The Role of Brand Identity in Social Media Marketing
Plagiarism is way too common nowadays. Every social media platform you turn to shows you the same old, overly-used templates, colour palettes, marketing tactics, and topics. It’s needless to say, why so many newcomers fail to connect with the audience.
Anyhow, on a positive note, just think about it: if everyone is doing the same thing, you have a great chance of bringing something new and creating a buzz all over the internet.
In this blogpost, we will discuss how going against all the odds you can create a unique brand identity and why it’s important.
What is Brand Identity?
Do you ever wonder why you know a few products just by the name of some brands? That’s the magic of brand identity.
Brand identity is how you represent your business to your customers. It greatly helps you stand among your competition and win your customers’ trust. A strong brand identity can considerably lead to increased sales and improved customer service.
A brand’s identity is the first impression you make, and it’s what people remember about you.
Brand identity is built upon how you express an externally visible image. This can include the logo of your brand and the colour and design palette of your posts.
You can easily integrate your brand’s message into a well-crafted brand identity.
To build a firm brand identity all you need is a strategic intuition to cultivate a specific idea in the consumer’s mind about your business.
Understanding Brand Identity
It’s basically a composition of multiple aspects like language, tone of voice or logo, etc. as we discussed. Your brand identity also influences how you interact and engage with your audience across multiple social media platforms.
Let’s take a look at what can be considered a strong brand identity:
- When your brand is easily recognized by consumers with a minimalistic marketing effort
- Stands right on your goals
- Consistent across various social media channels where your audience is actively present
- Is building a positive image of your brand among customers
A well-curated brand identity can prove to be the greatest asset to your business.
Although brand value is intangible, making it hard to quantify in terms of success or performance, studies and research have proven over time that it can bring a strong brand equity to that table.
Take Nike for example. It owns one of the most highly recognizable taglines, logos and campaigns. According to a report by Forbes, Nike ranked 13 among the World’s most powerful brands in 2020.
Building Brand Identity
To build a strong, consistent and cohesive brand identity over time, there are some set of rules you should apply to your strategy:
1. Analyze the market
Conduct a thorough SWOT analysis of both your company and your competition to assess strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
This helps you understand where your products or services stand in the market, identify gaps you can close to achieve your goals, and find new audience segments to leverage.
2. Determine your key business goals
Set major goals. Your goals should comprise both short term and long-term milestones. This helps you keep sticking to your purpose throughout your journey without getting distracted.
3. Identify your customer base
Conduct the surveys in the focus groups to identify your customers. Understand their needs and desires.
4. Determine the personality and messaging
You should never overlook the messaging part as it majorly shapes the audience’s perception of your business.
Try to be sensible, thoughtful and sensitive with your messages. Your messages must convey a proper value proposition.
5. Create your style guide
Next up is the style guide of your brand. You need a proper style guide in terms of both design and content. This guide will determine the colour scheme you will choose for your social media posts.
A social media style guide helps you ensure that your social media presence seems consistent and credible.
By crafting a good style guide you can establish a unique voice and style, this can make your content recognizable and help you connect with your audience.
6. Focus on the common beliefs and values of your customers
Study the buying behaviour of your customers to understand what they expect and why they choose to buy a product. Learn their attitude, behaviour and needs to tailor your products and services.
7. Link with other brands for cross-collaboration
Collaborate with social media influencers to enhance your reach.
For example, if your niche involves selling finance-related courses, you could collaborate with an influencer known for sharing finance knowledge.
They can subtly promote your courses in their reels or YouTube videos, driving significant traffic to your website.
Key Components of Brand Identity
To craft a good brand identity, you must first understand its key components so you don’t miss on any part:
Values and Missions
Values and mission are a crucial part of your brand identity as they act as the guiding principle for you. They are also useful in considering your specific beliefs and ideals. They greatly shape your identity.
Personality
Yes, just like us humans, brands have personalities, too. That’s because, just like us, brands do communicate.
Choose your brand’s personality based on what type of audience you cater to.
For example, if your website is about selling VFX courses, you can leverage cinematic tone and convey to your audience how your courses are helpful in creating cinematic masterpieces.
On the other hand, if you sell SaaS, your brand personality should be sophisticated.
Visual Elements
It comprises the typography, colour palette and logo to convey your brand’s essence. Make sure your visual elements are appropriate for your target audience.
Ensure that your visual identity is distinct from competitors. Keep your designs uncomplicated and easy to understand.
Storytelling
Storytelling shapes your brand identity by creating an emotional connection with your audience.
It allows you to communicate your values, mission, and personality in a relatable way, which ultimately sets your brand apart from competitors and builds a strong, lasting impression in the minds of customers.
Role of Brand Identity in Social Media Marketing
A brand’s voice on social media helps establish a consistent identity, build trust, and connect with customers:
- Consistency: A consistent voice across all platforms helps customers recognize your brand and build trust.
- Differentiation: A unique voice helps your brand stand out from competitors.
- Emotional connection: An authentic voice can help you build connections with your audience and make your brand more approachable.
- Audience connection: A voice that resonates with your target audience can help you connect with them on a deeper level.
- Purpose and direction: A voice can give your social media posts a point of view and help set your account apart.
- Adaptability: A flexible voice can help you adapt to different circumstances.
Strong Brand Identity Examples
1. Coca Cola
The brand identity of Coca-Cola is based on a number of factors. Let’s go through each of them, one by one:
Storytelling
Coca-Cola’s brand identity is majorly built on powerful storytelling. Remember how each of their campaigns never fails to connect the audience with the feeling of happiness, joy and togetherness.
Logo
Written in the Spencerian script, Coca-Cola has one of the most iconic logos.
Social Media marketing lesson to take from Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola runs seasonal campaigns to trigger mass excitement among its audience. Moreover, they widely participate in social issues such as blackout trends to connect with their audience.
If they can do it, what’s stopping you?
2. Pop Fit
Pop fit largely focuses on running social media campaigns that promote a sense of inclusivity, body positivity, and representation:
Using their social media they provide a sneak peek into how they offer a wide range of sizes from XXS to 5XL addressing sizing issues.
Their posts feature women of colour, wheelchair users, and different body types.
They also showcase that they really care about customers’ needs. One such example is when they launched a leggings collection with a pocket attached to it.
What to learn from them?
You can take inspiration from this brand to evoke a sense of empowerment and confidence among your audience.
3. Marcella NYC
By social media, the Marcella NYC brand identity speaks of its mission to empower girls and women across the world.
Some of the ways Marcella NYC communicates its brand identity through social media are:
Sustainable practices
Marcella uses organic fabric, sustainable materials, recycled materials, and biodegradable packaging.
Partnership with CAMFED
For every article of clothing she sells, Marcella uses her funds to pay for three days in school for a girl in the developing world through CAMFED, an international NGO dedicated to girls’ education.
Minimalist chic
Marcella’s clothing is inspired by NYC’s architecture. All her collection has monochromatic colour, clean lines, and geometric shapes just like the design of the city.
Winding Up
In a nutshell, building a brand of differentiation is extremely fundamental to making a difference in social media marketing. As seen, a unique brand helps you connect with the target audience and builds trust.
This can be achieved by understanding the market, setting clear goals, and telling the story of the brand itself, making it make all the immense impact.
So, don’t be afraid to be different! Amidst all the homogenous brands that chatter and look alike, your differing voice is a real differentiator that brings your casual viewers into loyal fans.
Focus on developing your brand identity, and you’ll turn casual viewers into loyal fans. Now, go out there and let your brand shine!
About the Author!
Ana Dsouza is a seasoned digital marketing expert at Kinex Media, with a passion for helping businesses build impactful brand identities. With over a decade of experience, she specializes in social media marketing strategies that foster engagement and growth. She enjoys staying current on marketing and design innovation trends when she is not creating insightful content.
Comments are closed.