Often in starting a business, we focus so much on putting products out and making sales that we ignore the importance of branding. Creating a brand personality should be top on the list when starting a business, because it is the story you tell your target audience that will either attract them to you or make them indifferent.
Creating the right brand identity will help hit the right spots in your audience; it is a demanding process but is always worth the efforts.
The Value of Having a Brand Identity
More often than not, businesses these days rely on techniques like promotions in order to make sales and move the business forward. Having a solid brand identity can help you avoid buy-one-get-one-free techniques that sometimes mean losing something to gain something.
Properly branding your fashion business will help you save money on promotions and earn you a community of loyal fashion consumers.
A good example of a fashion brand with a strong brand essence is Nike. Nike owns the most recognizable brand logo, and their essence is clear and easily acceptable. Nike as a brand tells you that whoever you are, whatever you do, just do it.
This is a meessage that is evergreen and very relatable to Nike’s target audience and it has served its purpose over the years. The value of the Nike brand, which is well represented by its logo (the swoosh ) is now estimated by Forbes to be worth about $11.5billion.
Branding makes your customer emotionally attached when they can relate to the story of your brand, it helps them to be loyal. It can also convert other customers who are willing to buy into the culture of your brand. It makes the life of the persona you have created for your brand attractive to prospective customers.
This will ultimately translate to monetary value and growth with consistency.
How to build a brand Identity
- Knowing and identifying your goals is important in building a brand. This helps you to know what you are looking to achieve and how to achieve it and will influence the process of building your brand identity.
- Identifying your target audience. You can not know what to say if you don’t know who you are saying it to. If you have already started your business, you existing customer base can help you determine who your target audience are. You need to know what they do, what they enjoy, what their launguage is, where they live, what jokes they laugh at and so on.
- A good look at your business’ strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) will help you know where you stand and the measure you need to put in place to build a good brand identity.
- What is your message? What is your brand’s essence and core? You need to dicover this and make it the centre of everything you do.
Rather than try to pick all the positive qualities you think a business should have and merge it into one, you shoul have a strong message and ensure that all your brand elements (captions, pictures, colors, products) come together to reflect your message.
What Next?
After analysing your business, identifying your audience and taking all other necessary steps, the next step will be to excute your conclusions to create your Brand Image. Your brand image is what depicts your message to your target audience and represents your essence.
The elements that come together to form your brand image include online contents, icons, logos, photographs, colors, product packaging, collections, brand’s face and studio/office decor; all these should clearly speak your ‘truth’.
Creating a brand identity for a fashion brand can be quite easy, but staying on course and ensuring the brand essence doesn’t get lost in the midst of activities is where the hardwork is. So, it is important to have checks every now and then to ensure that everything that comes in contact with your prospective consumers speaks your language and sends your message one way or another.
