Developing a corporate identity for your business: its importance and tips

Essentially, corporate identity is all you can associate with your company, including logos, colors, fonts, stationery and presentation design, web design, etc. In other words, it is all that forms your company’s visual image. Also, it involves your office decor, employee uniform, and any graphic your company produces and employs.

However, corporate identity goes far beyond the visual image. It describes you as a company so that your image is comprehensible and understandable for the outer world. Thus, corporate identity should also include corporate culture, customer service, corporate values, and objectives as well as internal and external communication.

Some mistakenly think that corporate identity is the same as brand identity. But it is not that way. For instance, a company may have one corporate identity with its logo and set of values. At the same time, it can involve several brand identities with their own brand attributes. Brand identity can be described as the customer-facing aspect – while corporate identity is the summary of everything the company does, produces, and represents.

Why do you need a corporate identity?

Corporate identity is vital to any business or organization, disregarding its size, scale, and purpose. First of all, it serves as a distinguishing tool, making your company stand out from the others on the market. And if you want to win the competition, it will be impossible without having a distinct corporate identity.

Also, corporate identity is the face of your business. And customers don’t like to deal with faceless companies that have nothing to offer except the same faceless products. Established companies with efficient corporate identity have more chances to appeal to a greater audience and engage with them because of well-meaning messages transmitted through an excellent corporate identity. Besides, it can also be a perfect fool for building favorable relationships with the customers and turning them into your regular clients. The culture you have and the values you provide can be a deciding factor for the audience. And if you manage to fill their needs or connect with them, they can be not only your clients but advocates and true supporters. Thus, it naturally increases your value and contributes to better business performance.

How to create your corporate identity?

Few stakeholders know that if you have a company set up, you already gain a corporate identity without even being informed about this. And it might not work in your favor, be weak, and deteriorate your business performance unless you start improving and developing it. So, how to create your corporate identity to be a leverage for your performance? There are few tips that may help you:

• Conduct a market research

It’s almost impossible to develop a corporate identity without considering the tendencies of the market. When overviewing the market, you get to know the foundation. Also, you can see how your competitors manage their identities and what approaches they employ. That data will help you to form your authentic strategy that will be operative in real settings.

• Craft the visual

The most obvious thing to do is to develop a visual language of future corporate identity. First, you need to think out your branding strategy, including your purpose, core values, and brand positioning. Then, you need to create a logo, decide on the color scheme and typography, take care of your stationery and marketing materials design. Don’t forget about the brand guidelines, with the help of which you will keep track of all those brand attributes in one place.

• Take care of both your internal and external corporate culture

Here, you need to make sure your employees are aware of your corporate identity and can be a part of it. Make sure they cultivate, observe and transmit your corporate values as you’ve intended. For better clarity, you may hire a professional responsible for corporate identity in your company and who will conduct workshops. Such an approach ensures consistency so that your internal company’s culture is the same as you describe it externally. And when everything is consistent, you have better chances to appeal.

• Control your social media

Some processes can be neglected without even knowing how significantly they can impact performance. Usually, it refers to corporate design on various channels of communication. Take social media, for instance. It's important to make sure that your corporate design is the same both on your website and all social media accounts. If not, you may confuse your customers, naturally lowering their level of credibility and trust.

• Make your corporate identity flexible yet future-oriented

When speaking about corporate identity, one may understand that it needs to be flexible to align well with all the changes your company may overcome. In other words, it’s critical to stay dynamic so each of the inputs will only improve but not ruin everything you’ve done previously. Also, it’s vital to keep one door always open for future possibilities. For that reason, when creating corporate identity, always think about the future and what you may need to achieve that. It’s better to know your opportunities rather than develop a corporate identity to be a short-term solution.

All in all, corporate identity is vital for each business that bends its steps toward success. And if generated properly, it can serve as leverage for overall business success.