Strategies for Building a Strong Brand Identity

Establishing a strong brand identity is paramount for success. It goes further than having a recognizeable logo or a catchy slogan. To dive deeper into the topic and bring you the pearls of wisdom, we’ve consulted with an array of entrepreneurs who have built (or helped build) strong brands themselves. Here are their go-to techniques.

Know Your Target Audience

Knowing your target audience is one of the best and most effective tips for building a strong brand identity. When you know exactly who you are speaking to, you can tailor a message that will resonate with your ideal customers. With all the “noise” that happens online each and every day, having a targeted message will ensure that your marketing stands out — for the right people. That last part is critical. You can have a message that stands out to the general public, but if they don’t become customers, then you’ve still wasted your time and money. The goal is always customers. When building your brand, your marketing should always be geared toward potential customers. To do this, you must understand exactly who those potential customers are.

Ann Martin, director of operations of CreditDonkey

Have a Professional Headshot

Entrepreneurs absolutely need to start with a professional headshot to establish their brand. Visuals will rocket their compelling message, their authentic confidence, and their experience… instantly.

Choosing a photographer who can relate and help style the entrepreneur’s headshot through the use of wardrobe, makeup, lighting, set design, color, and mood that the entrepreneur would like to project. An online persona is key!

On a flat, impersonal computer screen, your eyes need to connect with your worldwide audience – you only have a split second to connect. Your face, pose, and confident demeanor are your brand, all supported by your surroundings. Finding a pro to help you get your brand identity message instantly recognizable is key. Investing in a professional brand photographer to get your visual brand identity nailed is your first step to marketing success.

Karen Vaisman, professional photographer & master retouching artist

Use the Right Social Media Platform

I believe the best strategy for building a strong brand identity isn’t simply about social media or digital marketing. It’s all about using the right social media platform. We use TikTok and YouTube, which I think are the go-to platforms these days. You can post short-form or long-form videos that truly capture the brand’s identity, drawing in a bigger audience. On those two platforms, too, you’re going to capture the younger generation.

Dustin Lemick, CEO of BriteCo Jewelry Insurance

Have a Consistent Tone

Be consistent in your tone. People who resonate with your brand are very sensitive to the tone of voice you use. Your tone dictates the way you share content and even the nature of the content you present. If there’s any dissonance in the patterns that your current audience already expects of you, it could cause them to discontinue their support for your brand.

Thaddeus W. Wendt, CEO of Feller Wendt LLC

Seek a Branding Expert

There are a few strategies that we have used over the years. One of the most important things is to use a professional for branding!! Sometimes, in the beginning, you have to do what you have to do, but once you have some money, hire a professional to help with logos and branding. One of the best things we EVER did was hire a store designer who made our vision come to life! It was so exciting that she was able to transform years of what was in my head into a tangible space. Be true to yourself with your vision, but lean on someone who has design skills and resources to bring it to life.

Libby Diament, founder & designer of Diament Boutiques in Washington DC 

Market the Specific Quality

I believe a strong brand identity always starts with the core quality or word you want people to associate your brand with. This way, people can instantly remember your company when they need something that has this quality.

For example, Volvo found its target market in people who prioritize safety. Their cars may not be the fastest or the prettiest, but they are safe. This angle works for them, and they constantly reinforce it in all of their advertising to keep reminding their target audience that they are the right choice for their next family car.

My advice to everyone who wants to build a strong brand is to find a specific quality of your product that enough people care about and base your brand around it.

Christine Szapiel, marketing manager at TIP Group Canada

Describe an Ideal Client

I help health and wellness business owners develop their brand strategy. The part of the strategy development that has the biggest impact or the biggest “a-ha!” moment for my clients is the Brand Story. This section gives their ideal client a face, and their strategy starts to come to life.

We outline the basic demographics of their ideal client, give them a name and photo, and put on our creative hats to write a detailed “day in the life” story. We start by describing who their ideal client is (are they married, educated, a mom/dad, where they live, etc.), and then we dive into what their problem is and what they’ve done to try to solve that problem so far. The turn of the story is when they have found my client’s business, and they are considering contacting them. We address concerns they may have about pulling the trigger and signing on with them, and ultimately details why they will pick up the phone to call. In the conclusion, we detail the hopes their ideal client has about using their business to solve their problems and how they will feel afterwards.

Tracy Paddison, owner of Tracy Mak Studio

Become a Thought Leader

Keep a consistent message across all platforms and become a true subject matter expert in your area of specialization. Be a true thought leader who provides valuable information to your ideal client. Many people worry about giving away too much for free; those who take your expertise and do it themselves are not your ideal clients. Your goal is to attract clients who see your expertise and know they need you. It’s important not to hide behind your company — people buy from people. Remind yourself that you are the thought leader the world needs to learn from.

Wesleyne Whittaker, sales consultant & owner of Transformed Sales

Solidify Your Brand Identity

For us, we started by focusing internally. You can’t have a strong brand identity if your “identity” purely focuses on your outward efforts. A business’s identity starts at its core — what its values, ethics, and goals are. Once you solidify these things, then you can focus more on the outwardly-facing efforts because you will have guidelines to base all of your decisions on in your core identity. That helps tie everything together.

Jeremy Yamaguchi, CEO of Lawn Love

Create a Brand Story

My best strategy for building a strong brand identity has been to view my brand as a character with a set personality and a backstory. This has worked really well to bring that brand to life in a way that reflects in marketing and social media content. First of all, I would recommend sitting down and creating a guide for your brand’s voice. In my experience, it’s also helpful to write down the story of your brand in a way that incorporates its values and goals. Having all of this information established in a document as a sort of style guide can help maintain your consistency between posts, across platforms, and between people who might be managing these things. 

Carter Seuthe, CEO of Credit Summit Consolidation

Choose the Perfect Logo

One of the things that you need to focus on when building a strong brand identity is your brand’s logo. Think of how people can easily identify brands such as Nike, Apple, and McDonald’s. If yours is not striking or doesn’t represent who or what you are as a brand, then you failed to establish a strong identity.

One of the things to consider when creating your logo is the color. Consider getting the expert opinion of color psychologists, as there is scientific evidence that color impacts buying decisions (read here for more info). Aside from color, another thing to consider is the font of your brand’s name. Think of it the other way around — the font is not for you but for your target audience. Make sure that the font looks good in print and online — it is readable even when scaled down (for more tips, please check here).

Gen Ariton, PR and outreach specialist at codeinwp.com

Offer a Unique Product

We built a strong brand by offering a unique product. When creating a brand identity, you can either follow what your competitors are doing but improve it or explore a market space that hasn’t been tapped into. You have the option to outdo your competitors at their own game or identify what they’re missing and fill that gap. At SNS Nails, instead of simply copying others, we chose to be different. We introduced a unique product in a saturated market and built our brand around it.

This is important for creating a strong brand identity. Understanding what sets you apart shapes your brand. This influences tangible aspects such as packaging, design, slogan, logo, and messaging. When these elements come together, they form a consistent and memorable brand that stays with your customers.

Anna Parvatova, brand manager & creative director of SNS Nails

Include Your Audience

One thing I have always tried to incorporate into my brand building is my audience. All of my most successful branding attempts have included audience participation, so to speak—since your brand is essentially for the benefit of the consumers you’re trying to reach, it makes sense to make them a part of it. I’ve had success doing this through polls and other engaging posts. Anything that allows you to engage organically with your audience and sets you apart from what competitors are doing will be a great way to develop your brand’s identity in the eyes of the people who matter the most: its customers. 

Ryan Farley, co-founder & CEO of LawnStarter

Create a Guarantee

While launching MVP Visuals, we believed our guarantees had to be at the core of our brand identity. As an ecommerce brand, we can’t always have live conversations with our event clients. So we created a series of guarantees that our competitors would be afraid to do and leaned into our white glove service. This resulted in our “on-time or it’s free” guarantee. We supply custom signage for hyper specific event dates. As a result, production and shipping times are a huge source of stress on our customers. With this specific guarantee, we’ve been able to alleviate one of their headaches and build a sense of trust as soon as they interact with our brand. I’d recommend any entrepreneur to look at their business, where they excel, and how they can build guarantees around it.

Ben Camerota, owner & president of MVPVisuals.com

Focus on Simplicity and Sustainability

The first step I took to build my company’s brand identity was to prioritize simplicity. 

In my opinion, simplicity is the key to creating a memorable brand. When we started shaping our brand strategy, we avoided complex designs and chose clean, minimal visuals that are easy to recognize. We made our logo simpler, used a straightforward color scheme, and picked clean typography. It’s important to remember that often, a less cluttered approach is more effective in creating a lasting brand identity. Brands like Google or FedEx are great examples of simple yet effective design.

In my experience, it’s actually better not to overcomplicate the brand-building process. 

We didn’t need an elaborate, expensive design overhaul. The biggest mistake in brand identity is choosing something that might need to change later. The strength of a brand lies in what people associate with it. If you have to alter the identity down the line, it disrupts those associations, which can be highly detrimental.

By the way, I’d like to add that we’ve also tapped into the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to boost our brand identity. 

For our company, we’ve always sought environmentally friendly practices and sustainable business models. This matters because consumers, especially younger ones, expect brands to be socially responsible and promote environmental or social awareness. When we align our efforts with causes that resonate with our audience, it helps us establish a stronger brand identity.

Victor Karpenko, founder & CEO of SeoProfy

Identify a Distinct Point of View

Brands with a strong identity have one thing in common: a distinct point of view. 

When establishing a brand, especially in a saturated market, it’s not enough to have a great product anymore. Now, businesses must be able to clearly communicate to audiences why their brand exists — and, more importantly, why anyone should care.

A brand’s point of view often starts with what the industry (or world at large) is missing (or doing wrong). What are the current incumbent brands lacking? In our agency, we refer to it as “the monster.” It can be a specific competitor, an industry standard or practice, or even a pain point felt and understood by your customers. Calling out the monster is the first step to establishing a distinct point of view.

The second step is asserting a different perspective in the face of that “monster” — how does your company see it differently? And finally, how is your product/service part of the solution? Once you nail this, building an identity, a brand personality, a visual/vocal language, a content strategy, etc. should simply be in support of projecting that point of view.

Robyn Young, founder of ThisIsYoung.com

Have a Solid Marketing Strategy

A key strategy for building a brand identity is your content marketing strategy. This covers everything from online copy to social posts. From the customer’s perspective, a brand is far more trustworthy and visible when they have an effective content strategy in place, as this showcases your overall message. What’s more, a good brand identity will give you a chance to create that message. What do you offer? Who is your target audience? How do you want to cater to them? Answering these questions will allow you to develop your content marketing strategy accordingly.

Lark Allen, content marketing specialist at Drive Research

Be Transparent

From the very beginning, our goal at Biom has always been to provide quality personal care products without shady ingredients or compromises. As a dentist and cosmetic chemist, my co-founder and I were frustrated by substandard products, which motivated us to build Biom, where quality formulation is a priority, combined with efficacy, of course.

Transparency is fundamental to our approach, ensuring consumers know precisely what goes into our products. That’s why I created a nothing-to-hide ingredients list on the packaging for every product, explaining why each ingredient was included. This builds trust and sets us apart from brands lacking in honesty and integrity.

For future entrepreneurs, I strongly believe transparency should be at the core of your brand identity. Show the world why you love what you’ve built, and they might just love it, too.

Fawn Bowe, co-founder of biöm

Don’t Make Exaggerated Statements

Before we are able to convey any message to our customers, we need to be absolutely sure about it ourselves. Make sure that your mission, vision, and values truly align with the actual practices in place (or expected to be in place). It can be tempting to come up with catchphrases that will look good while advertising but will cause harm to the organisation’s brand image as the customers realise that the business misguided them to set unrealistic expectations.

At School of Academics, we kept our message simple to “Focusing on delivering courses to education professionals,” with our vision to offer “Mobility To Learn Whenever And Wherever” — and it worked wonders. More than 2500+ teaching professionals from prestigious educational establishments all over the world have signed up for our accredited qualifications. When making these statements, we were sure about why our organisation existed and what we were prepared to offer consistently. We did not try to overcomplicate it, nor did we try to lure potential clients by making exaggerated statements.

Iqbal Ahmad, founder & CEO of Britannia School of Academics

Be Authentic

How do you build a strong identity that stands out in, more often than not, oversaturated markets?

One strategy that’s been crucial for us at Brosix is focusing on differentiation. When we started our business, there were already a ton of messaging programs out there. So, our line of thinking was, “What can we offer that other brands don’t provide?” In our industry, there was a clear lack of safety features like message encryption, which weren’t present in most communication apps. So we doubled down on that and made it the main highlight of our product.

The goal is for customers to memorize your brand by the solution you offer for a specific need. Want safe messaging? Immediately, Brosix comes to mind.

Entrepreneurs shouldn’t be afraid to go against the grain. Focus on what sets you apart and make that the cornerstone of your brand identity. Your target audience will appreciate the authenticity, and it will help you build a strong, memorable brand.

Stefan Chekanov, co-founder & CEO of Brosix

Have a Unique Name and Great Customer Service

In the case of one of my companies, it’s the name “PissedConsumer” that makes the brand memorable. It may not be the mainstream name, but it reflects consumers’ state of mind when they reach us, and they like it. We’ve built a strong brand identity that reflects the needs and voices of consumers who come to our platform to share their issues and be heard by companies. 

However, with brand identity, it’s not just the name, logo, or design that should stick in consumers’ minds. Customers’ experience and their satisfaction with the service identify a strong brand. I found that businesses that ensure consistency and resolve customers’ issues have a high chance of succeeding. We have recently conducted a survey asking consumers what they pay attention to when reading company reviews, and 91% of respondents answered it’s the consumer experiences.

By creating positive connections and resolving customer issues, a company earns trust and loyalty, which makes the brand stand out among its competitors. Thus, I would recommend future entrepreneurs continuously improve their services to meet customer needs. Work with complaints, address issues, and optimize your services per customer feedback to build a strong brand identity.

Michael Podolsky, co-founder & CEO of PissedConsumer.com & WiserBrand.com