Let’s start with a simple truth of running a business: if your target audience doesn’t recognize you, they’ll forget your business – and if they forget you, they won’t buy from you.
This statement is enough to emphasize the importance of building a strong brand recognition. Being a part of branding, recognition is the first to building a brand that grows at scale. Brand recognition isn’t only important because it only helps you sell better, but also because it ensures people remember your brand.
After all, it’s the remembered brands that customers choose when they need something. That’s why brand identifiers aren’t just pretty assets. They’re the foundational components that signal who you are, what you do, and why it matters.
Read on, as we discuss how brand identifiers make your brand recognizable and how to create ones that ensure your target audience remembers you.
Understanding Brand Identifiers
In simple terms, brand identifiers are the elements of your business that make it recognizable. It’s a touchpoint that whenever a person comes across it, they’re instantly remembered about your business.
Let’s take a look at some brand identifiers crucial to establishing strong brand recognition:
Identifier #1 – Brand Name
Your name is not just a label. It’s the first spoken form of your brand’s identity Some characteristics of a good brand name:
- Reflect your brand’s truth.
- Evokes emotion.
- Feels right to say. It should be easy for the customers to pronounce and be impactful at the same time.
- Aligns with what you stand for.
A Quick Test
Take a moment and say the name you’re building on out loud.
Does it sound like something your customers would connect with? To answer this question, ask yourself if the name is simple to comprehend and impactful enough to communicate what your business stands for.
However, i the name sound like it was picked just to be clever, it’s best to come up with other potential ideas.
A Common Naming Error
Too many businesses pick abstract or trendy names just because they sound “cool”. Unfortunately, trendy names without any emotional alignment or relevance age quickly – and are likely to confuse your target audience instead of driving them towards your business.
What Works
When choosing a name, focus on something that:
- Is rooted in your story
- Reflects what you offer
- Aligns with your customer’s self-interests.
Identifier #2 – Your Logo
Your brand’s logo functions like a silent representative. It should visually express who you are and what your business is about – without the need of depending on other brand identifiers to make it relevant.
At After Branding, we ask one question before creating a logo: Does this logo reflect the brand’s personality and the values it stands for?
Ideally, a brand’s logo should:
- Signals the brand’s tone.
- Matches the audience’s expectations while standing out.
- Hold up across other marketing elements like digital, print, merchandise, etc.
What Businesses Get Wrong About Logos:
A consistent error across many businesses is that they make their logo overly-complicated by cramming multiple ideas in a single design. In worse scenarios, businesses finalize their logos on designs because they may be trending or mimic another successful brand.
It’s crucial to understand that your business has a unique identity – copying someone else will not only make your customers think that you’re another copycat but will also damage your brand reputation.
What Works
When choosing a logo, try to keep it simple, bold, and meaningful. You don’t need a fancy logo to leave an impression. You need a logo that communicates value and tells your customers that you’re trustable.
Identifier #3 – Your Tagline
Think of your tagline as an elevator pitch that amplifies your brand’s values and your objective. For any business, the tagline serves as your introduction to the customer.
Seeing that it’s an introduction to your business, it should answer these two questions in under 10 words:
- What do you do?
- Why does it matter?
Some must-haves of a strong tagline include:
- It’s focused on communicating your brand’s value instead of its process.
- It has an emotional pull, directly speaking to your customer’s level of return.
- Doesn’t depend on your logo or name to look coherent.
Where Taglines Go Wrong:
All three identifiers have one thing in common – they help your business stand out. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t understand this concept and utilize generic phrases like “Your success is our goal.”
These taglines don’t communicate anything to a customer. It doesn’t tell your customers that you understand their needs. The ambiguity in these taglines makes your business another lost voice in the sea, making your business just another option for the customers.
What Works
When choosing your tagline, it’s crucial to focus on delivering a message that ties your work to your audience’s level of returns. For example:
- A Productivity app could use something like: “Do less. Achieve more.”
- A local bakery could have a tagline like: “Warm bread. Warmer hearts.”
Notice that these taglines aren’t too long yet they deliver the message you want to communicate to the customer.
The Power Of Utilizing Your Brand Identifiers Correctly
When your brand identifiers align with your audience’s needs, developing brand recognition becomes fairly easy. People start remembering your business because it clearly defines what you’re all about and how their levels of returns are addressed.
Your customers start saying your name with confidence and referrals your way. Implementing these brand identifiers ensure you don’t just look like a business. You become a brand.
Final Words
When you start a business, every aspect is necessary in building the brand recognition needed to succeed. No matter how good your products may be or how effective your marketing is, you won’t get the best results until your branding is strong enough to make people remember you.
Considering their importance, it’s crucial to build brand identifiers that speak to your customer’s level of returns. Align your brand with what it stands for, and let every element you create tell the same story until it’s remembered.
Because in a world where customers are surrounded by many options, the ones who are remembered are the ones that grow. And everything starts… After Branding.
