Discover the importance of the Brand Identity Prism and how to master your content marketing to build a strong, enduring brand identity.
When it comes to establishing the main goals for content marketing, brand identity probably isn’t in your list. Instead, many businesses prioritise leads and revenue.
However, sustaining these things simply isn’t possible without a strong brand identity to keep existing customers coming back or engaging in the first place.
That’s not to say you should remove revenue and leads from your list. It’s just a case of playing the long game and developing a brand identity which supports these nice, shiny metrics.
To achieve this, you need to start paying closer attention to your content marketing and the words that you use.
Brand identity definition
So, what is brand identity?
Brand identity is a part of your business’ branding. In essence, your brand identity is an ongoing visual perception of your business, product or services.
Jeff Bezos, akaAmazon’s big cheese, says “Branding is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”.
Your brand identity is portrayed through your images and colours, right down to the words you use. As a business, it’s up to you to decide how you want to be seen by the outside world.
Why content marketing matters to brand identity
A credible, trustworthy brand always wins. In fact, a recent study revealed that 90% of people make up their mind about a brand after doing a quick search about it.
It only takes one content marketing campaign mishap or poorly written piece of blog content to put a prospect off for life.
When you get it right, content marketing is a valuable tool in the marketing mix which keeps the line of dialogue open between you and your customers. The moment you go quiet is the moment your customers will start forgetting you.
A healthy brand identity with a powerful content marketing strategy is a means of discovery, storytelling and confirmation.
Content marketing will let you draw upon new trends and focus on customer pain points –using SEO, Google Analytics and thought leaders as a basis.
Your brand needs to look visible, trustworthy and relevant. Every piece of copywriting will test these three elements and will directly impact your brand identity.
Once you find a successful angle, you can use content marketing to delve deeper into the topic, explore different niches and cover the things your audience wants to hear about.
These discoveries give you the building blocks to add further value and develop a higher level of trust affiliation with your brand.
A part of the writing content process is to listen to what people want. Millennials and Generation Z don’t want to read stuffy, corporate content. Both generations are digitally-savvy and live their lives in the fast lane, so it’s vital to keep content light, digestible and accessible. Every piece of copywriting in your content marketing strategy should be treated like a book blurb or a film trailer. Keep it brief and make every word count, as around half of your website traffic will probably come from mobile devices.
Kapferer Brand Identity Prism and content marketing
Another way to ensure your content marketing isn’t damaging your brand identity is to keepJean-Noel Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism in mind when you’re copywriting.
This famous model proposes that a brand’s success is driven by a company-wide utilisation of six elements:
• Physique – this is the physical characteristics and iconography of your brand – i.e. Nike’s swoosh and sleek Apple iconography.
• Personality – this part of the Brand Identity Prism is based on how a brand communicates with the world – i.e. its tone of voice and its copywriting.
• Culture – this concerns the value system and the principles which reflect the brand’s behaviour – i.e. the internal way of working and the environment they create for their workers.
• Relationship – this describes the relationship between the brand and its customers, plus what they believe they’ll get from the brand beyond their product or service – i.e. John Lewis offers warranties.
• Reflection – this part of the Brand IdentityPrism is all about the brand’s target persona – for example, Toyota’s content marketing and advertisement targets families.
• Self-image – this part deals with how the customer sees their ideal self. A brand needs to understand how they want to look and behave, then tweak their content accordingly.
While the physique and culture parts of the Brand Identity Prism aren’t really relevant to content marketing, personality, relationship, reflection and self-image are.
Whether you’re writing a promotional email campaign or putting some SEO website copy together, every word you use directly impacts the Brand Identity Prism and the way your brand is perceived.
First and foremost, it’s essential to know your brand’s target persona (Reflection) and the way they want to act or be seen(self-image).
Once you establish these two components, you can establish a tone of voice which resonates with this target audience (personality). Within the written content, you can include subtle reminders of the USPs or benefits that go beyond your standard product or service (relationship).
All four parts of Kapferer’s Brand Identity Prism enable you to create content marketing which makes your brand more recognisable, more relevant and more successful.
So, the moment you start creating your next piece of copy for your content marketing strategy, keep your audience in mind and remember the impact your words can have on your brand identity.
Content marketing and brand identity support
Keen to improve your content marketing strategy and enhance your brand identity? Then give Design in the Shires a call.
Over the years, we’ve provided copywriting, brand identity and content marketing services to a wide array of businesses in Worcestershire,Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.
To find out more, get in touch with Design in the Shires today.
