If your brand identity is not right, they’re never going to pick you out from the crowd. If your brand identity is right, they will recognise your business amongst all the others and – if you’ve done the other things right – will associate it with good things. This will then help to build their loyalty and attract new footfall through the door.
This is what you need to get right at the beginning, but every year brings new changes and challenges for businesses. Just because you worked to build a strong brand identity at the start of your business journey, doesn’t mean it’s working in the long run.
So how do you know if you haven’t nailed down your brand identity yet? To help answer this question, we’ve listed down three of the most common signs that a brand identity isn’t working, as well as how to solve the problem.
Brand Identity or Brand Similarity?
Funnily enough, one of the most important things you’re trying to achieve with your brand identity is identification! You need to ensure that consumers can identify you in a busy marketplace, and this can be very difficult if you are entering into a crowded industry.
In Oxford, for instance, the publishing industry is booming. Outside of London, this city is the largest centre of publishing in the UK, with over 100 publishing businesses competing to distinguish themselves.
Here at XIST2, we offer web design services that help distinguish these types of companies, working with them to build a unique brand rather than simply fall into the mix. This subsequently helps businesses to avoid becoming part of a hivemind.
A key sign that this has happened is if your brand identity begins to look and feel like your competition. Your packaging looks the same, your website, your logo. Even your social media voice is beginning to sound identical to others in the industry.
Customer Retention and Conversion
Apart from looking like others in the industry, a key sign that your brand identity is not working can be found in your customer retention and conversion rate. If you’ve found that you’re losing customers, your sales are declining, and fewer customers are coming in, then it could easily be down to the message of your brand – rather than anything inherently wrong with the output itself.
As a business owner, you need to remember that your job is to connect with your audience. To do this, you need to tell a clear and consistent story and continue to tell this story every day of the business’s life.
The best stories are the ones that stand the test of time, so if customers are dropping off, then it could be that the story isn’t interesting enough. Or rather, someone else is telling it better. Make sure to do your research into how other people are relaying their purpose, their vision, and their values. Get inspired by others, and then work to reshape the message to match your own, unique vision.
Flexibility Over Time
Speaking of standing the test of time, the last key sign that your brand identity is the failure to fit into an updated market space.
The world is constantly changing, of course. The internet in 2024 is not the same as it was in 2014, and similarly, your consumers are not the same as they were at the beginning. They expect, desire, and are attracted to different things, and your brand needs to be flexible enough to cater to that.
Once again, a good way to work this out is to look at your competition, and what they are doing to update their image in the current market. Is your logo overly detailed? Is your website looking dated and ill-fitted to current formats? Even the biggest brands change their identity to assimilate to modern-day preferences and aesthetics, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t do the same.
Look at the flexibility of your brand image and whether it can naturally adapt. Do your research into where the industry might be in two years, three years, five, and then shape your identity into something that can thrive over time.
