How to build a strong brand identity (that goes beyond a fancy logo)

It takes more than a bold colour palette to build a strong brand identity. Here’s how to distinguish your business.

All too often, #TeamDuck hears words to this effect…

“Are we happy with our brand? Yes, we updated our logo last year. It’s all sorted.”

We hate to break it to you, but it’s not that simple. While visual identity is a crucial consideration for any growing business, it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Assets such as logos, colour palettes and fonts are incredibly important, but they are not the sum total of your brand.

A strong brand identity starts with understanding your offering and how it fits within the wider market, pinpointing the reasons why you do what you do, identifying your ideal customers and establishing the value you add for your client base. Combine these factors with in-depth competitor analysis and an appealing brand personality, and you are well on your way to creating a brand identity capable of underpinning clear, consistent and confident marketing and communications. However, those who prioritise visual aspects before reaching this stage risk wasting considerable time, effort and money. 

In short, people need to know what they are buying into before making a purchase – and few, if any, will part with their money on the strength of a logo. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C brand, your primary aim is to develop a meaningful connection with your client base. Why? Because your target audience won’t just come to you. The onus is on you to show them how your product or service meets their needs or solves their problems, and the value they will derive by spending money with you rather than your rivals.

The good news is that you don’t need to be turning over billions of dollars to develop and benefit from a strong and compelling brand identity. All it takes is a little bit of work and some creative thinking. A logo, colour palette and subscription to ChatGPT (or your GenAI platform of choice) will only get you so far. If it’s real returns you’re looking for, human intervention – and thinking – is required. 

So, what are the key things to consider when crafting a brand identity? From understanding what you stand for and your market positioning to defining your audience, finding your brand’s voice and developing visuals, a step-by-step approach will bring clarity and consistency to your marketing and communications activities.

Decide what you stand for
Understanding who you are as a brand is important. It’s the first step to developing a consistent identity that prospective clients can recognise and connect with. This begins with you, as a business founder, owner, director or CEO, working alongside other key stakeholders to articulate your organisation’s motivations and aspirations.

“Even if you haven’t previously taken the time to formally articulate your vision, mission and values, you might just find that these elements are already guiding your daily operations and influencing your organisational culture.”

Usually, this process involves putting into words some of the fundamental elements of the business that you will have considered at the outset but haven’t necessarily formalised. Begin by exploring what it is you are working to achieve in the long term (your vision), how you will get there (your mission), and the key principles from which you will never deviate, no matter how bad a day you are having (your values).

Now, the way you describe yourselves at this point may not be completely unique. Uber’s vision ‘to ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion’ could belong to an airline, for example, but the devil is in the detail, as they say. It’s the unique ways that you set out to deliver on your vision that should set you apart. Once you’re on the right path, it will be easier to figure these things out.

Even if you haven’t previously taken the time to formally articulate your vision, mission and values, you might just find that these elements are already guiding your daily operations and influencing your organisational culture. If not, spelling them out is still likely to prove a worthwhile exercise – simply to get everyone on the same page.  

Set your brand apart
Once you’ve established what your brand stands for, you need to think about how it differs from the competition. Doing this could be pretty simple if you are selling a truly unique product or service. The chances are, though, that like many businesses, your offering has competition.

Take, for example, an accountancy firm offering core services such as financial accounting, reporting and tax preparation. People looking for an accountant value an organisation staffed by skilled, knowledgeable professionals who can provide timely and accurate advice or guidance. If you happen to run an accounting service, you will value the same skillset in your team, and as such, you’ll likely have a loyal customer base who love your offering. Fantastic! But how do you attract new customers?

Naturally, you’ll want to promote how amazingly efficient, accurate and experienced your team is. But every other company in your sector is saying the same thing. With this in mind, you need to establish what it is your organisation does better – or differently – than the competition. Where does the value for your client come in?

You can figure this out by honestly evaluating your own services and scrutinising your competition. For instance, is there an opportunity to turn their weaknesses into your organisation’s strengths? Is there a niche market that no one else in your area is serving? Sneaky, we know, but it works.

Define your target audience
All of this leads nicely into defining your audience. Who actually needs your products or services? *Hint, it’s not everyone.* Knowing who you are speaking to helps shape the way your organisation communicates, from the channels you choose to the language you use. Narrowing down ‘everyone’ to a handful of key target audiences can feel a little counterintuitive. Limiting your field will surely mean fewer sales, right?

Wrong.

Brands that try to appeal to everyone end up appealing to no one. Their messaging becomes background noise and fails to connect with anyone. (Interestingly, this is a common complaint we hear from teams that have been asking AI to generate content without providing a clear marcomms framework to develop written copy.)

But I digress. Even brands we think of as being ‘everyman’ brands, like IKEA and Ford, are not actually trying to target everybody. They know that their appeal lies in their accessibility and affordability. As such, their marcomms activities are crafted to develop emotional resonance with their defined target audiences, based on their lack of pretence, reliability and inclusivity rather than exclusivity. 

Take, for example, IKEA’s TV ads, which heavily feature families and mess, make pop culture references and feature behaviours we may recognise in ourselves or others. They play on these motifs, using humour to connect with their customers on an emotional level. And it works. By developing an easily understandable brand identity with a clear target audience, they have given an off-the-shelf, flat-pack furniture outlet a quirky, playful and unique personality, all while positioning themselves as the stylish yet practical solution to our interior design woes (at an affordable price).

By contrast, everyman brands are not trying to tap into the same customer base as high-end designers delivering bespoke or luxury products. Their audience has different priorities and emotional pulls. But they haven’t hedged their bets, thinking ‘what if by talking to x, I miss out on business from y?’ Instead, they have fully embraced x, come to know their traits inside and out, and developed their messaging with this target audience in mind.

Establishing who doesn’t need your product or services saves you from wasting time, energy and money chasing business you will never win.

Find your brand’s voice
Once you know who you are and who you’re talking to, you can establish your brand’s voice. This pulls together all the foundational work you have done and uses it to create a consistent set of guidelines for your marcomms activities. It defines what your brand talks about (the content) and how it speaks (the tone) across all channels, from your website to your company newsletter to your social media.

The aim is to create clear, consistent guidelines so that your communications reflect your brand’s purpose (why your customers come to you) and personality (why they connect with you), regardless of who writes the copy. Your tone might sit anywhere between the playful, quirky style that brands like Innocent and Skittles are known for, and the expert, informative voices favoured by Microsoft and NatWest. It really depends on what you are selling, why you are selling it and who you are selling it to.

Fundamentally, a successful brand voice must appeal to its target audience, demonstrating that you speak their language. In this way, you can connect with your customer base on an emotional level. After all, the goal is to make your audience think, feel and act. This is why consistency is so important, and you need to sweat the small stuff to create it, because whether or not you use contractions, whether exclamation marks and emojis are appropriate on your social platforms, and whether you include or avoid industry jargon will help shape your customer-facing identity across all touch points, both digital and offline.

Inconsistencies in the way you communicate risk gradually eroding the hard work you’ve put into cultivating a connection with your audience, making it feel inauthentic and hard for them to identify with, ultimately reducing click-through rates and interest from prospective clients. Anyone who has tried to use AI to write their social media content, for example, may notice that without foundational messaging in place, it struggles to consistently generate content that speaks to your audience in your brand’s voice, falling flat no matter how often you post. 

Develop your visual identity
Now you’re communicating clearly, consistently and with conviction, you’re ready to delve into that visual identity. Go back to your logo, colour palette and font choices. Do they feel in keeping with the brand identity you’ve constructed through this work? Do they really reflect the organisation’s purpose and personality and resonate with the kind of people you are trying to attract? Remember, your visuals are an expression of your brand identity.

“Your messaging will be sharper because it’s directed at a well-defined audience, your visuals will feel more intentional, and the right people will start to recognise your brand.”

If you originally chose your visuals because you thought they were ‘edgy’, ‘cute’ or ‘fun’, or you developed your colour palette based on your personal favourite hues, it might be time to be honest about what you’re trying to achieve. The purpose of a visual identity is to say something about your brand, not you as an individual. That’s why shoring up your strategic foundations before the graphics and colour schemes will better equip you to create consistency between messaging and visuals, allowing them to work in harmony and promote your business effectively.

Keeping it simple – limiting the number of hex codes, fonts and typefaces used – is always advisable. Think about the likes of McDonald’s, Starbucks and Amazon. They have one or two instantly recognisable colours and fonts that are easy to read, unfussy and used consistently across all messaging. There is no wild style variation between offerings, even if there are subtle differences. This is done deliberately to create a coherent and recognisable identity.

As with your messaging, creating strict guidelines for your decision-making will contribute to that overarching sense of ‘sameness’, ensuring that your brand feels genuine, authoritative and trustworthy.

So, if you thought you had your brand identity ‘in the bag’ because you’d settled on your visuals, I hope I’ve explained why you might have a bit more work to do. Remember that brands don’t emerge from a logo alone, nor are they built overnight. It takes time to establish and grow a strong brand, and that growth comes from clarity about who you are and who you serve, as well as consistency in how you show up.

Fortunately, once you have solid foundations in place, everything else becomes easier. Your messaging will be sharper because it’s directed at a well-defined audience, your visuals will feel more intentional, and the right people will start to recognise your brand. More importantly, they will begin to trust you. You just need the right thinking, the right questions and the confidence to commit to your identity across every touchpoint.

If you get this right, your brand will stop being part of the background noise and become something that people tune into, remember and – most importantly – choose.

If you’re ready to build a clearer, more consistent and confident brand identity to resonate with the people you want to reach, we’d love to help. Book a discovery call to find out how we can support you.