Who are you? Not to get too existential here, but if you’re running a business, this is a crucial question. Who are you as an organization? Answering that question is key to determining your company’s brand identity. What is brand identity? A brand identity is so much more than a clever catchphrase, cute logo, or color scheme – the personality, tone, and unique value that sets your business apart.

Whether you’re launching a new company, expanding an existing organization, or preparing your business to face new challenges and thrive over the long haul, defining your brand identity is a crucial, foundational step.

So, how do you create a compelling brand identity from scratch?

Define Your Brand’s Purpose, Mission, and Vision

First things first: Begin by clarifying your brand’s purpose, mission, and vision. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your team to help you get started:

• What makes you you?
• Why do you do what you do?
• What unique offerings do you bring to the world and your customers?
• How are you different from others who work in your same arena?
• What does working for your business as a leader or staff member feel like?
• What are your clients’ pain points, and how do you meet them?
• When customers describe what it’s like to work with you, what do you want them to say?
• What can customers feel, experience, or gain from working with you that they can’t get anywhere else?
• What do you do–and what do you not do?
• Where are you headed as a company?

Once you’ve brainstormed answers to those questions, you might also do persona research and create a messaging map to help determine your brand messaging. You can begin identifying your mission, purpose, and vision from there.

Those three terms are important, important enough to examine individually. Let’s break down each term:

Mission

Your mission is a summary of what you do and how you do it. It’s your company’s North Star: anytime you make a decision, it needs to point toward your mission. Whether you’re considering offering a new product or service, making a new hire, or investing in a new resource, your first question should be: Does this decision support our mission? If it does, sail onward; if not, chart a different course.

Values

Your values are your why and how. They are a set of promises you make to yourself and your customers, and they always guide your decisions, behavior, and interactions. Always. Your values are what draws customers to you in the first place, and they’re what keeps them with you for the long haul.

Vision

Your vision is not just what you offer today but where you see yourself going. A vision statement brings your mission and values together in a memorable phrase. Think short and punchy, a big idea compressed into concise phrasing. When crafting your vision statement, you want it to fit these descriptions:

• Keep it short: Don’t overcomplicate it.
• Make it specific: Find exactly the right words.
• Be clear: Leave no questions about who you are.
• Remain authentic: Don’t be theoretical; mean what you say.

---

---

What’s Your Brand Voice and Personality?

Once you’ve clarified your mission, values, and vision, it’s time to drill down even deeper to identify your brand voice and personality. If you’re a sucker for personality tests, Myers-Briggs types, or the enneagram, this may be your favorite part of the process. This is where you figure out your organization’s unique flavor and style. You’ll want to revisit two questions: How do you describe yourself, and how do you want your clients or customers to describe you?

Here are some words to play around with as you clarify your brand voice and personality:

• Friendly
• Professional
• Bold
• Quirky
• Playful
• Authoritative
• Formal
• Casual
• Responsible
• Trustworthy
• Responsive

The list goes on… but do your best to pick the top three descriptors. Once you’ve narrowed down your descriptors, you can use those adjectives or phrases to inform your messaging and specific branding choices. That means you engage your creativity to insert your personality into everything your company does:

Reflect your voice in your written materials.

When you craft website content, blog posts, marketing material, ads, or social media posts, you want your voice to come through. If your brand’s voice is playful, you’ll write with a more casual and lighthearted tone. If your personality is trustworthy and responsible, you’ll adopt a more earnest approach.

Reflect your personality visually.

With so much of our business happening online, visual content marketing matters. When you design an aesthetic for your logo, website, and marketing materials, you want to choose colors, fonts, and graphics that match the personality you’re trying to convey. If you’re aiming for youthful and vibrant, you may opt for brighter colors and fun, informal fonts. If your brand’s personality is more serious, you may employ the comfort of deeper, richer colors and traditional fonts.

Specify your brand guidelines.

Once you identify your personality and voice, it’s helpful to create brand guidelines so everyone at your company is on the same page. What colors, fonts, graphics, and writing style should everyone use? What catchphrases, terms, or mottos should be reiterated?

All these elements work together to help you present a clear brand identity and present yourself to potential customers consistently and confidently. Every time they encounter you online or in person, they have the same experience. This gives your customers a sense of trust, comfort, and ease, so they keep coming back.

What’s Your Story?

People love a good story–what’s yours? If your story were a movie, what inciting incident got the action started? What event set you on your current path? What villain are you trying to help your customers defeat? (And keep in mind, the “villain” may not be a person but may be a problem or pain point that you help them overcome.) And perhaps most important of all, what’s the happy ending? How does a customer come to you and walk away with a positive outcome and a better life? All of that is your story. A story that will resonate with customers who need what you provide.

You can tell your story in many different ways:

• Share the history of your company in blog posts, social media posts, and the “About” section of your website.

• Share testimonials from satisfied customers, telling their stories and how you worked to help them find a happy ending.

• Invite your leadership or team members to share how they came to work together, why they love working with you, and why they believe in the organization.

• Share case studies from satisfied clients or successful endeavors.

We remember stories because we see ourselves in them. We connect on an emotional level. The more clearly and powerfully you tell your story, the more it will resonate with potential customers, drawing them in. And telling your story will unify your staff and leadership. It will help everyone remember who they are and why they love working together towards a meaningful goal.

Test, Retest, Revise, and Evolve

While your purpose, mission, and vision should be the fixed North Star, that doesn’t mean your company should remain fixed in place. Times change, customer needs shift, new customer demographics surprise you, and design styles and lingo go in and out of fashion. While you don’t want to make a change every time the wind shifts, you don’t want to get stuck in the past:

• A wise company keeps a finger on the pulse of its customers, noticing new needs, pain points, and requests.

• A savvy company pays attention to cultural shifts and identifies brand messaging that has become unrelatable or outdated.

• A smart company tests their messaging to make sure it’s effective, and if it’s not, they revise, retool, and retest.

Today’s companies have to provide both consistency and innovation. Companies that stand the test of time are reliable but also responsive. They are excellent and adaptive. Dependable and versatile. Your brand identity should grow along with you–and with your customers. When it’s time to grow, you take a lesson from the dinosaurs: instead of becoming a fossil, you evolve.

If you’re ready to set sail as a company, don’t just head off into uncharted waters — make sure you know where you’re going. Taking the time to craft a compelling brand identity will ensure you know exactly where you’re going and how you want to get there.

---