Table of Contents
All the best brand guides include these 8 key strategies for success. Building a stand-out brand is essential for any business in today’s market! A well-defined brand helps you stay consistent in your marketing visuals and creates lasting connections with your audience. This article explores the best brand guide strategies that I use with all of my clients to set them up for long-term success.
Introduction: Understanding Brand Identity Design
Before we dive into all the best brand guide strategies, let’s chat about what brand identity design really means! It’s all of your visual components that represent you, including:
Logo: The visual signature mark of your brand. Think – the McDonald’s golden arches or the Nike swoosh.
Color Palette: The strategic colors that you use throughout your marketing materials to evoke the emotions and values of your brand. This is a powerful component of your brand that will help establish brand memorability.
Typography: The font system (header, subheaders, and paragraph text styles) that communicates your brand’s unique personality.
Brand Photography and Imagery: The photograph and image style treatments as set by your brand style guide. For example – do you display all of your photos in black & white? Are they used in full color? Perhaps you use a specific filter or color editing treatment.
Brand Voice and Tone: This language-focused brand element is how you communicate with your audience on social media, through email marketing, and beyond.
Brand Story: The unique narrative that conveys how you got started, your brand’s values, and mission.
Define Your Brand Purpose
What is Brand Purpose?
All of the best brand guides include a solid brand purpose. Your brand purpose is the reason your brand exists beyond making a profit. It’s your “why”—the heartbeat of your brand! Often, the brand purpose is rooted in a personal experience or observation that the business owner had prior to starting the company. Ask yourself – is there a specific event that led to you wanting to start this business? Defining your brand purpose is crucial for guiding your brand’s direction and resonating with your target audience.
How to Define Your Brand Purpose
- Identify Core Values: What underlying principles guide your business? What do you deeply believe in? These values will play a role in every decision you make in your business, and all the best brand guides use them as the foundation for the visual components.
- Understand Your Impact: Think about how your products or services benefit your customers and the community. What positive change do you want to create in the world?
- Reflect on Your Passion: Why are you passionate about your business and do you TRULY believe that you can help others in some way?
Example
My client, Hedonist Health, provides holistic wellness coaching in both 1-on-1 and group settings. Specializing in harm reduction and education, they strive to empower their clients and bring awareness to living a healthier life through food, lifestyle, and moderation.
Their brand purpose is rooted in the core values of empowerment without judgement, access to brain and body education, and mental and physical health support without the use of fancy diet plans.
A Logo Design Mockup Within My Client’s (Hedonist Health) Brand Guide
Conduct Market Research
Thoroughly understanding your target audience is crucial for designing effective branding. Going beyond the typical demographics (like their gender and location) is essential – you need to know customer preferences, behaviors, and brands they connect with. This is a necessary step to creating the best brand guide possible for the business.
How To Do Effective Market Research
- Surveys and Questionnaires: Use tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey to collect feedback from potential customers. This is an excellent way to gather information on what your audience actually wants instead of guessing.
- Focus Groups: Organize focus group discussions to gather insights about customer perceptions.
- Competitor Analysis: Spy on your competitors (on social media, in their comment sections, within customer reviews, etc.) to identify gaps in the market and potential opportunities for your brand.
Benefits of Market Research
- Informed Decision-Making: Data-driven insights allow you to make savvy branding decisions.
- Tailored Messaging: Understanding your audience enables you to craft messages that resonate on a deep level and help you become memorable.
Example
In creating the best brand guide for my client, House of Modern Realty, we took a look at the real estate world as a whole. In a lot of ways, this industry can be very formal and can be intimidating to buyers, sellers, and agents. However, HOM takes a fresh approach. With their hyper-personalization techniques, they are able to easily stand out in the market as a more approachable option.
My client, House of Modern Realty‘s bold branding in action
Develop a Strong Visual Identity
Your brand’s visual identity is the first impression you make on potential customers! The foundation of the brand purpose and market research helps set the foundation for the best brand guide possible.
Creating The Best Brand Guide For Your Business
A brand style guide outlines the dos and don’ts of using your visual elements. This guide should include each of the following components:
- logo design & usage guidelines
- font system
- color palette
- mission statement
- core values
- social media guidelines
- brand pattern / texture
- brand iconography
- recommended stock photo style / image treatment OR brand photography with associated styling
- mock-ups of the brand elements in action
- social media templates
- revision rounds so that we get your brand absolutely perfect
My client, House of Modern Realty‘s bold branding in action
Craft Your Brand Voice
Your brand voice is how you communicate with your audience on social media, through your email marketing, etc. The world is done with boring – it’s time to infuse some flavor into your business and show off your unique personality! All of the best brand guides include recommendations on how to approach the language component of your marketing.
Steps to Develop Brand Voice
- Identify Your Brand Personality: Is your brand friendly and approachable, or authoritative and professional? Define three to five adjectives that describe your brand. These descriptors will help guide the language that you will use. For example – “hey guys” vs. “hey y’all” vs. “hey gorgeous” all have different tones to them.
- Craft Messaging Guidelines: Write sample messages that exemplify your brand voice, ensuring consistency across all marketing channels.
Build an Online Presence
In today’s digital age, having a frequently-updated online presence is vital for success! Your website and social media profiles are often the first touchpoints potential customers have with your business, so it’s important to follow your best brand guide practices to enhance brand authority and trustworthiness.
Key Components of Online Presence
- Professional Website: Your website should reflect your brand identity, be easy to navigate, and provide valuable information for your target audience.
- Social Media: Choose platforms that align with your audience demographics. Where are your most aligned people hanging out? Create consistent and engaging content that showcases your brand personality.
- Content Marketing: Develop a content strategy that positions your brand as an authority in your industry. This can include blogs, videos, infographics, and more!
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO): is crucial for increasing your online visibility. Optimize your website and social media content for relevant keywords to improve search rankings, get your work in front of people that might be seeking what you offer, and ultimately, generate more leads for your business.
A collection of custom website designs that I have created for clients
Encourage Audience Engagement
Regularly engaging with your audience is essential for building loyalty and creating fans that RAVE about your business to all their friends! It’s best brand guide practice to outline how you plan to foster a two-way relationship through meaningful interactions.
Strategies for Audience Engagement
- Social Media Interaction: Respond to comments, messages, and mentions promptly. Typically – I suggest to clients that they should set a time block in their calendar to do this once per day. Use polls and questions within your content to encourage more interaction!
- Email Marketing: Create personalized email campaigns that offer value and encourage customer feedback. Many email marketing platforms have audience customization features that you can leverage, including first name inclusion, segmentation by interest, etc.
- User-Generated Content: It’s always awesome when customers love your product/service so much that they feel compelled to share their experience with you. Reward them by showcasing their content on your channels – repost their content to show gratitude and encourage others to do the same.
Consistency is Key
At the heart of all the best brand guides is consistency. When all brand touchpoints look the same, this helps the business building trust and brand recognition! Ensure that your brand elements, messaging, and customer experiences are cohesive, reinforcing the principles set forth in your guide.
Areas to Maintain Consistency
- Visual Identity: Use the same logos, colors, and fonts across all platforms and materials.
- Brand Voice: Ensure that your messaging aligns with your defined brand voice, regardless of the communication channel.
- Customer Experience: Provide a consistent experience, from product quality to customer service, to reinforce your brand identity.
Left: Branding identity design direction for my client, Princess Etch.
Right: Showing how this branding identity is integrated into the custom website design I created for her.
Leverage Aligned Partnerships
Collaborating with others can amplify your brand’s reach and credibility! Once your brand guide is complete, use it as a model for how to start working alongside service providers in industries that are complimentary to what you offer. Forming partnerships with neighboring niches can help you support your clients in a more wholistic manner. You want to make sure that the people that you collaborate with align with you from a core values and mission standpoint.
The Benefits of Creating Your Referral Network
- Increased Visibility: Partners can introduce your brand to new audiences, and in turn, increase your visibility.
- Enhanced Credibility: Recommendations always hold a bit more weight when coming from a trusted source. Think about the last time you took a restaurant recommendation from a friend. If your friend raved about the restaurant, you automatically get more excited than if you were to search out a new recommendation on your own. Fostering these types of recommendation networks can enhance your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness!
Conclusion
To create the best brand guide for your specific business – you need a strategic, customized brand identity and approach. When done right, this helps you to stand out from others in your niche, build trust with your dream clients, and create a memorable brand. By following these branding strategies – you’ll be well on your way to crafting a business that stands the test of time.
If you need some support with crafting the best brand guide for your business – check out the resources I have listed below.
Take The BOLD Branding Persona Quiz
Curious about which BOLD Branding Persona you embody?
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Ready To Step Into Your Bold Branding Era?
I would love to help your creative business stand out from the crowd and attract your dream clients! Check out some of my custom branding work and if it feels aligned, reach out via my contact page. Once I receive your application, we can have a quick chat about your website goals and overall vision for your bold branding. I look forward to hearing from you soon!