Are You Making These Mistakes With Brand Identity?

Building the right identity is crucial for the success of any new startup.

Without strong brand identity, customers won’t be able to connect to your business as they should and that’s an issue. It could kill the chance of your company building up a solid customer base that you can rely on. A loyal base of customers will allow your business to stay afloat through thick and thin.

So, if there is a rough economy on the horizon, then your company will survive the coming storm. So the question becomes, how exactly do you build your online brand identity the right way? Or rather, what mistakes do you need to ensure that you avoid? There are a few to be aware of, so let’s jump in.

No Consistency 

One of the common mistakes with your business brand is not ensuring that it’s consistent across the board. Essentially, every piece of content that you release whether it’s for your website or social media, should clearly be tied back to your business. You can do this by establishing and using a style guide. A style guide will be particularly useful if you are planning on using freelancers or outsourcing agents to complete content for your business. It will ensure that everyone is on the same page all the time. 

The big benefit of consistency is that you won’t confuse customers. You also won’t need to worry about hitting them over the head with your brand message. Your brand message is synonymous with your identity so as long as you keep things consistent they will always have this in mind. 

Of course, through consistency, you will also be able to build up the personality of your brand and that’s definitely a key aspect of the identity. Remember, customers, don’t want to interact with nameless businesses. Instead, they want to ensure that they feel connected to the people behind your company and their unique personalities. Some brands are fantastic at using this concept effectively. For instance, Wendy’s is well known for making their content fun, interesting, engaging and adding in personal flair.

Quality

Quality is crucial when you are establishing your business brand identity. Ultimately. If the quality isn’t there with the content that you create and publish, then customers are going to assume it’s not there with the services and products that you offer either. Instead, they will, rightfully or wrongfully, decide that you won’t be able to deliver the service that they need. 

Slow loads are particularly problematic because they give your customers a reason to check out the competition. If your business website takes longer than three seconds to load a page, you’re in trouble. To handle this, consider speaking to a web design company. They will be able to change your website the right way to ensure that it loads far more rapidly. 

Of course, this isn’t the only area where speed needs to be a top priority. You should think about the structure of your website too. It’s vital that you consider whether it’s easy or difficult for customers to find what they are looking for. The general rule here is three clicks. If it takes longer than three clicks for customers to find what they are searching for on your website, there’s a problem with the structure. The good news is that it’s not that difficult to correct the situation if you have the right web designer on your side. They won’t have to take your website apart to do it either. 

It’s worth noting that this can also be accomplished by adding the right links to lead buyers to purchase decisions. Alternatively, you can add a chat pop-up to your site. A pop-up can quickly deliver the answers that customers need and ensure that they don’t get lost on the way to a final purchase.

No Engagement

You do need to make sure that you are engaging with customers online too. This isn’t just about writing compelling content although that’s a great start. It’s important to think about speaking directly to individual customers and actually treating them as individuals. One of the best ways to do this is to get active on social media. You can hire a social media manager to complete this role for you or you may want to handle it yourself. It’s ultimately going to depend on the size of your customer base and your business too. 

You can also use software to track mentions of your business online. This is a great way to find out who you should be speaking to. For instance, you might find that there are some negative comments about your business brand. If you speak to these people, then you might just be able to turn things around. You could even win them over and convince them to make another purchase. 

Engagement can be completed through other sources too. For instance, you can try email engagement. The trick here is to use data that you have collected for customers and then use it to show that you understand your target audience.

Remember, this also needs to be personalized and provide the right argument to get that sale. You have to make each customer that you engage with feel like they are important to you and your brand on a personal level.

Don’t forget, your emails to these customers should maintain the same level of consistency that we spoke about earlier. It also needs to hit high levels of quality. If it looks like the spam that’s exactly how they’re going to treat it. 
Are you making these mistakes with your brand identity?

If so then it’s important to realize it’s not too late to correct the situation. You can get back on track with your business and ensure that it gains the traction and the attention that you want. Business owners often think that you only get one chance to make the right impression. To an extent this is true, however, it’s not the full story because you can always take the opportunity to regain any ground that you might have lost.

This is a contributed post.