Your Brand Essence – How to define and maintain it

In a perfect world, there would be unicorns running free, and your brand’s target audience, would recognise your logo without any content – sometimes even without any words. But we know this isn’t the case for most brands out there. Prioritising, planning and strategising our brand essence is, well, essential for consistency across your communication platforms. Without a solid brand essence, your messaging can com across as inconsistent, disjointed, and lacking the “WHY” which customers need to understand in order to fully trust your brand.

Every time your business launches a campaign, updates a website or posts on social media, you showcase your brand essence and tell your audience a little bit more about what you stand for.  This is why, at Spicy HQ, we have gathered some of our most valuable and simple tips on how to define and maintain your brand essence so that you can make sure you are presenting the brand you aim to be.

Reinforce your brand beliefs

What does your brand centre upon? How do you want your customers to perceive you and who you are? Do you make a niche type of widgets which are high-end and professional or make a flexible type of widget that mould to different cogs? These are some questions which are important and if you don’t instantly know the answer then you may need to head back to the drawing board and figure out what drove you to where you are and what your original goals were. 2 more key questions to ask are:

What problems do you solve?

How are you different? (can be a combination of things rather than just one thing)

Take a look at our Spicy Instagram account and how we remain transparent about who we are, what we love and how we do it!

Develop your brand’s creative elements

In addition to your brands central message, your brand also has a visual vocabulary. Your brand’s visual vocabulary will be reflected in your colour palette, typography and overall graphic style. This look and feel with be carried through your marketing campaigns, website, social media and packaging. This visual vocabulary should be distinctive, resonate with your customers, be consistent and stay true to your brand’s values.

One process to ensure you are building the appropriate voice for your target audience is to evaluate their profession, social preferences, age, gender and who else is marketing to them. By doing this comprehensive research you can ensure that the design choices you make are informed.

Maximise the impact of your audience engagement

This focuses on your social media platforms and your direct correspondence with customers. On social media, users come to you with questions and concerns, which means you have to maintain that brand voice when responding. Customers want their concerns prioritised and no one will react positively to waiting on the phone to speak to a representative. Customers are much more likely to have a positive experience with brands that give a direct response to their questions or issues.

This means that whilst replying to every conversation surrounding your brand is very time consuming, when you do have the opportunity to respond it must be done with consideration. Listening and monitoring your messages gives you the chance to make a real impression on a customer.  While response rates change per industry, increasing actions and availability can have serious payoffs.

Are you considering a rebranding?

Or perhaps keen to kickstart your brand through some digital marketing?

Talk to us to find out how!