E20: What is Brand Identity and How To Create Mine

What is up Remote Start Nation, my name is Jim Doyon, your host and I want to welcome you to another episode of Remote Start. This episode comes to you from Sarasota Florida, if you could see me I've got my party shirt on, we're about to go hang out downtown, see what restaurants are down there and do a little hanging out and explore the city. So I'm really looking forward to that, but before I left I wanted to put together this episode and start a series for you that really helps to build your brand, guide your brand foundation.

In the last episode and if you haven't listened to it I, you know, ask that you go back and do so, so it kind of gives you a little bit of clarity where we're headed in the next few episodes in this series of brand and branding but I go over the different elements of your brand and I really hit on all the different aspects that you need to think about when you're building your brand and one of those is brand identity. So in this episode I really like to hit on brand identity, some of the different things that you needed do when you're building out your brand identity and hopefully that'll help you out. One thing I want to make clear, I do heavily recommend that in a lot of these areas you get help from an expert and I say that because you can always down the road, you can always rebrand, you can always change but if you have the ability to do it right from the start you're going to have that much better of a head start in building your brand and getting your audience to really recognize with who you are, if you do it right the first time. So as I go through this list go ahead and do it yourself if you have questions don't forget to ask a professional ask somebody who knows what they're doing, the other part of that is if you piece things together, if you piece your logo, if you piece your mission statement, if you piece your font your brand icon, if you piece those things together and doing them from different people there's less of a chance of it being cohesive, it's very important that your brand is cohesive, So with that said Remote Start Nation, let's go through this and hopefully gives you a little bit of insight into brand identity, what it is and how you can help to build your brand.

So first thing brand identity it's more than just a logo, and I know a lot of people when I think of identity they think a logo but it's not, it's the personality of your company, it's a story you tell customers and potential customers, and it's how you want people to feel when they think of your brand, so building a strong brand identity to me is super, super important when it comes to any business, small, large, medium sized whatever your business is and whatever growth stage it's in, I hope you have a strong brand identity and know what your brand is and what you stand for. You know, I look at it as your brand identity is that first impression somebody has of your brand, when someone hears your name, when somebody's talking about your brand, when someone sees your logo, what's that going to tell them, what's that going to leave to their imagination to figure out more about you? You know, and like I said last episode I spoke about the different elements of a brand, and in the following episodes I'm going to go into each element and go into detail like I am now about brand identity but I want you to know something although I'm starting with brand identity it shouldn't be your first step, in fact it should be one of the last parts you do to building out your brand foundation and the reason is a lot of the other elements that go into your brand will pave the way to put together a really awesome logo or even come up with the name of your of your brand, so that's that first step and if you already have a brand and you're looking at rebranding there's more steps than what I'm learning out here. In fact it starts with really getting your entire team to look at your current brand and figure out where you want to go. So when building your brand identity from scratch, I want you to really take the time to think about how you're going to stand out from your competition and again what are people going to think when they see or hear or understand who your brand is and who you are, you know, what are your company's values, what do you want customers to think of when they hear your name, what kind of image do you want to project, this important things to consider so I do want to remind you that, yes you can do this on your own but again there's a lot of companies out there, there's copywriter writers, there's designers and there's agencies and yes Woodward Movement is one of those but they can help you and if you get it done right from the start you just have that, that upper hand but the most important thing whether you do it by yourself where you get help from an expert is you want all the pieces to be cohesive. So before you start spending money on advertising, I think it's important that you have this lockdown and i say that because otherwise I just feel like there's a good chance you're going to throw away money. So here's a few steps to take and some thoughts I have on how you can get there.

The number one thing something that's super important is you need just to stop, don't think about your logo, don't think about your name, don't think about any of that stuff until you've researched your target audience and your competitors, understand what your competitors voices, understand what they're doing in the market, understand your target, what who is the community that you're trying to be a part of, and after that after you figure that out you do your research then ask yourself, how is your brand going to add value to this audience or the community? And once you find those two things out after you do the research and after you figure out how you're going to add value some of the other things kind of come into place. So another thing the third thing, what is your personality going to be so are you going to have a fun excited serious brand, is it going to be you know like very bright and outgoing or is it going to be more you know subtle and lowkey, these are all things to think about, right? And the most important thing here is it needs to be authentic, it should be who you and your team are, yes, your target audience you want to make sure that your personality is going to be one that coincides with how they are or who they are, but at the same time if it's something that isn't you at all then you better find teammates around you that are that type of person or personality. Alright, so once you have these things figured out now comes some of the fun stuff.

Number one, choose your business name, have fun, be creative a lot of names you're going to find out have probably already taken and this is where when you have a list it might not be a bad idea to go seek out help from an attorney that can look into this further for you and make sure that you're not going to choose a name that you're later going to have to go back and change and yes that can happen even if you do get help from an attorney but it's nice to know that if they're doing their research, that there's a good chance you're going to be okay, and again if you have a hard time with this one or any of the rest I'm going to talk about for that matter don't be afraid to seek help from someone who's an expert in this. The next thing do a domain search trademark search and you could do this yourself just type in the names that you're thinking about and don't just look in the first page of Google, look at websites, look at you know other things that are out there to make sure that there isn't somebody already in the same field as you using the same name as you. The third thing write your slogan once you put together your brand values or brand position this can be easy to figure out and that's why I say brand identity shouldn't be the very first thing you do, in fact your brand positioning, your brand values, your other elements of your brand should come first and it's going to make a lot of this a lot a lot easier to do. The next thing choose a look of your brand okay, what colors, what font what type, these are things that again when you look at your community you might be able to get a good feel for the personality and the brand colors and what your logo and icon and all these should look like. So with that said the next thing should be your logo, right? So and with your logo you're going to, want to think about your icon, your font, your type is, all the aspects of your logo, what are all those pieces and how they're how are they going to play into your brand, think of how it's going to be seen, it's going to be printed on that's a super important one. I see all the time that someone comes up with a logo that has all these different colors in it what happens when you wanna go print on shirts or you know it you wanna print it black and white or get an embroidered or something like that and it doesn't look good, these are things to think of when you're when you're putting all this together and again why an expert can help. So with that said I'm gonna leave you with all that but I just wanna keep one more thing in your mind, when it comes to brand identity remember to keep it simple and keep it authentic and I say that because a lot of times if you make it too detailed or too difficult to understand, people like simple is that saying keep it simple stupid, right? Kiss, so if you keep it simple people are gonna understand it better don't leave it for them to go guess and do research to figure out who you are, make it stick with them.

Alright Remote Start Nation, I hope that gives you a little bit of help on building your brand identity. So with that said I hope you have an awesome day, I hope you go start something and I hope you have wonderful, wonderful rest of your week, we'll talk soon!