Running your business without defining your brand identity is like building a house with no defining features.

It will be bland, plain, and unrecognizable.

Worse, it will pass under the radar of your target customers or clients because there is nothing about your business that would make it memorable to them.

Your brand identity isn’t just an external appendage to your business – it’s the very core of your business’ being.

  • What your business is about;
  • What you want your business to be for the community; and
  • What you want your customers/clients to experience from your business.

Every business is a brand.

Every brand has its own identity.

This is the reason why defining your brand identity should take center stage when planning for your business.

Have you already done this?

If your answer is yes, then great! Find out how well this brand identity is working for your business and improve on the areas that need your attention.

If your answer is no, then it’s not too late.

We at HoopJumper collected 10 questions that you can ask when defining your brand identity.

Let’s begin.

 

Question #1: What Is Your Business’ Purpose?

Your business must have a purpose greater than just “making money.”

Financial benefits already come with the territory, so why does your business exist?

What ultimate goal do you want to achieve with your business for your community?

This question is critical to defining your brand identity because not only will this be how your customers will judge your business, it will also be your guiding principle as the business owner when planning for the future.

Watch this amazing Ted Talk by Simon Senek about finding your purpose or “why”.

 

Question #2. What Problems Are You Solving For Your Customers/Clients?

As the business owner, you should always focus on solving your customers’ problems.

This is the best way to build your business’ brand.

Before you can do that though, you have to be clear on what problem you are trying to solve.

As the saying goes, “the bigger the problem solved, the greater the benefits.”

Take time to listen to what your community is saying, the problems they are facing, and see how your product or service can solve that problem.

You should be defining your brand identity as a problem solver.

 

Question #3. What Are Your Values?

As mentioned in the two questions above, you want to go beyond just earning money – you want to present a genuine solution to the problems that your customers/clients are facing.

And in order to make sure that you are consistent in that area, you need to develop a code of ethics for your business.

What are the principles that guide you into delivering the best possible product or service to your customer or client?

Values are essential in defining your brand identity because they will become the basis of what your mission, vision, and company policies will be.

And when you are able to follow through with these values consistently, it will further cement people’s impressions about your business based on those values, making your business more memorable.

 

Question #4. Who Are Your Customers/Clients?

In defining your brand identity, you need to know who you will be providing your products or services to.

You’re not going to sell to everyone at every time, so you need to make sure you are not wasting time marketing to the wrong people.

You need to build a customer profile. This would involve researching the demographic, age, possible needs/wants, etc…

And you don’t want to have just one customer profile. You’d want to be developing several profiles so you can sort them out on which profile would benefit “most” from your products or services.

 

Question #5. Who Are Your Competitors?

You are not alone doing business in your community. You will always have competition.

You need to know who they are so that you can assess your brand’s place in the market.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you’ll be defining your brand identity based on your competitors.

This just means that taking a look at your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses will help you better mold an identity for your own business.

Do not forget, though – your business’ brand identity needs to be something you’re comfortable in.

Nobody likes a fraud.

 

Question #6. What Are Your Business’s Strengths?

Once you’ve figured out who your competition is, it’s time to start identifying how you can present your business as a better alternative among them.

This doesn’t mean that you’ll go around throwing shade at your competitors’ weaknesses; it means highlighting your own business’ strengths to invite interest from your leads.

Start by listing down what makes your business a great place to visit. If you have staff, how well do they attend to your customers/clients? How great is your product?

At this stage of defining your brand identity, you don’t want to be doing comparisons yet.

You just want to be identifying your business’ strengths.

Make sure that your business’ strengths are relevant to what your customers or clients need.

 

Question #7. What Is Your Business’ UVP?

A unique value proposition (UVP) is a statement that defines how your business is different from your competition.

This is where knowing your strengths and knowing your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses comes into play.

What makes your business unique? Why should people be choosing you in a sea of businesses that offer the same product or service?

Developing your UVP is critical in defining your brand identity because it helps you stand out among your competitors.

Your UVP is what sells you to your leads because it is what they go to when they are trying to sort out all of the choices in the market.

Once you’ve ironed out your UVP, it will also play a part in defining your brand messaging, but that’s a topic for another blog.

 

Question #8. What Is Your Business’ Story?

Every business has a story, which means every brand tells a story.

The question is: how to make that story interesting to your potential customers or clients?

Like a hero’s journey, your brand story is key to defining your brand identity because it develops genuine interest from your target audience.

Some of the key questions that can help you build your business’ brand story are:

  • What motivated you to start your business?
  • How did you get from point A to point B?
  • What setbacks did you overcome along the way?
  • How does your brand interact with the lives of its customers?

Your business’ brand story is an opportunity to make you more relatable to your customers and clients.

Tell me if you recognize this story:

“A retired military man develops a flavorful fried chicken recipe using 11 herbs and spices and tries to sell this to various restaurants across the country with no luck. He doesn’t give up, and by the time he’s in his seventies, he hits the jackpot and now a worldwide fried chicken restaurant chain is thriving.”

If you haven’t heard this story before, it’s a shortened version of the life of Colonel Sanders, the founder of the world-renowned restaurant KFC.

 

Question #9. What Is Your Business’ Brand Personality?

After the story, comes the personality.

Do you know that one of the most interesting aspects in a story is how the hero’s journey transforms his character and personality and makes him a better person?

In a way, the brand story does that to your business as well.

Your brand story and brand personality should be connected, but they should not be far from who you are as the business owner.

Most often, the best brand personalities are the ones that serve as an extension of the founder or president of the business.

This is because your business needs a human face associated with it to become relatable.

 

Question #10. How Do You Want Your Business To Be Perceived?

Once you’ve defined your brand personality, you can start to think about how that personality would speak.

Using a consistent voice that embodies and projects your brand’s personality traits will show the world that you know who you are and that you live the identity you’ve shared with the world.

How would you speak to your customers if you were chatting one-to-one?

That should be the starting place for your brand voice.

 

Our Final Thoughts

Defining your brand identity is the centerpiece of your marketing strategy.

When you have a properly-developed brand identity, you can get your ideal clients and customers to contact you instead of you always trying to go after them.

We at HoopJumper help independent professionals create, refresh and expand your brand so you will look professional and make more money.

Check out our Branding Services today and let us help you develop the brand identity that works for you!