7 Digital Marketing Best Practices that Grow Your Business | Part 1: Business Identity
First-time small business owners immediately look to themselves, free digital marketing and design tools to create their identity; they think it will be the most cost-effective way to launch a business quickly. Unfortunately, not everyone has corporate and branding backgrounds so holes start appearing within just a few months.
When free tools are continually relied on, it quickly becomes apparent that they can only take a business so far without anyone having any actual knowledge, skill and experience.
A business identity should last forever, so it is something that shouldn’t be experimented with. A business should be well-defined before anything is implemented.
Is corporate and brand identity the same thing?
The distinction between us and the noobs is that we know that corporate and brand identities are two completely different things. A corporate identity includes the why, who, what and when within the structure of your business. A brand identity displays your corporate identity through branding, communications, or information. Essentially, a corporate identity plugs into a brand identity through logos, colour palettes, fonts and visual elements.
If this seems a little confusing, here’s a breakdown to help simplify this practice. Firstly, we need to understand corporate identity:
What is corporate identity?
Corporate identity is the backbone of a business. Questions like, “why are we starting this business?”, “what is our mission?”, “What is our culture?” or “who are our consumers?” should be thrown around to grasp a true reflection of a business. Once a clear understanding of what the business’s mission is and its goals, the inspiration for a brand identity is born.
What is brand identity?
Can you tell Nike’s logo apart from Revlon’s logo? You probably answered yes. Thanks to the messages brands incorporate into their marketing, we can all tell brands apart well. For example; you know Revlon sells cosmetics products because they brand their stores with beautiful full-faced make up looks. You know Nike sells sports items because they launched a digital branding campaign on YouTube with this year’s top athlete in their newest sport boot. That’s brand identity!
The best way to implement the two is to understand your corporate identity, then only your branding identity. Remember, your corporate identity should influence everything you do for your business. All of your design assets, comminations, messaging and sale collateral should all resonate with your corporate identity, your business should be so obvious to the consumer!
We know it could be difficult to achieve all of this on your own. Well, you’re not alone, shmaak it marketing was created to help first-time business owners to design and implement both corporate and brand identities inexpensively!
