How to create a powerful brand identity

A company cannot reduce its existence to a product that is sold to consumers, the product itself is an identity, offering buyers an experience or interaction that will bring about feelings and emotions or identification with shared ideals and causes.

The SaaS market is highly competitive because of its facilities that eliminate barriers that previously limited the entry of any new competitor, making the online environment more fierce if you want to win over new buyers. The user who has played a game from a famous franchise, when thinking about purchasing another game, will most likely choose the continuation or a remake of the franchise that he already knows instead of testing new titles that might displease him.

Having a solid presence and a brand identity strategy can promote the success of a product, even with so many other similar products available. Building a solid brand isn't just about designing a logo and putting on a lean slogan, branding is the combination of all the little exposed efforts that drive the public to want to contribute to your idea.

Waze is an example of success in talking about a powerful brand identity: their software is just another navigation system like others, but their product doesn't sell a navigation system, it sells people's cooperation to improve their lives, offering path routes with fewer vehicles, and the users themselves are the data creators themselves to make this idea possible.

“We could all go for a lot less traffic in our lives
Join 140+ million helping each other get there.“

There is no mention of the navigation system at all, the sale is the idea of users helping each other to spend less time stuck in big city traffic.

What is Brand Identity?

It is the combination of everything that your company or SaaS product has to say to the world, the values that guide it, the way it communicates, what goals you want to accomplish, and how you intend to make what you propose come true. In short, it is the personality of your entire business allied to a promise that drives the enterprise to exist and to differentiate itself from the others in the market.

The brand is the main asset that differentiates you from any other organization, having a name, logo, slogan, something that symbolizes the organization, design, and even a unique voice can comprise a brand.

Another well-known example is the Pokémon brand, by The Pokémon Company, we can facilitate this vision even further:

Name: pokemon
Tagline: Gotta catch 'em all!
Symbol: The Pokemon Pikachu figure
Voice: The voice of Pokemon Pikachu's voice actress, Ikue Ōtani Ikue Ōtani.

It's practically impossible to look at the figure of Pikachu or hear his dub and not automatically remember the pokémon company, it differs from any other because of its personality, or rather, its powerful brand.

Benefits of a Powerful Brand Identity

Having a solid and powerful brand identity has a constant and lasting effect: it inspires consumers and increases their sense of loyalty to your company or product. Consumers inspired by a strong identity don't just buy the product, they move to help the company grow by providing ideas, sharing new releases, and telling their stories about using the product and how it changed their lives forever.

Youtube, despite being an entertainment and learning platform, has become a means of generating income, and its best publicity is generated without spending anything: users who, within the platform, create content for youtube and tell how the platform has changed their lives, bringing convenience to work remotely, without punitive bosses and increasing your purchasing power.

The “Face” of Your SaaS Business

The logo is the “face” of your enterprise, this face makes the identification of a visual figure with everything that makes up your organization or product automatically, it tells the public what that “design” means with a multitude of information without needing to write only one letter.

Trust & Credibility

With all the dangers and deceptions that the ease of the digital world allows, users are looking for products in which they can trust that their data and records will be safe from any intrusion or problem that may happen. A strong brand provides authority that over time builds trust and creates the credibility that few companies actually have, Amazon for example, Amazon Web Services, has an image of trust by always being up and running and almost no reports of problems on the part of consumers using the service, and it has become the first choice for any aspiring SaaS developer when it comes to cloud security and stability.

How to Create a Brand Identity

Target public and value proposition

In order for any business to survive, it needs people willing to buy its product, so it is very important to identify who the target audience your company wants to reach and generate identification is. It can be young people who want to change the world or simply elderly people who seek to be represented by some organization, no matter the result of the research, as long as it shows a well-defined profile.

A practical example of a target audience is the vegan movement, many companies enter this environment just by producing 100% plant-based food without worrying about taste, texture, and price. For this individual, in-natura vegetable foods are already cheap, they will hardly be willing to pay more for things that are not different from the usual, some products such as vegetable meats are even successful, but most of the products taste bad and that it doesn't even closely resemble the taste of animal flesh.

For this audience, being vegan is a lifestyle, not a choice of consumption, a proposal and value here is what actions the company uses to support and benefit this lifestyle, it is not enough to have 100% plant-based food, it has to show that really cares about the movement, not buying from other companies that practice animal cruelty. An important tip that helped many companies in this area to grow was the creation of content that publicizes NGOs in favor of the defense of animals on their blogs and media, generating public identification with the brand.

Create buyer persona

Once the profile of the target audience is built, use this profile to create the persona of those who will buy your product, the persona is the “public figure” of the brand, a set of communication behaviors that give the consumer a more humanized image of the organization, humanizing any company makes it easier for normal people to identify things that aren't quite human. Personas are also great for helping to determine which point deserves the most attention and resource allocation, guiding product development,and understanding which has the greatest chance of being a commercial success.

Public Communication

Using the persona and the value proposition, the big challenge now is to communicate to users and buyers who you are and what you do to benefit the world. It sounds easy to make a simple webpage and invest in paid traffic marketing, and this is the biggest mistake SaaS companies make today. Just saying that you exist and talking in a raw and quick way about what your company does not attract anyone, people don't look for companies, they look for changes and solutions, and the first point of the search will be through questions that can be answered as clearly and intuitively as possible.

Many ventures do it through blog articles or social media posts and videos, nearly 3 billion people are on social media so it's a good, great place to occupy. Avoid talking about discounts or simple benefits that don't add much to your audience, try to talk about the subjects that your target audience loves, about what they are really interested in, it was the time when marketing seemed like marketing, today the last thing what a successful marketing campaign is about being a marketing campaign.

Explain how your products are made, where the idea was born, show real stories of people who have solved their problems with the help of your company, and create entertainment that associates the benefit of the product with the buyer's first choice decision.

Creating a strong and powerful brand identity takes time and a lot of effort, it brings challenges and creates new difficulties to be overcome, the result of this whole journey is a consolidated name that will be a reference for anyone when choosing which product to buy.