How to Create a Powerful Brand Identity (our 5 step guide)

As more and more talented and capable entrepreneurs begin to brand themselves, a trend of DIY branding has taken over the business world. While there’s nothing at all wrong with DIYing your brand (hello, money saved!), it’s all too common that many business owners build their brand from shallow trends in their niche. Driven by the time constraints of their side hustle or the ever-present comparison game, they abandon the core concept of authenticity and originality in branding and clamor to make something, anything so that they can launch their endeavors and build their businesses.

It can be so easy to just mimic another’s brand “aura”, if you will, in an effort to maximize the returns on our time investment. The harsh reality is, however, that this way of branding is not authentic or original, which means they don’t stand out to anyone— the exact opposite of what branding should do.

How to Design Your Brand Identity

Having a brand that’s authentic means being more in tune with who you are and where your passions lie, as well as the needs of your audience. Spoiler alert: It isn’t just about an amazing logo and a pretty color palette. When you pull together elements of yourself and your personality, the benefits you’ll reap are well worth the extra time and effort it takes to really dive in and build a powerful brand identity.

With all that said, here’s our 5-step guide to creating a powerful brand identity that stays closer to the things you love, the things that represent you and your business, and your personality!

1. Define Your Purpose & Passions

A lot of times, we become entrepreneurs to “make money”, not necessarily out of passion, but out of need. Understanding your passion from the start and building a business around this will ultimately create a business you love. You want to look inward and ask yourself:

What do I love?

What fuels me?

What would I do for free?

These questions might seem obvious, but they are so important moving forward. It’s better to be known as the expert and go-to person who does ONE thing incredibly well and with passion, than known for doing a lot of things, but nothing special. What are you confident that you can do best for others? Do that.

2. Embrace Your Personality

One of the most enjoyable things about branding, especially when the brand is your face, is the opportunity to add those flairs of your personality to it. In a solo business, the connection with your customer can be much, much more immediate. That one-on-one relationship makes it not only possible, but beneficial to show a little bit of the real you!

Start small and with your natural way of speaking. Instead of tweeting a proper Oxford-style sentence, try using a bit of your own slang. We’re definitely not afraid to add a few shits and damns in our emails, blogs, social media posts, etc. because that’s who we are and how we speak. We embrace our personalities and aren’t afraid to infuse that into our brand to help show that, hey, we’re two very real human beings.

When it comes to showing your personality, though, there is a pretty solid line that typically shouldn’t be crossed. Avoid using your brand as a stage to rant or complain about your life, and definitely don’t post any inappropriate photos. The internet is forever, friends, and slip ups like that can damage your brand as well as your reputation.

3. Understand Your Audience

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), nobody really cares about you. People mostly care about themselves, the problems that they have, and how you can solve them. In life, everything comes down to problems and solutions. Your audience has a problem. That problem might be the simplest thing in the world or the most complex thing. Your job is to discover what that problem is and offer a solution that will benefit them.

Building an authentic brand that you love means getting to know and understand your audience and genuinely care about creating those solutions for them. The better you understand your audience, the better you will get at solving their problems. You have to do everything in your power to find out what their pain points are, and you do that by asking questions. Contact every client that you’ve worked with and ask them where they were before they hired you. Research through Facebook Groups, or simply ask Google. All of these things will get you closer to understanding your audience better than they do.

4. Create an Experience of Transformation

Once you’re clear on your audience and their needs, you want to make sure that you build an experience of transformation. Building a brand that’s authentic means really making an effort to move people from their problems to their solutions, and you want to make sure you communicate it clearly. 

Fill the gap between the problems and the solutions of your audience, and make sure that your communication is geared in that direction. It all comes down to how you frame and package what you do; in other words, it’s all about positioning. How are you communicating who you are and what you do?

5. Love the Look

We get it. We understand that your visual identity is the first thing that people will notice about your brand. However, know that you’ll likely decide to change your logo or colors a thousand times as your business evolves, and while it is important to have elements that look good, understanding the more inward aspects of your brand is such an integral part of a powerful identity.

To keep this part easy for you, we’ve created Branding Pack Templates in The Creative Template Shop. You’ll receive one-click-add Canva templates for your logo, elements, color palette, typography, and branded patterns! Essentially, all the things you need design-wise to bring your brand identity to life.

You can instantly download your Branding Pack, as well as all other templates in The Shop for only $47/month when you become a member!

That wraps up our 5-step guide to creating a powerful brand identity! With a little soul searching, a little DIY spirit, and a good foundation, branding can become an integral piece of any creative person’s skillset.