Brand identities remain timeless. But organizations keep on turning a blind eye to their importance. They shouldn’t.

One word bounces around a lot in boardroom meetings, interactions with buyers and vendors, and internal communications.

Brand.

The reverence the word holds is immense. And why wouldn’t it be? Brands are giving people a sense of belonging, appeasing our tribal nature in all the right ways.

That’s why every great leader speaks of their brand with reverence, love, and care. They have to! Because that’s what people are buying for— they are buying from the brand. The saturated marketing is full of similar products, and the only thing standing between the buyer and the vendor is the perception.

The brand image, so to speak of. And brand images are formed only through an identity deeply rooted in the organizational mission.

As time passes and our computing powers evolve to create content with autonomy, this brand identity will become crucial to survive. Without it, companies will find themselves adrift, competition racing ahead of them.

But what can organizations do about it?

There are many options, and the short one, the tl;dr, is to embrace your process, your mission.

That is your identity.

Your brand.

However, for those who want the long answer. There are two vital ones that we’ve been able to find.

Before diving into the meaty parts of the discussion— let’s reintroduce the concept.

The identity of a brand is what it does.

What is brand identity?

Generally, brand identity is the visual and contextual cues your brand represents. However, brand identity is not limited to such a definition— this is just one side of it. Brand identity, as a more inclusive definition, should mean:

1. The unique activities a brand performs are its identity
2. The experience they deliver to their users
3. The mission they embody
4. How well they embody that mission
5. The impact of the actions of the user
6. Perception of the user

Many think that brand image and brand identity are two distinct concepts; they are not. The perception of the audience— is brand image, which is an intrinsic part of the identity.

Brands are never disconnected from what they do.

Average brands fail at this.

There is a reason so many organizations lose face value with their customers— they lack this authenticity. They show something they are not, and their buyers quickly grasp this fact.

Their identity isn’t forged in their mission. Fortunately, the modern buyer is more aware than ever. And they are actively looking for markers that foster trust. Their brand interactions, especially during consideration, are done with a fine pick comb.

Any sign of distrust will thrust brands to the bottom of the barrel.

First in, last out.

Brand identity is forged in the heart of the organization.

The question is, what can you do about it? A lot of organizations usually peddle inauthenticity— they simply cannot walk their talk because, well, they aren’t doing what they are saying.

It’s disingenuous. However, brands with strong identities may fail, and an inauthentic brand may not. That is the truth.

Yet, brands that drive revenue through inauthentic means begin failing sooner or later. And if the buyers decide enough is enough, the business will run dry. That’s why so many organizations pivot. They have lost the battle with the buyer and need to save face.

Time and again, brands with a powerful identity and reputation manage to survive even the harshest of critics— it’s because they align with their goal and deliver on it, even if sometimes the process might be messy.

The question is: Can you replicate it?

Possibly not. The answer to this is easy. Every brand has to discover itself through an arduous and creative process.

While no one can walk your hand through crafting your brand identity, there are frameworks you can use. Here’s one:

1. Why was the organization founded, and what is the vision driving it?
2. What roles do your employees play in your organization?
3. What do you do to make sure the vision is realized?
4. Deeply understand what you’re offering the buyer.
5. Why are you offering it?
6. What’s your opinion on the industry you’re serving— essentially, what are the holes you have noticed?
7. What are you doing to fill these gaps?
8. How are you doing it?

Reflection of such kind will help you gain clarity. As Ciente has echoed many times, strategy is about performing unique activities. And these unique activities are the ones that give identity and meaning to your brand.

It gives a non-living thing the properties of personality and charm.

The two answers and the importance of brand identity.

There is a lot of data that answers why brand identities are so vital. But there are two pieces of literature that we must draw our attention to.

The first is HubSpot’s 2024 Sales Trends Report, and the other is Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice.

While they may seem disconnected, they discuss consumption and the role of choice in these habits. The report outlines what B2B marketers have known for a while— 96% of B2B prospects do their own research before speaking to SDRs.

They advise that organizations form a consultant-consultee relationship with their prospects by educating and delighting their buyers. Essentially, brands will have to add value to buyers’ lives.

But will they trust any brand?

No. And that’s why brand identities are important.

They will trust the brand they feel familiar with and the one that has made them feel heard. Without this identity, organizations won’t be able to gain buyer mindshare.

HubSpot suggests adding more choice in the mix, giving power to the buyer— letting them self-buy and serve. However, a severe problem arises here: 60% of software buyers experience regret.

Why is that? It’s the paradox of choice— faced with many choices, people experience fatigue and enter analysis paralysis. And to escape from the discomfort, make choices that might not be aligned with the overall goal.

The paradox of choice outlines that facing an overwhelming number of options can lead to decision paralysis, increased effort, and dissatisfaction.

It’s a logical fallacy.

And here, in this messy fallacy, lies the ability of brands to survive by crafting an identity that helps buyers break away from this paralysis.

So, what can brands do here?

Their identity, the core, must speak to their intended buyer. But you may think that it might limit your impact. Not at all.

When you speak to one group of people or speak their language, you start creating value that is timeless. And people favor such timeless wisdom— they enjoy knowledge that helps them tackle multiple scenarios at once.

The importance of brand identity isn’t limited to knowledge. It’s also about reducing choice by giving people a sense of belonging and security.

In the always-on world, brand identity is a survival metric.

If you provide multiple options to the buyer, their fatigue will guide them towards a brand they know. However, some brands don’t get it.

They do everything yet forget to form an actual personality. Dull and uninspired messaging will not work. Look at AI and its replication quality and speed— nothing can match it.

But AI systems will not replace personality, charm, and voice— things that require originality.

Understand that your brand identity stands between you and the loss of your business. Explore Salestech.

It’s the driver of economic certainty.

Building robust brand reputation takes time. And even a miniscule mistake could prove costly. How can brands proactively manage this?.

The modern buyer is self-aware. With digital resources and channels at the doorstep, they can leverage research, instigating a shift in their buying patterns. It has led to heightened demand and dynamic expectations.

And what happens when these expectations are not met? Criticism, scrutiny, and endless social debate.

In this digital-first era where social media is at the forefront of every public opinion – shared and discussed, brands take consumer opinions quite seriously. This prolonged noise seems unmanageable, especially when customers often want businesses to respond to their pain points straightaway.

And digital transformations have accentuated these concerns.

From social proofs to online reviews, consumer opinions deeply impact a company’s market positioning. Tech innovations have also put them under a microscope. Now, it’s easy to detect, augment, and scrutinize any error – when they deter from an ethical pathway the audience has already framed.

These could range from tiny slip-ups to data breaches to poor consumer reviews. Any divergence significantly affects their brand reputation, leading to a loss of market share and their status. The brand should be a priority – the value it entails and the relationships forged.

With digital innovations accessible in a blink, businesses are rethinking and regrouping. With modern challenges in tow, they are developing unique solutions and strategies to address and counter them. If tech can work against them, it can also benefit them.

Because market value isn’t merely about the numbers, most of it is dependent on brand equity and other immeasurable metrics. These incite holes in form of weaknesses across the brand, making them susceptible to reputational damages, which may directly impact sales and customers.

What Should Remain the Priority: Risk Mitigation or Crisis Management?

“Too often, we’re tempted to address the symptoms of a problem rather than the root causes or conditions,” asserts the Managing Director of Achievers Workforce Institute.

In line with how companies can mitigate reputational risks, the Forbes Council voices a similar opinion. They agree that brands should frame a proactive approach to safeguard their reputation instead of waiting for the problems to fester.

Precaution before cure has been a motto that has worked effectively in every road of life. It similarly applies to the business landscape.

This is where risk management and crisis management differ from each other. Addressing brand reputation risks is crucial before any sort of crisis management. It requires a reactive approach.

Why?

When a brand has a positive reputation, the perception is that they’re providing more value to their audiences. These organizations entail loyal customers who access a broad range of services from them or apply for premium. It proves how tangled customer experience and brand reputation are with each other.

Is Brand Reputation All About the External Image?

Here, we highlight another facet of this discussion – brand reputation is relative and subjective.

For example, an expert opinion of a business might differ from the audience’s.

However, at the end of the road, there are similar goals – invite trustworthy partnerships, successfully launch products into the market, and safeguard against competitors.

But doesn’t understanding reputational risk involve defining “brand reputation” beforehand? Brand reputation focuses on the value – of what people perceive externally to build an internal (trusted) relationship with the business.

An old article by HBR implies that reputation is all about perception. But to what extent is it true? Generally understood as a socially constructed notion, the magnitude of the hit isn’t driven by a speculative allegation but depends on its credibility. A brand reputation might take years to construe, but a tiny hiccup or obstacle to disrupt – it encompasses the value expression.

A business can capitalize on this – attracting investors and boosting clients amidst other factors interlinked to its growth and success.

In a research paper titled – “Corporate Reputation: Being Good and Looking Good” (2019), the author questions – is reputation about having a positive image or doing good (ethically)? The modern challenge identifies a cross-connection between both these aspects. It’s the same angle that the HBR article provides on reputational risks – identification of the gap between the perceived image and the reality.

This could introduce a wide rupture in the public perception and the actual standing of the business.

The consequences?

Negative marketing could lead to a dip in sales and challenges in customer retention, damaging the overall reputation. This is why business leaders should draw on creating value through strategic reputation risk management.

How to Effectively Implement Reputation Crisis Management Strategies?

Reputation management evaluates how the market perceives a business and then seeks to execute strategies that ensure a positive image. For a long-term and noticeable effect, reputation management should be integrated and adapted to align with the business-wide processes. Here, stakeholders’ perspective goes a long way.

Building back a positive and streamlined reputation – whether an internal or external overview – requires management insight. This ensures that the beliefs and long-term requisites align with stakeholder expectations.

Moreover, a proper reputation management strategy should be followed by significant performance indicators, illustrating which factors affect a brand’s reputation. Only then can an organization continue to build a roadmap.

However, this isn’t all. Reputation management is a consistent process that requires dedication. For robust reputation crisis management planning, the following take the front wheel:

1. A thought-out code of conduct

What if a stakeholder, an employee, or a partner instigates a reputational crisis? What is the primary approach to managing such a crisis? To handle conflicts, an organization has to be aware of the model behavior – the conduct and ethics everyone who’s part of the organization should follow.

In 2019, following the #MeToo movement, organizations decided to hold CEOs accountable, ramping up ethical standards at the C-level. This was on the basis of professional and personal conduct and led to over 120 CEOs resigning and 580 of them stepping down.

When specific stakeholders are directly tied to a brand’s identity, this could hit the brand’s reputation and create a crisis in their market perception.

However, a well-planned and meticulous code of conduct helps establish what is and isn’t acceptable in a professional setting. And when these rules are not followed appropriately, corrective measures should be placed.

When well-designed code of conduct highlights core values and purpose – it’s much easier to map a smooth pathway in handling a crisis. The organization then entails an offensive solution when a stakeholder or employee gives root to a crisis such as the one mentioned above.

The brand’s code of conduct holds them accountable and establishes their awareness regarding how one should behave. It also includes evaluating employee sentiments along specific ethical indicators such as accountability, trust, and decision-making. It has to be an inclusive process where the attributes resonate with diverse stakeholder groups.

Thus, to influence the ideal behavior in the organization, these standard codes have to be woven within the organization’s culture and mission. This way, it extends across departments and hierarchies.

2. The philosophy behind the brand’s vision and mission

It’s true that a brand doesn’t receive a bad reputation overnight. There are specific mistakes leading to such a displacement in brand positioning and loss of market trust.

Here, the primary thought is questioning where the business stands and what the values it stands for. If there are any hiccups between what the audience expects and brand values, rebranding could be a potential next step.

If a business loses its direction toward engaging its audience, it could be time to reassess its mission statements and values. It is specifically fruitful in aligning with where the company hopes to be and its overall strategic framework.

The current channels and partner websites on which your brand is present should reflect the edited messages, descriptions, trademarks, guidelines, and logos.

3. Periodic audits

Periodic audits investigate what the market is saying across variable platforms – social media, review websites, user reviews, and Google searches, amongst others.

These require extensive research, offering a different perspective on where your team is lacking in its crisis management strategies. The point is – people are already talking, so you need to know where.

The in-depth research will help assess the extent of damage done – what exactly happened, the subsequent backlash, and how it affected the company. It’s important to continue tracking the scenario – whether the backlash is increasing, moderate, or decreasing.

Doing so will highlight the areas of the crises which require primary attention.

4. The following steps are monitoring, reacting, and improving the reputation.

Once you’ve mapped the conversation around the brand, it’s time to take some measures. What if the reviews and comments are negative or moderate? The next step is to think over strategies to improve them.

You have to turn the tide. But how?

Study the market trends and customer experiences. Both these factors are revealed through the conducted audits. Create a consistent management strategy around this:

1. Who will oversee/monitor the implementation and evaluation of these strategies?

A brand reputation manager or a new group of employees? Building a team leveraging employees who indulge in customer-facing activities could contribute toward effective communication.

They’re already talking to customers, so they are aware of the tone and messaging they should use.

However, businesses must acknowledge that those on top are sometimes the only ones with the resources to preside over reputation crisis management. The communication isn’t merely with the customers but also with the stakeholders who decide whether a risk should be managed or avoided.

Additionally, there should be a brand reputation manager, i.e., the point of contact, who will help bridge the gap with the decision-makers and improve coordination.

2. Do the reviews or comments deserve responses?

Legitimate and genuine feedback, whether positive or negative, that transcends trolling should be responded to. Arguing with trolls online may backfire and damage the reputation further. However, addressing real concerns and providing them with solutions could improve the derailing opinions.

It could additionally prove that, as a business, you care about the well-being and time of your clients.

3. Establish readiness, even for favorable audits

Even if the audit reports demonstrate consistency in maintaining a positive brand reputation, a business should be ever-ready. Crisis could easily be deviated by undertaking efficient precautions.

Because once it occurs, there should be a previously thought-out plan on handling it.

Planning for emergencies will also help develop the ideal response.

Execution of brand crisis management requires a reactive and all-inclusive approach.

The rupture between the reality of a brand and its reputation should materialize into a positive public perception instead of deteriorating. Media in the age of information overload plays a modular role in shaping the market’s perception.

This is why there should always be a communication and a trust-building strategy set in stone. Companies also undertake PR managers to build robust plans to manage media images.

But image and reputation aren’t the same. Reputation is built on a long-term collective opinion, once destroyed, takes decades to reinstate.

This is why a reactive approach to crisis management is the key – an actionable route to assuring audiences of the guidelines the brand values.

Modulating the strategies according to the source of the crisis can be a vital step in reputation crisis management. If it was due to data breaches, execute new cyber policies; if it was due to employee/stakeholder misconduct, develop a standard model for the ideal behavior.

And, there is one aspect threading them all into ball of yarn – strong communication. Technology has increased the stakes for everyone involved. When someone has a negative experience, the news travels faster across social platforms. This works reversibly as well – in case of a positive brand reputation.

With minimalistic branding becoming the trend of the hour, can understanding the narrative behind the design process help brands find their voice?

The traditional definition of graphic design focuses more on its practical functionalities, i.e., illustrating what needs to be communicated, only considering it as a practice of doing.

Today, the domain of graphic design inhibits much more than that.

It does not merely involve typography, illustration, printing, and photography, though these allude to its origin. However, there are nuances involved that highlight why it has become crucial for businesses worldwide for branding purposes.

It involves both – thinking (idea generation) and doing (action of illustrating). In graphic design, these two elements are combined to form a channel of communication and emotional expression for brands.

A channel that helps brands instill unique messages, and appeal to their targeted audience.

In simple words, there remains a huge misconception that collates graphic design and branding with visual content.

However, marketers who leverage graphic design and branding services understand how significant graphic designers are. They know that the process and the product hold similar weight in branding. Its significance is quite visible across the marketing landscape, where graphic design is the guiding framework of the overall branding process. 

It is an instrument of persuasion, instruction, and information while being an expression of a strong brand identity.

Graphic design is the instrument that instills a narrative into your brand.

Your brand cannot remain a hollow echo of products and services but instead something similar to a live strong identity. More than encompassing a corporate value, it should hold a narrative.

Just as different colors in nature add a specific pop to the world, graphic design contributes that flair to your branding projects. So, where does the connection between graphic design and branding begin?

Commercial imagery.

“They are eye-hungry. They pop”, said Andy Warhol on industrial painting, i.e., art consumed by the masses.

This form of imagery didn’t exhibit abstractness but the “literalness” in everything we use and perceive, like a Coca-Cola sticker we paste on our phone cases. Arguably, this is where the idea behind designing unique logos for brands stems from.

But that was the point. With commercialization and the rise of innovations that required a business to stand out, graphic design and branding took on a new meaning.

This new direction of graphic design and branding process was curating a channel of communication in the commercial arena that helped identify products meant to be bought and sold. And the form of illustration designed for identification was used in a unique way.

Repetition and uniformity became the two significant keys of commerce, graphic design and branding, as evident.

Source: Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans

So, this instituted a visual vocabulary of mass culture. This meant that specific visual identities represented certain commodities used broadly across the market.

This ideology of recognizable imagery is still borrowed from and ascribed to the realm where graphic design and branding intersect. For example, how the half-eaten apple of Apple is recognized by users and non-users everywhere – from MacBooks to t-shirts.

This can be connected to the brand logo, entailing replication and sensibly outlining the meaning behind the intangible idea.

Visualization of abstract concepts entails a profound creativity that corresponds to articulating an idea or communicating feelings by ascribing symbols to what is known.

Your brand’s message is an intangible concept, but you map it into reality through visual elements such as a logo, typography, color, mission statement, etc.

Logos are such channels or instruments of communication that should be provided more consideration.

It is short for logotype, combining the Greek words – logos (word or speech) and túpos (mark or imprint). The concept of a visual identity or making a logo by graphic designers is to give shape to an intangible concept and even to differentiate classes of objects from one another.

The principal reasons why this is necessary – differentiation and ownership.

Imagine there are four different businesses of jeans in the same building in front of each other.

In the modern market where competition is prevalent and persistent, there’s no escape. We know that one jeans seller has higher quality jeans than the other, while the other has lower prices.

We prefer and are loyal to one brand of jeans, so how do we differentiate it from the others?

Yes, word-of-mouth marketing can go a long way and exist before technological tools. What if we combine this with a form of visual identity?

This was also the idea behind Levi being previously known as the “Two Horse Brand” until 1928. The reason for taking on the two horses for their logo demarcated their product’s durability. This was the narrative behind the logo – it entailed a meaning that could make its brand stand out in the market and increase its share.

In simple terms – “thinking about images means being led into certain thoughts by images.”

So, they tapped into the primary step that can boost their brand recognition – the logo. And this was quite successful. For years, consumers attributed Levi Strauss & Co. as the “pants with two horses”.

How else could consumers understand the durability of their product?

Levi Strauss & Co. themselves offer an explanation. Their need to put two horses was to communicate in a language that all their consumers would grasp. There was a cultural barrier, and very few people were actually educated, but through visuals – the emotions one could grasp would remain the same.

If not, everyone could easily describe which brand of jeans they wanted they could always say “the one with two horses”. And this makes a lot of difference in elevating brand awareness. This means a brand is unique, distinct, and successful enough to be recognized through its logo rather than its name.

See, how much significance does a brand logo entail in entering a new market?

Not only did they hope to communicate what their brand is known for – durable denim – but they also understand their audience. So, those “pants with horses” did not merely become their logo but also their persona: a strong identity for their brand.

But this has undergone a transformation since.

With Levi’s growing popularity across the entire world, this logo was deemed unnecessary. To keep up with the changing market dynamics, minimalism has taken root.

While brand identity is significantly crucial to narrating the product that your business offers, graphic designing and logos keep pace with the changing rules of aestheticism. And the trendiness of how people perceive color schemes, typography, layouts, and the overall brand design.

A design does not comprise colors and lines, but it contains hidden meanings and an effective use of space.

As soon as Levi started to take off, minimalism impacted its old logo. Once the brand is built, recognition comprises a singularity, as we have noticed in several huge brands.

The ‘F’ for Facebook’s app, the bird for Twitter, the half-eaten apple for Apple, and the list goes on.

Brands have incorporated minimalism in their designs and layout.

This is also relevant for the B2B landscape.

Simulation has become an escape. Any aesthetic that catches our attention occupies less space and a convenience that affords comfort to our naked eyes.

Taken as a mode to demonstrate elegance and clarity, minimalism holds a bright future.

The use of pastel colors, alignment, negative space, and bold typography is the essence of minimalism today. With immense competition across the market between businesses that sell similar products, graphic design and branding processes can change everything.

Like the Pop Art movement, we might say that minimalism opposed abstract expressionism. This form of art did not ask its viewers to instill meaning into the work or extract metaphors. But instead, assess the space and body around the art piece.

It is paramount to understand why minimalism was established to further outline why it is much preferred in the designs and advertisements that we have today.

Frank Stella, a minimalist artist, said, “What you see is what you see.” And what they popularly meant is less is more, even from a design perspective.

But in graphic design and branding, a diagram might possess something more. It doesn’t merely start with a logo or end there. Either way, it constitutes a value. The brand’s value is communicated through this.

And the very exercise of expressing oneself or recording a message began with visual art.

Surely, tech advancements have transformed our way of expression or communicating but the underlying elements remain loyal to the traditional forms of storytelling – the crux of visual art. It’s the significance of art encompassing a narrative. In graphic design and branding, logos, color palettes, typography, and use of space – the elements that construe modern design – entail a narrative.

And in branding, the entire vision and statement that the brand is built on holds meaning.

A brand doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

With the figures etched onto the walls, doors, collaterals, business merch, etc., how does this not contain any similarities to cave paintings?

Yes, the art of storytelling is not limited to stick figures, monochromatic colors, or just filling in random colors. But, at the core of marketing, creativity aligning with the business objectives is in the driver’s seat. The businesses and the audiences, in a dynamic and constantly spiraling market, demand much more.

So, the combination of graphic design and branding changes how we utilize and engage with visuals, according to how they take root in a highly commercial and mechanical world.

However, design is not merely art. It enrolls a meticulous use of colors, space, lines, font, and alignment for successful branding.

For example, the use of red and yellow in the McDonald’s logo is not random. It holds psychological significance, according to Karen Haller, a UK psychologist expert in color and design psychology, i.e., to trigger hunger:

“Looking at the positive psychological qualities of red and yellow concerning the fast-food industry, red triggers stimulation, appetite, and hunger, it attracts attention. Yellow triggers the feelings of happiness and friendliness,” Haller said. “When you combine red and yellow, it’s about speed, quickness. In, eat, and out again.”

A simple Google search tells us that red and yellow are common colors for fast food restaurants, and due to the reason stated above by Haller. Visual perception, human behavior, and emotions result in specific reactions and triggers.

Red offers that excitement because often it is associated with a ripe strawberry, sweetened candy, or tender meat. On the contrary, its association with intense emotions such as anger and rage works in favor of these brands. It calls for an urgent response, proactively influencing mood and behavior. This is why it’s used to illustrate danger.

Color holds a crucial space in graphic design and branding.

The whole element of branding is to induce consumer loyalty, boost purchasing intent, and expand market share. And in this case, its identity matters tenfold. In the examples above, from Warhol’s soup cans to Levi’s logo, color aids have been the steering wheel to propel your brand.

Colors in graphic design and branding leverage their significant influence as different forms of signals in nature and culture.

Why?

Because they help in scene segmentation, object recognition, and stimulus discrimination. The sense of specific colors leads to attraction or repulsion, depending on how they rattle our emotional stimuli.

But just as the use of red and yellow in fast food chains exhibits a sense of hunger and satisfaction, the use of colors and the reaction it harnesses depends on the context, which is not uniform.

This is why blue is often used for corporate and more conservative brands such as Facebook, LinkedIn, PayPal, Intel, Phillips, and Visa, among 43% of other Fortune 500 companies. Blue is trustworthy and calming, and all graphic designers are aware of this.

And if you ask any brand with a blue logo, why blue? The answer always constitutes two terms – innovation and reliability.

What is the narrative hidden beyond the graphic design and branding of Facebook?

On 31^st August, Facebook underwent a technical glitch. This put a halt to users’ engagement with the platform because our inbuilt habit of doom scrolling brought attention to this change.

The blue ‘F’ logo turned black. Surprising? Yes. Unusual? No. Applications undergo technical issues all the time and are resolved within a few minutes or hours.

But why was this newsworthy? The brand that Facebook has built has blue at its core graphic design and branding tactics. We have a simple understanding that Facebook’s blue entails a marketing association. Due to its market share, it isn’t required to stand out and have an eye-catching and impressionable logo.

We all know what Facebook’s logo looks like.

When the glitch changed the color of this F into black, consumers assumed that maybe this was a rebranding effort by the organization. This is how intertwined the color blue is with Facebook across the market.

But you know what the most fascinating aspect of this is? The actual narrative behind the color and the logo – Mark Zuckerberg’s red and green color blindness, alluding to which he said:

“Blue is the richest color for me; I can see all of blue.”

This is a story behind the use of the color blue. It’s out there but hidden behind the marketing understanding of why brands use the color.

Visual accessibility was a huge reason if not one of the only significant ones. The brand’s association with blue color is emotive behind the curtains of the marketing landscape, along with its bold sans serif typography.

In graphic design and branding, every executed design is intentional.

Graphic designers do need to align with client requirements, but the first thing on their minds should potentially be the experience.

Is minimalistic art the future of B2B graphic design and branding?

Where do the pros of minimalism end and the dangers of losing the details begin?

Even though there is a need for a new direction in art and design, where do we lose sight of our vision – art as expression? Isn’t expressing oneself hidden in the details, or is less the new more?

In the tech landscape, a lot has changed. Twitter became X, and we have built-in AI assistants like ChatGPT. But some things have remained the same. And one of them is the homepage design for the Google search engine.

Google’s search engine homepage grabbed my attention not because of its exceptional use of colors but its simplicity. We can say it embodies absolute neutrality, stripped away of distraction and popping colors. Not much regarding the graphic design and branding of Google’s search engine homepage has transformed.

We have come a long way. While brands have caught up, most users still gravitate towards minimalism, and AI-generated images are widely criticized. And Google retaining its UX design, even in today’s atmosphere, is commendable, to say the least.

The graphic designers know what they are doing with the appropriate spacing and proper alignment of the CTAs spread across the page. It’s minimalistic, making it increasingly user-centric.

It’s minimal with carefully chosen attention-grabbing vibrant colors, such as blue used for their CTAs that provide a clean and formal look, against the white background.

It grabs the reader or scroller’s attention quite instantly.

Every logo, color palette, typeface, or use of whitespace amidst other intricacies of graphic design and branding is an existing proof. Especially in the immensely complex and expansive space of digital marketing.

Visibility, readability, and direct communication.

Expression is an integral component of these platforms, especially Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The platform itself allows space for creativity and innovation in the form of content curation. With a plethora of creative content within the apps, quite evidently, the external graphic design and branding of these platforms are quite minimalistic.

But with minimalistic brand design becoming a trend, are we, as creatives, losing our touch or making the brands lose their personality? Or is minimalism making us rethink whether we need a balance between functionality and creativity to finally stand out in the market?

But one thing is for sure. While minimalism may be the trend right now, it does not project the direction that graphic and branding design might take, especially in the B2B landscape.

Uniqueness and creativity have to remain.

To strip away a brand of any one of these is to take away the trust ideal customers have instilled in it. Art and design have always been the common ground of experimentation, and their future is as fluid as ever.

Building a strong brand image helps you accelerate your sales pipeline. But how do you set the right KPIs to measure growth?

For a brand that wants to scale, it makes sense to invest time and resources toward your market presence. Having your brand appeal to a wide audience may seem tough to begin with. However, studies highlight that 81% of buyers will purchase from a brand they trust.  Brands can leverage tracking to gauge how well the brand performs among the target audience.

It keeps your brand’s health in check, helping you understand how your customers perceive your business and their patterns of purchasing your offerings. A solid brand tracking shows you what has worked well and what requires improvement. Popular brands have established a strong brand identity by fostering awareness and more loyal customers. 77% of marketing leaders believe branding promotes sustained growth. To become a strong brand, you must understand how this powerful tool can be leveraged in your favor.

Why consider tracking your brand?

Effective brand tracking allows you to identify factors that positively impact your sales cycle. Using the data derived, you can predict the potential threats and opportunities. Optimizing your overall marketing strategy is another key highlight of brand tracking.

It is equally useful whether you are starting up or have successfully established your brand voice. Brand tracking helps you gather customer-centric data, including their feedback. Such details give you a better idea of what your target audience thinks of your brand and its products/services, how they benefitted, and what challenges (if any) need attention.

You can also benefit from this approach by testing strategies, watching out for competitors and what they are up to, and performing a comparative analysis. These enable you to determine your strengths and uncover new opportunities. When you continuously track your brand, it allows you to assess its performance over some time. The good thing about real-time tracking is the scope to flag issues before they become a problem.

With the booming tech landscape, customer engagement with your brand can happen across various channels. When you integrate the right brand tracking tools, you can assimilate data with KPIs relevant to brand awareness and preference among a target audience. The key significance of brand tracking is to identify trends and acquire data-driven insights that uncover potential threats and opportunities in the market.

Use cases of brand tracking

Let’s look at the top three use cases of brand tracking

Understanding your brand’s performance

You can utilize metrics to track shifts in customer perceptions and evaluate the ongoing trends that can impact your brand’s performance. This approach lets you tweak your marketing strategies to stay ahead of the competition.

Finding out your potential threats and opportunities

Brand tracking brings you closer to analyzing changes in customer preferences and awareness. You will tap into the competitive brands that can impact your performance and growth. Once you have these details in place, you can proactively address the roadblocks, make the most of the new opportunities, and protect your brand reputation.

Optimizing your marketing efforts

Since brand tracking provides data-driven insights, it optimizes marketing strategy and allocates budgets accordingly. It makes the marketing activities behind brand growth clear. You can allocate your resources to the initiatives likely to create a large impact and move the audience.

The Metrics for Measuring Brand Tracking

Measuring your brand health with a tracking tool is a way to understand the commercial value of your brand while recording changes and optimizing your strategy. While doing so, you can decide on a timeline for tracking performance efficiency. If you are running a few ad campaigns, it’s a good idea to have more frequent analyses.

You need to measure your brand regularly. This will make it clear the metrics that work best for you over time, enabling you to identify the scope for improvement. However, if you’re launching new advertising campaigns more regularly than this, it’s a good idea to increase the frequency of metric analysis. This allows you to see how they’re contributing to your brand.

Brand awareness

It’s a perfect KPI to measure how many customers know your brand and its offerings. The brand awareness metric is also a reflection of your brand’s marketing efforts toward connecting with your audience. When you can foster awareness, it wins audience trust and ultimately, boosts the sales cycle.

Brand recall

This metric stems from the lasting impression of your brand among your target customers. When that happens, they can remember your brand when prompted or when they think about a specific pain point. With the help of brand recall, you can understand the depth of your brand positioning and the efficacy with which the brand message is retained in the audience. It promotes greater awareness and holds the potential to influence purchase decisions.

Brand consideration

The B2B landscape is highly competitive. Your customers will probably check several options before purchase decision. Keeping tabs on brand consideration will help you assess how potential customers perceive your brand. It also offers the benefit of crafting marketing strategies to increase the chance of being considered for purchase.

Brand preference

There are so many brands in the market and more than one could be offering similar solutions or products as your brand. Your target customers may be weighing these competitors as potential options. Brand preference offers clarity on the chance of them choosing your brand. It gives you an idea about the competitor’s position and your brand. Brand preference also sheds light on the factors that can influence customers’ purchase decisions.

Brand loyalty

To think of it, brand loyalty is the ultimate goal for every brand. If there is brand loyalty, customers are likely to keep choosing your solution or product. The brand loyalty metric gives you an idea of the probability of customers to continue purchasing from your brand. If it is strong, the chances of customers returning for purchase is quite high. This metric is perfect for eliminating doubts about whether a client is there for the long haul or only temporarily. Moreover, you can receive an estimate of the proportion of customers likely to purchase again from you.

Brand associations

As customers continue to choose your brand, they may form opinions and create a perception about what you stand for. The brand associate metric helps you see whether the brand image in the market aligns with how you want to portray it. However, the targets should be achievable, allowing you to measure what makes you unique. Ensure that your strong points are highlighted and if not, there is time to make that change. It’s all about conveying the uniqueness of your brand and letting the customers know your values. A way to execute this could be to measure associations through open-text feedback, which gives you an accurate picture of how your audience feels about the brand and what connects them. You can dive deep into the negative and positive associations and then work on having more positives.

Brand usage 

Your brand is out there and you have a fairly decent number of customers. But how do you calculate their dependency on your brand? This metric will give you a clear picture of how often customers buy your products or services. You can add questionnaires or surveys on your website or purchase page to track user frequency.

Best practices for brand tracking

Although brand tracking may seem like a complicated marketing activity, it is worth your time and effort. This step-by-step guide will help you develop a complete brand tracking report.

1. Define your goals

Setting clear objectives is the starting point for a smooth brand-tracking experience. Focus on improving your brand identity or calculating the ROI from a particular campaign. The idea is to utilize these goals as a roadmap for choosing the right metrics. Your KPI must align with the business objectives and help attain the desired results.

2. Select Your Brand Tracker

Once you have identified your objectives, the next step is to pick the methodology you’ll go by. You may supplement the brand tracking studies with questionnaires, interviews, and digital analytics to collect relevant data. Different KPIs will require different brand tracking tools, thereby providing relevant data. While making the selection, verify whether it supplies the information to calculate these metrics.

3. Collect and Analyze Data

Assessing your brand performance data is a key benefit of implementing tracking. Use the tools that align with your brand to process and download data. As you conduct the analysis, stay tuned to the trends and patterns you observe in the information. You may be surprised to stumble upon some valuable insights.

4. Monitor Continuously and Adapt

Tracking brand performance with metrics is futile if you miss adapting. You can easily accomplish this by setting up automated tools for collecting real-time data. It’s advisable to review these metrics and understand the emerging trends or shifts in customer behavior. The findings revealed in the data can serve as a guide for developing new strategies. But you must be willing to adjust your approach as and when needed.

5. Report Findings and Take Action

And we come to the final step of brand tracking— report what you learned and implement insights-driven actions. To make the most of this step, focus on creating clear, concise reports highlighting metrics and trends. Create a visually appealing report by adding elements, such as charts and graphs for a quick overview of complex data. These insights will drive your next strategic action plan. Don’t forget to measure the impact of these actions on your brand’s overall performance.

Summing up

Branding is all about making an impact on your target audience. This requires tracking how your brand is performing every now and then. Utilize the right metric for getting clarity on how popular your brand is and how often customers purchase. Such details are important to help you understand brand positioning. The insights gained from brand tracking will guide you to making data-driven decisions that optimize your marketing efforts and allocate your budgets more effectively. By understanding which marketing activities drive the most significant improvements in brand performance, you can focus your resources on the most impactful initiatives, ensuring the best possible return on investment.

When your customers reach the end of the sales funnel & are just a step away from garnering new clients, these marketing tactics will help you win leads.

The bottom funnel is a closing stage. Your potential customers are done with their research (TOFU) and have weighed the options well (MOFU). By now your prospects have thoroughly investigated their problem and are well aware of the potential solutions available in the market. All they need is a final push to take things ahead from the BOFU phase. And the next step is converting them into buyers.

That said, the last leg of the sales funnel pipeline may have the least number of leads. The number of prospects at this stage will probably be few, but all of them chose to come this far. You can be sure that they align with your offerings and are ready to make the purchase. Your prospects have liked your brand and are one decision away from sealing the deal.

These prospective clients fairly have an idea of how your brand will address their pain points, over the conversations or messages you probably exchanged before they reached this stage. They could be regularly visiting your website to understand how your product or service resonates with them. By the time your prospects reach the Bottom Of the Funnel stage of the funnel, they have interacted with your TOFU and MOFU content, instilling brand awareness and building trust in what you have to offer. The BOFU phase is also a point where you are banking on garnering more leads and getting worked up about how to make this happen. In this article, we have provided insights to guide you toward successful interactions with BOFU customers.c

Your BOFU marketing objective needs to center around convincing your prospects that they should buy your product or services. Building an effective marketing strategy for BOFU is a catalyst for driving revenue and accelerating brand growth. It is the process of marketing to a narrow, highly qualified audience to nurture the decision-making process and persuade buyers to purchase your product or service. For converting more prospects to leads at this stage, you need an effective BOFU marketing plan to convince potential customers that they need to go ahead and make the buying decision.

Bottom-of-the-funnel Marketing Tactics: Content Ideas to help you shine

In a marketing funnel, a well-crafted BOFU will make a big difference to help your brand shine. The goal of your marketing strategy is to amplify personalization and highlight your brand’s trustworthiness.  Although in-person interactions are considered impactful, robust content can also attract customers for the long haul.  

While launching a bottom-of-the-funnel marketing campaign, remember that your end goal is to take people across the finish line, converting them into paying accounts. An impactful digital marketing strategy will serve as a roadmap to convince potential customers to purchase your offering. And this is possible by delivering informative content that motivates prospects to take action.

The bottom-of-the-funnel content framework focuses on prospects familiar with their pain point and actively seeking the best solution. These are the people who are very close to buying your offering. This is the perfect stage to use the power of content to persuade the purchase decision. BOFU content takes personalization up a notch, helping the potential leads decide to follow through and convert. Your content must convey why your offering is the best solution for their pain point.

We have compiled ideas for effective BOFU content to inspire action and increase the lead conversion rate.

Product Guides and Tutorials

Publishing how-to guides and tutorials for your products or services are good content forms to consider. Utilize them to convince your prospects that your offerings will deliver the results and outcomes they’re counting on.

Free Trial Experiences

A free trial is a great way to advertise your expertise. More customers would be willing to give a free trial a go than jump to the purchase. If your business is product-based, a free trial will help provide customers with more details. It is perfect to provide an opportunity to find appealing features about your product, convincing you to purchase. When your prospects enjoy a free trial experience, the probability of them converting into paying customer could be higher.

Case Studies

Case studies work well for the bottom-of-the-funnel marketing strategy to support the final nurturing and the much-needed persuasion. The feature of case studies that stands out is that you can create interviews narrating buyer personas and provide deep insights into what made them take the plunge of purchase decisions. These case studies can also draw upon why the customers think your product or solution is amazing and how well it solves their challenges. Add the benefits of integrating your offering and why they recommend prospective buyers. You can use case studies as an opportunity to highlight features of how other customers are benefitting from your product or service.

Blog Posts

Blog posts are amazing marketing tools for bottom-of-the-funnel. You can launch short and pillar blog posts to communicate key features of your offerings and how they will help your prospective customers. The idea here is to develop blog pieces for specific buyer personas, so they find it highly relevant and can resonate with them. All the blogs can then be distributed through various channels, such as websites, emails, social media posts, and so on.

Infographics

These forms of content are visually appealing and work well to catch the audience’s attention. With infographics, you can showcase complex solutions in a simple and visual format. This content can also feature customer experience and how your brand helped them overcome pain points.

Paid Advertising 

Set a clear budget plan for advertising your offering to the right client network. Launching paid ads can help you remarket to customers you previously interacted with and who showed interest. Collect relevant data to share your ad campaign with and use the channels frequented by prospective customers.

Email campaigns

Once you have drawn a niche audience in the BOFU phase, you can persuade them with an effective email. Sending out personalized email campaigns to potential customers can work in your favor. Personalize your messages so you connect with them better. This marketing channel remains a great way to guide the buying journey of prospects and enhance their interest in your offerings. While engaging with customers, think carefully about how to leverage emails to earn a conversion at the BOFU phase.  In your emails, you can add a combination of targeted content, such as useful tips and promotional offers.

Customer success stories

Success stories can be uploaded on your web page, giving potential customers confidence in your brand. Provide potential customers with stories that highlight the positive experiences that people have had in the past. Share a link to a video demonstrating successful user experiences with products or services.

Wrapping up

The bottom-of-the-funnel is pretty much the end phase of your sales cycle— the last step before converting prospects into paying accounts. A strategic plan can help push prospective customers to make the purchase decision. Your marketing plan for BOFU customers needs to focus on the incentive and accomplish the lead conversion with impactful content marketing. The types of content that will work well for bottom-of-the-funnel marketing differ from the TOFU and MOFU stages. Rather than utilizing it to build trust, you’ll need to leverage content strategies to increase lead conversion. With these marketing efforts, utilize BOFU to highlight your offerings directly to prospective customers.

Brands are no longer just symbols, names, or designs. They have become an identity. A cohesive message delivered in unison.

Products have become abundant in the market. There is a technology that can solve every business problem. And, with the technology comes the buyers and competitors.

An organization or individual must compete for the attention of the buyer.

With social media, individuals can position themselves as solutions to problems, too. This could be a marketing problem, as the rise of influencer marketing would suggest. Or they could sell their product, like Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest. Have no doubt, he is an SEO influencer and the face of his organization. People buy his product because his name is attached to it.

But why is this? Some organizations and individuals present themselves in a manner that we find refreshing.

Their charisma is infectious and investing our attention is entertaining and enlightening. Once an organization or individual is perceived to be charismatic, they begin to hold the attention of a relevant audience.

These organizations and individuals are called brands.

For all the vagueness of the term, we must ask: What is a brand?

Why is brand identity important?

Let us talk about a famous story: Michael Jordan and Nike. In 1984, Nike and Michael Jordan created a historic moment in sports and fashion: the Air Jordan.

The legendary red and black Jordan pair were on full display during a pre-season game when Michael Jordan wore it for the first time.

The NBA was furious. They sent a letter to Nike stating the shoes violated policy and would levy a fine of $5000 per game. Nike agreed and paid the fine for each of his games, revolutionizing marketing.

The Air Jordan became an anti-establishment and a rebel-figure sneaker in the market, becoming the most popular individual-led brand ever. The legendary sneakers sold enough copies in May to reach $70 million in sales.

You may think that Nike here is the brand in question, but let us pivot and understand that while Nike defined itself as a disruptor and risk taker, it was Michael Jordan, the conqueror, who would take the limelight. And not just for his exceptional skills on the court but his presence and sense of marketing.

From his iconic ‘Be Like Mikeʼ marketing campaign to Space Jam, he became a phenomenon. A brand.

Defining a brand.

A brand is any distinctive feature like a name, term, design, or symbol that identifies goods or services. That is what it says on the American Marketing Association.

But looking at Jordan, doesn’t it feel more than that? He had no term or design. All Michael Jordan had to offer was him.

In the influencer market of personal branding, where thought leadership has become vital to stand out—a brand should be defined as the ability of an organization or an individual to craft a recognizable voice that creates an emotional response within an audience.

The need for a brand voice or identity

Have you heard about CEPs? These are Category Entry Points. These cues inside the buyer’s head help them retrieve a brand from their memory banks.

In any category, certain brands will come to your mind. Think about smartphones. Which brand comes to your mind? Apple or Samsung?

Think about AI. It’s OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is it not? Whatever the category, you have associated certain products with a brand. For a brand you trust, you don’t buy only for the product but rather the experience the brand provides through them. You want to be identified with it.

A brand voice helps organizations and individuals develop a unique voice that can be thought of easily in buying situations. This voice can generate an emotional response. Or generate trust from B2B buyers in the market for risk-mitigating solutions. A brand voice helps buyers understand what you/your organization stand for.

Crafting a brand identity takes creativity, patience, and experimentation.

Why do you connect with certain brands? It is because something resonates with you. Something that the brand does or conveys speaks to you on a personal level.

That is the brand identity. A way of saying and expressing their ideas. Crafting this voice or identity takes patience, a readiness to experiment, and creative risk-taking.

Let us break the brand voice down into two parts.

1. Crafting an identity from the organization/individual perspective.
2. The importance of the voice for the buyers/consumers.

Brand Identity: The creator’s perspective

To find the brand identity, the creator— organization or the individual—must understand the why. This is the noble mission of the brand. For businesses like Apple, it is to bring the best user experience through their services, products, and software.

For SEMrush, it is to make marketing competition fair and transparent. For individuals, take the de facto productivity brand, Ali Abbdal. For him and his team, it is helping people build a life they love.

Knowing the why helps brands craft a clear and concise message. The why provides the core of a brand identity.

Once a brand identifies its core, it can move towards the next layer, the how.

The how details the process of you bringing your mission into reality. If Apple wants to create the best user experience, how are they doing it? It is by using the best available specs in the market and designing their products to have a premium feel.

Or Ali Abbdal? How does he help people lead a life they love? Through free productivity resources online and actionable steps for successful and time-efficient people.

The how brings your why into existence and provides a platform for people to believe in you.

The next layer of this equation is the what. What are the methods by which you deliver your why and how? For Apple, the iPhone, iPad, and Mac are the what.

For individual-led brands, the recent trend is that of the content. Individual brands deliver the what by showing themselves to the world. It is their personality and their life that draws audiences in.

Many platforms enable this, from the GenZ culture of TikTok to thought leadership on LinkedIn. Social media empowers anyone to rise, organizations included and become a cultural phenomenon.

And brand identity is all about it: Becoming a cultural icon.

Keen readers must have noticed that a brand voice follows Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. But it is not that he discovered the formula. He observed that successful leaders and brands followed this type of identity exploration. A differentiating brand builds from the inside.

Brand Identity: For the buyer

Why would the buyer decide to go for your brand? For B2B buying scenarios, they want to mitigate risk without disturbing the status quo.

While purchasing, they think along these verticals:

1. Will our purchase integrate well within our existing systems?
2. Does the purchase solve a problem we are facing?
3. Will it solve any potential risks we will face in the future?

There is a reason why SEMrush, Salesforce, and HubSpot are so easy to integrate with existing software and data collectors. And vice-versa.

Usually, the conversations are around avoiding market failures and adding organization-elevating solutions. For B2B buyers, disruption of their organization is not a safe option. This rings true for most traditional organizations.

According to Gartner’s survey, the B2B buying committee has 6 to 10 individuals. Each individual has concerns and options they would prefer. Yet this group of opinionated individuals manage to reach a conclusion.

ABM is to be greatly appreciated for this. The core of ABM campaigns is a cohesive, consistent, and seamless brand identity.

If the majority in the buying committee: –

1. Can identify with your brand
2. Find it relatable
3. Believe the solutions align with their mission and values.
4. Accepting the promise to deliver a positive outcome is tangible and achievable.

They will accept your solution as the best in the market for them. With an over-flooded market of goods, services, and personalities, buyers will purchase from you because of trust and perception.

Your brand identity will do the selling. Now, it is your product team’s job to deliver on the promises the voice has made.

Marketing and Storytelling.

Human beings are wired for stories. We derive meaning from understanding a person’s or organization’s story.

Microsoft as the underdog, Or Metaʼs electric rise to stardom. We love a good story. Here is where brand identity is found, in the story of your brand.

Marketing messages can do a lot of things. But it cannot replace a good story. All good stories are marketing, but not all marketing is a good story.

Some messages seem underhanded, while some feel shallow and full of empty promises. A brand’s story relies on resonance and the ability to deliver. A brand that cannot make good on its promise will not find its identity because it is based on false promises. But truth without a distinct voice will fall flat on the audience’s ear.

Marketing teams must deliver the message with creativity, passion, and a deep understanding of their “productˮ and audience.

To understand what works, use a growth marketing approach. Experiment, analyze, create, and reiterate.

As David Ogilvy says, tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating.

Brand voice and identities are an organization and individual way of showing their personality and explicit truth. It is a platform to attract and engage with the right buyer.

However, the line of cultural relevance and customer sensitivities must be considered. What kind of cultural impact does your brand want to make?

Believe it or not, every organization and individual has the power and accessibility to become an icon. The trick is to find the correct audience and the right voice.

Create an identity with your brand positioned to say something unique to you.