Your Brand Identity is one of the four key components of your customer experience. Having a consistent brand throughout the entire buying AND relationship-building processes does a few things:

• builds trust and credibility
• creates the perception of professionalism and legitimacy
• reduces confusion at all stages of the experience
• increases brand recognition and ultimately brand loyalty

But how do you create a consistent brand? How do you align it with the four other components of the customer experience? Here are 3 easy steps to make it happen.

Identify your keywords

From values to the vibe you want to give off, having 3-5 keywords that represent your business goes a long way to ensuring that everything you do, offer, say, put out there aligns with your overall vision.

how to do it

Block off 10 minutes and get brainstorming. Write down as many words as you can think of (you can go back and cross off the bad ones later) that answer the following questions:

• What do I stand for?
• How do I want to come across?
• What do I want to represent?
• Who am I?

Some examples: professional, young, trendy, modest, modern, approachable, mature, active, engaging, leader, expert, casual, reliable, etc.

Define your key elements

Having consistent elements in everything you do is the key to a successful, consistent brand identity. No matter what you put out if your logo has identical elements, fonts are the same, colours are the same or complimentary, no matter where your customer (or potential customer) is in their experience with you, they’ll know they’re in the right place. Even better, if you have a professional brand identity, they’ll be impressed and attracted to you – and even more inclined to buy from you. The inherent trust is there, no matter how often we were told when we were little not to judge a book by its cover.

Some basics

• Having a logo and alternative logo (that compliments) goes a long way for brand identity. It should go on EVERYTHING.
• Stick to 2-3 fonts. One heading (primary) and one subheading (accent). If your primary font is pretty busy, it helps to add a third, cleaner-looking font for body text. Keep your target audience in mind – what attracts them?
• Similar to fonts, try to stick to 1-2 accent colours. You don’t want to look too busy or overwhelm your customers. Yet again, this is a guideline. Always be in the mind of your customer, but don’t forget to be true to yourself at the same time.

Bring it all together

Once you’ve decided on the fundamentals, it’s bringing in your brand identity to every stage of your customer experience. This means your marketing. Your sales. Your post-purchasing. Emails. Invoices. Networking. Social Media. Price tags. O.M.G.

You’ll figure it out. While we highly recommend you invest in your brand identity and (ultimately your customer experience) by hiring a professional graphic designer (hey there, pick us), there are still tons of tools out there that make it manageable for you to do it yourself. We’ve listed them below for you to check out and get started.

• Canva – drag & drop image creation
• Vistaprint – printing & basic design templates
• Pexels, Unsplash, & Burst – free for commercial use stock photos

If you’re unsure about what you need, contact us today and we’d be happy to have a look & point you in the right direction!