understanding-identity-guidelines-to-empower-your-brand

Understanding Identity Guidelines To Empower Your Brand

Not all real estate agents are gifted with the technical savvy to design their own websites and rely on the expertise of designers to do it for them. 

Many settle for the design proposals that are presented to them, but do take note that a designer may have differing perspectives, especially when they try to execute design templates for your brand.

This could result in designs that may not be consistent with your brand identity and could cause a mismatch between the design identity and your brand, which is something that could affect your web performance.

What is an identity guideline?

There are no hard and fast rules for identity guidelines but in simple terms brand identity guidelines are critical to a company or business because these define the standards that bind the principles and personality of your organisation.

Each brand has its unique identities that when properly identified and understood, should help provide the variables and indicators for your business, from your business logo, brand personality, target audience, operational functions, messaging, marketing campaigns, and client experience goals, just to name a few,

Your identity guidelines highlight the outline of your brand experience and reflected in your staff or employee work demeanours, as well as your dealings with your service providers, marketing partners, etc.

Why you need identity guidelines

Remember that your brand identity guidelines extend beyond your outline and brand standards because they also have much to do with internal and external expectations that exemplify your brand such as what your business aims for, who you are, what you stand for, what your clients can expect from you, and so on.

In short, your identity guidelines will help you reach your organisation’s potential and help you on your journey to success.

How to get started

A firm and solid brand identity guidelines start with the right understanding of your business’ intentions, goals, personality, clients, and what would make you stand out from your competition.

Understand your brand

This comes first because this is the foundation of your identity guidelines, so make sure you master our brand inside and out. 

Take reference from your official mission statement, vision statement, and core business values. 

Study your audience

In real estate, your audience needs to be more than just buyers or sellers, rather treat them as potential clients that you need to build a relationship with. 

Identify your audience demographics and those that you want to target. Identify pain points and find out what touchpoints can be used to reach out or are effective at touching base with them such as social media, email newsletters, blogs, etc.

Develop a client journey outline

Now that you have identified your brand offerings, you then outline your client journey from the moment they are exposed to your brand, how you interact with them, how you provide solutions to their pain points, etc. 

It is critical that you map out the process at this stage from audience awareness to product consideration, to the decision process, and the end goal of them becoming your brand advocates.

Establish your brand ethos

Finally, it’s time to lay down your brand ethos and establish the criteria that characterise your attributes, position, traits, promise, vision, and values. Use these as the basis for creating your brand identity guidelines.

How to make strong brand identity guidelines 

Take note that your identity guidelines should go beyond your business logo, typeface, fonts, and colours, rather consider it was a whole in packaging how your brand should be presented to your audience,

There are other factors such as brand voice, image and video placements, taglines, calls to action (CTA)- just about anything that helps define your brand both externally and internally.

While guidelines may vary with different organisations, here are the ones that are common across all.

Identity guidelines need to be consistent

When presenting your brand across different platforms, it should be consistent all throughout. Define your standards and present them in your guidelines to implement a uniform and cohesive brand image.

For instance, your content must reflect your consistent grammar or punctuation such as the use of the Oxford comma, as well as the use of your brand colours on specific types of content and how it is presented when posted or published.

It needs to be impactful

From a visual perspective, your brand must be memorable or recognisable to your audience. They should drive your audience to think of you the moment they see something to remind them of your brand.

For instance, they see certain home designs online and they immediately get reminded of you.

It could also be specific fonts and colours on your content or typography, as long as it is closely associated with your brand.

It must be scalable

Make your guidelines scalable by ensuring that it can be flexible in the sense that it can be used anywhere from your ads, blogs, images, designs, etc. Make sure that it can be used everywhere whether in print or online. 

Also, make sure that it is scalable enough to be applicable across all channels and be able to grow with your brand.

It must be clear

Be specific and straight to the point with your guidelines so that they leave no grey areas for interpretation, especially when you need to communicate this with your team or service providers. 

It should also be the same with your marketing campaigns and online presence.

Make it clear so that your message gets clearly across so they know who you are, what your brand is, how your brand presents itself, and the voice that speaks to your audience.

 

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