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Getting the best out of your visual identity along with your marketing goals can make a huge difference in your sales.

Bringing in more sales without risking your brand identity on advertising can be a great way to build your empire.

While all that sounds amazing, in the cases when you are handling such a design-related project the limitation of not having a design perspective can make your work tiresome.

However, you may opt to hire a graphic designer to assist in communicating your brand message. You can’t do any of that without a powerful visual identity for your customer’s persuasion and increase sales.

Before jumping in let’s define a few terms.

 

What is Brand Identity?

Your brand identity is defined by how your audience perceives a product, company, service or person.

All the components that relate to your product, service, company or person define your brand identity. A number of the element are the name, logo, tagline, voice, – typeface, and shape that create an appeal. Brand Identity is a sub-constituent of brand image.

It is the message the consumer receives from the product, person, or thing. Therefore, brand identity should be a consistent message from the customer’s perception.

For example, If a portion of the identity of a product is a particular swatch, consistency of the colour is a necessity in maintaining the product identity. The point is, identity must match the image projected to the audience.

In this way, the brand identity connects a product to its recognition.

Now I know you’re thinking, how does this relate to visual branding?

 

What is Visual Brand Identity?

A visual identity is the visual aspect of branding that businesses create in order to evoke certain feelings and experiences with the brand. Brands use this to influence the audience’s perception of the company, business, product, service or person.

It includes anything visual that your brand produces such as logo design, fonts, photos, and any other visuals that you use to communicate your brand.

However, business owners don’t make the mistake of thinking branding is simply just making a logo. While it is a part of it, branding goes far beyond a logo.

Your visual identity is part of your branding that communicates the overall message, values, and promise of your brand through anything that is visual.

You can, and should, use visual clues to suggest abstract ideas to your audience. Are you authoritative, feminine, irreverent, acerbic, fancy, or playful?

For example, your business website from your colour choices, the size of your text, and the mood of your design create the user perception and feel about your brand. This is why visual identity is so important.

Whether knowingly or not, you influence your audience to define your brand. Engaging with your customers on your brand may provide useful insight to drive your business.

In case the visual that you’re conveying does not match your brand values, it will disappoint and confuse your audience.

Point to note, all of the visual elements tell a story that communicates your values.

Building your visual brand identity is easy to do.

Here are 101 Design Thinking: Visual Identity tips to skyrocket your brand communication and sales, for non-designers.

 

Value Proposition

Your brand value is the foundation of your brand conversion to sales and increase of customers. Without value, the customer could be easily confused or discouraged and fail to purchase your product. And this would be a drawback for your business.

All visual identity efforts need to align with your brand message and the value your brand offers.

So, try to understand what makes your ideal audience. Why would your audience buy your product or service? What is the void that you fill?

For example, If you are a gym instructor, maybe your ideal customer may be an overworked fellow who’s desperately searching to lose weight. Now, how do you present your brand in a friendly, visual way that shows you have the answer to his problem?

As a gym instructor, you may dedicate a portion of your website to testimonials from happy clients. Not forgetting to include a photo as a human touchpoint.

Use these tips to improve your brand’s value proposition and give customers a better experience.

 

1. Identify your brand strength …and communicate it

Trying to please all kinds of people never works.

Instead, try to understand your customers and develop your brand identity along with that. For instance, a Kenyan Restaurant maying experiencing an increase in traffic and conversion from the website on Tuesday from the orders.

It’s all about understanding the value you offer customers and using it to increase your sales.

All visual communication design work is to build on your brand message and communicate it to your audience.

 

2. Make it clear in your brand message

Anyone who visits your website or social media pages should be able to quickly understand what your speciality is. Your value proposition should be clearly delivered in all your messaging so that customers know what to expect from your brand.

 

3. Talk to your customers

Engage with your customers to get the insight that will inform your focus on delivering. In the design, process designers tend to engage the customers to familiarize themselves with what works and what doesn’t.

 

4. Quantify your value

If you’ve helped 120 entrepreneurs build a website, say so. It sounds better than – we’ve helped lots of people start a website. As best you can, quantify your value proposition. Use your quantified work in your marketing material.

 

5. Find alternative channels to offer value

Your brand value proposition isn’t limited to your products or services. You may deliver value to your social media connections with valuable content. Point to note, focus on solving your customer’s pain points.

Tell people what your product can do for them. Outline the benefits of your product or services to potential customers. Is it Better, Faster, or Cheaper? These are all triggers that cause people to buy, so use them.

 

6. Share your success stories

Testimonials are excellent tools for showing off your value. Anyone who’s considering a purchase will feel more comfortable, knowing you’ve helped others with similar needs.

Your more added value or how better you solve a problem than competitors is what drives traffic to your business such as a website or to your store translating to increased sales or traffic.

Be clear about the benefits you provide and how different you offer over the competition, and keep it consistent across all your marketing.

 

Maintain a Consistent Identity

As brand identity is important in your visual strategy, a consistent application of images, colours, fonts, and layouts are all graphic design elements that will play a massive role in making your brand identity stand out.

Although, competition for customers is fierce in most industries nowadays, even in fields such as healthcare, which once seemed off-limits to marketing.

A brand’s visual identity is the key to differentiating yourself from the competition, but if you don’t build your brand promise around consistently, your branding efforts might be pointless.

Brands are built through the consistent delivery of the brand promise through all delivery channels. It is the consistent, desired experience that builds trust and trust is the foundation for loyalty and promotion of sales.

Consistency creates cohesion, that if your customer visits your website and storefront, they still get the same story.

 

Keep It Simple and Clear

Consider these strongest brands Google and Apple which have invested hugely in their brand value and the ripple effect has been industry-leading business performance.

One of the aspects that stand common is that their brand success can be directly tied to simplicity ? to making life simpler for their users.

They have also adhered to the principle of simplicity in defining their brand experiences. Considering this principle as a brand to simplify customer experience drives customer satisfaction, commitment, and connection.

Your visual identity does not need to be complicated. Having too many visuals as a brand, you stand the risk of confusing your audience with your brand message.

So, remove everything from your visual identity that does not contribute to your brand persona.

Consider this context, In every brand lifecycle simplicity in the customer experience and satisfaction, is the most important thing.

However, the experience with a brand is just one of the elements in developing brand identity.

Good brand identity emerges from the customer experience by looking for opportunities to simplify and eliminate complications in a brand’s visual identity in order to provide value and satisfaction.

Simplicity is not just eliminating unnecessary visuals, clarifying brand messages or using modern graphics. Brands that succeed due to simplicity understand that everything must work together, clearly and seamlessly.

 

Conclusion

Getting the right customer perception and satisfaction for your brand is tough.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Sometimes you need a little help to align your brand value and visual identity, keep it simple, and provide value to the right customers. These 101 strategies are ideal for brands, businesses, companies, and people.

Remember that Simplicity matters just as much for brand identity as what customers perceive of your business. You have to be consistent with your brand value if you want to succeed.
Cohesion
From cohesion of all your brand value through consistency to adhering to the principle of simplicity in defining their brand experiences customer satisfaction, commitment, and connection putting your business on the map.

Follow the 101 tips in this post to increase your brand identity strength and drive more sales than ever before.

What tips do you use to build your Visual Identity strength for your brand?

 

Paul Simiyu

Founder and Team Lead of Simpaul Design, a brand strategy and design agency in Nairobi, Kenya. Here at Simpaul Design, we work with brands across various categories with a focus on connecting with consumers and building brands that people want to be a part of. We specialize in brand identity and strategy, UX/UI, and brand transformation.