If you know the enemy and yourself, your victory is certain. If you know yourself, but not the enemy, your chances of winning and losing are equal. If you do not know the enemy and not even yourself, you will succumb in every battle. (Sun Tzu, The Art of War).
Inspired by this phrase from the ancient Chinese military strategy treatise The Art of War, text also used in numerous management schools around the world, today I want to make you reflect on the importance of knowing yourself and the environment that we surrounds, to be successful not only in the business. So let's try to understand:
What is brand identity
Because it's important to define your brand identity
How to communicate your brand identity
How to protect your brand identity
What is brand identity
We begin by defining the brand, which, according to the Enciclopedia Treccani, is the brand or the "original, graphic or figurative mark, applied to the products of an enterprise to distinguish them from similar products of others manufacturing". It is an important element because it makes us immediately recognizable, it represents our identity and allows us to be able to offer ourselves on the market in an original and effective way.
The corporate identity or brand identity, however, is much more, it includes the whole set of graphic and communication elements through which we present and communicate the value of our company. The brand identity tells our story, the image we want to give our customers (brand image), the values we believe in and that we want to share.
What is brand identity and why it is important for your company
Being recognizable and consistent, then: WINNING!
A logo is not enough to define who we are: we need to identify all the elements that make us unique and recognizable to our customers, communicating consistency between the company values expressed and their perception outside. Being recognizable and consistent with our corporate identity inspires confidence and trust is the basis of any relationship, not just work. Strengthening brand identity means strengthening trust in our company and therefore increasing sales.
We all have a story to tell: what is the story of your company?
Meeting a new client is a great challenge, stimulating my curiosity and the desire to discover a new story to tell. I deal with web marketing for companies and for tourist facilities and it is important to know the corporate identity in order to communicate it better and thus succeed in telling the story of a company or the experience of a holiday in a more suggestive way.
Whatever your business starts to bring these simple questions:
What motivated you to create your company?
What image do you want to convey?
What are your values?
What represents you best?
Starting from the answers to these questions, you can already delineate a trace of the story that will compose the identity of your company.
Why is it important to define your brand identity?
Knowing yourself is the principle of all wisdom.
(Aristotle)
Outlining your corporate identity helps you to better understand how to position yourself on the market, identify the target you want to reach and the personas you want to reach, or better, the possible users to whom you can offer your product or service. This is to avoid a useless waste of energy and MONEY that you would face meeting the wrong goal.
The next step will be to adopt the appropriate type of communication and in line with your identity.
A simple simple example:
If you manage an e-commerce company that specializes in children's clothing or toys, the users you are addressing are obviously families and your communication will have to align with what you expect this type of customer. In particular, on your website and within your product cards you will have to choose a direct communication to mothers, who reassure them on the type of fabric or on the material used to make the toys, explaining why buying your products is the right choice for them.
How to communicate your brand identity
After defining your name, logo and your entire story outlining an exact brand identity, you just have to develop communication on the web. Let's talk first of all about your site, which must absolutely comply with some basic rules:
Be Google-friendly;
Be usable and intuitive;
Be designed to sell.
The starting point is certainly a study of SEO Branding Strategy or accurate analysis of how to position the brand online, starting from the identification of the right keywords and, based on these, create valuable content that communicate your brand identity.
Inside the site everything must talk about yourself and the values of your company in a linear and consistent way