How to develop a unique brand identity and distinguish yourself from competitors

Starting a business can be exciting, but it's also a competitive landscape. How do you make sure your brand stands out? By establishing your brand values. These values are the principles that guide your business and make it unique. They shape your brand's mission, promise, and ultimately, its identity.

First, take some time to get to know the people you are trying to reach. Understand who they are and what their needs are. This will give you a better idea of what they are looking for so that you can really create something meaningful for them.

Values

Next, think about what makes your brand unique. What are your brand's core values? These values should be a reflection of what your business stands for and the unique promise it makes to customers. Your core values are personal to you and what you believe in, they are your foundations and do not change. This is why I start with Values when building brand strategies with my clients.

If this is something you want to work on click here to download my brand plan of action. There’s a really useful section on choosing your brand values.

Alot of people get confused on the different terms used in brand strategy so I want to try and keep it as simple as possible. The lines can feel blurred between your Values, Purpose, and Goals but if you find you are repeating yourself, don’t worry, your usually on the right track.

Purpose

The next step to focus on is your Purpose. Your purpose is all about why you are doing what you do. It isn’t necessarily a reachable goal but more of a reminder of what you want your business to achieve.

Working on this will help you to:

• Differentiate yourself from competitors 

• Create a sense of loyalty and trust 

• Create a strong and consistent brand identity 

• Help guide decision-making and strategy in how you present your brand.

Vision

Vision always follows on from your purpose, while purpose is why you started vision is about where your going.

If you fast forward 5 years from now where would your business be?

How is it helping clients?

How is it helping the world?

If you would like to go deeper on this make sure to grab the brand plan of action here.

Mission

Your mission is the detailed action steps you will take to achieve your vision. Can you see how all of these things connect and build a bigger picture of a meaningful brand?

A lot of people skip the mission statement and try to wing it as they go, but your mission statement will help guide you in the right direction. Did you skip it or do you have one already?

Only once you have a clear understanding of your brand values, purpose, vision and mission, you can start building a strategic brand identity. 

With keeping all of the work you have done here you can start to think about how your brand strategy will look visually. Brand is really about how it makes people feel so we need to get this spot on in order for it to be successful.

NOW you can create an identity that makes sense for you business goals as well as your audience.

You are the driving force behind your business and by creating your brand strategy that is true to who you are and what you stand for it is already unique. 

You haven’t looked at what is already out there and copied it.

The best way of distinguishing yourself from your competitors is by creating something that is so true it is inevitably unique.

This is the work I do with my clients, we start with what is really important and deep dive into your brand strategy.