better. A brand asset management system will provide your brand with a home, making sure everything is accessible from one place, and always up to date.