A new year marks a fresh start for companies. It’s a time to set new business objectives, marketing goals, and sales KPIs to keep your company relevant, on-track, and growing. Coming out of 2020, many B2B companies were forced to pivot their business models, products, and services to quickly and effectively meet new and evolving demands in critical markets and for remote workforces.
As you look ahead to 2021 and beyond, will the changes you made to your business this past year sustain or dissipate? In either scenario, your target audience needs to be informed about who you are and what you can offer them. After such a crazy year, customers are craving clarity more than ever.
To provide new and existing customers with clarity, and to generate the attention that your brand deserves, it’s critical that every aspect of your brand—from visioning and positioning to messaging and visual identity, reflect your company’s current state. This Toolkit: Creating a Compelling & Relevant Brand Identity, dives deep into each of these aspects, coaching you through the creation process.
In this blog, we share the highlights, breaking down the basics about how to reset and recharge your company’s brand identity in 2021 to generate the attention and leads your company deserves.
Why Brand Identity Is Important
A brand identity defines how your company looks, feels, and sounds in the marketplace. Your brand identity is the first impression, second look, and final input to a prospect’s decision to work with you.
Markets are becoming increasingly saturated, especially those that were impacted by COVID-19, such as healthcare, technology, manufacturing, logistics, and business services. Customers are also hyper-focused on the experience that brands offer them from the start, beginning with their web presence.
Companies with an outdated or confusing brand identity and customer experience will struggle to compete in the marketplace.
What Does Brand Identity Include?
Your brand’s identity is comprised of a few key aspects that need to be tightly integrated if you want to create a compelling brand and clear offering for your audience. The components include: Visioning to define your brand’s purpose and direction; Personality and Tone to hone the way your brand looks and sounds; Messaging to communicate your positioning and value propositions; Visual Identity to determine your logo, colors, imagery, and so forth; and Brand Guidelines to ensure all of these elements are used consistently, accurately, and cohesively.
Use the prompts in this Toolkit to start brainstorming your brand’s key components, or to figure out if any of these components should change for the future.
The ability to really nail down these components and ensure they are strategically integrated will make the difference between a brand identity that falls flat or confuses your customers and a compelling brand identity that your target market gravitates towards.
Getting Your Brand the Attention It Deserves
The whole point of creating a brand identity is so that it can be seen and loved by your customers. So, once you’ve nailed down your brand’s key components, here are a few ways to get it out there to start generating awareness, leads, and ROI.
First, apply your brand identity to your core and foundational assets, including your website, overview brochure (digital and print), social media profiles, email signatures, event or building signage, and any other marketing and sales assets that are frequently used.
Next, drive attention to these assets with an integrated brand launch or relaunch. Leverage public relations, media outreach, email marketing, and social media to get the word out that your company has reset and recharged! This orchestrated effort will bring clarity about your brand to your target market.
Then, launch an ongoing, integrated marketing program using your new messaging and visual identity. Use digital marketing, content marketing, inbound and outbound campaigns, and event marketing to get competitive in your marketplace. There’s been a resurgence of account-based marketing (ABM) lately, so consider using modern tactics such as LinkedIn and programmatic advertising to target specific accounts.
What Does Your 2021 Reset Look Like?
If you’ve read this entire blog, it’s likely that you want to increase brand awareness and leads in 2021. Let’s be real, who doesn’t? But now that you know the critical role that brand identity, clarity, and experience play to compete in your marketplace, how will you start? We suggest downloading the Toolkit: Creating a Compelling & Relevant Brand Identity for a closer look at how to create your brand’s key components.
Then, when you’re ready, engage a marketing agency to solidify your identity, refresh your assets, launch your brand, and orchestrate your ongoing marketing efforts. As a top-ranked marketing and branding agency, Sagefrog has developed more than 200 B2B brands and we would be glad to chat about how we can help you with yours.
