Every so often we talk about building a brand identity, about formulating a personality around a product, or a particular brand image, and using it alongside marketing and advertising material. However, seldom do marketers consider the importance of a corporate identity, because attracting the right kind of talent and rock stars to lead your teams is just as important as creating a stellar brand and a product to match.
In this blog, we will talk about how to build a corporate identity, and go through the process of creating the best logo design company in any given market, purely through making its corporate identity attractive for customers, as we as recruits, and ensuring the right corporate environment internally.
The Importance Of Building A Vibrant Corporate Identity
While there are fundamental differences between a brand identity and a corporate identity, the end goal is very similar. Whereas a brand identity is created to attract and retain clients for a company’s products, a corporate identity is created to formulate a perception of the organization itself, which can also attract and retain recruits and talent. In some cases, it might even help attract customers as well.
This core philosophy is taken into consideration when deciding each aspect of a corporate identity, which starts off with the organization’s external persona and processes.
Dive Deep Into The 7 Steps For Building Unique Corporate Identity
These are the quick steps which you should follow to build a corporate identity, and be the best logo design company. Building a corporate identity is a slow process, but it is also lasting, and can affect your organization positively.
1. Creating External Communication Channels
Now, let us say you want to create one of the best affordable logo design services in USA. Of course, that is an ambitious venture, but if you focus on these steps, you will give yourself the best chance to create an effective corporate identity.
As a large part of corporate identity is how the company presents itself to the public, it can be said that the products a company makes, and their brand identity, are both influenced by their corporate identity, and vice versa.
So, you might want to ensure that your company invests in its public perception. That means having all public channels and points of contact in their best possible condition. These aren’t just the company’s offices and office buildings, but their digital presence as well, such as websites, social media pages, and more.
2. Keeping a Robust Digital Presence
Simply hosting a website is not enough. Creating a channel through which outside parties can know if your organization is active is also necessary. For example, a social media page that is created, but seldom updated, shows that a company is not keeping its corporate identity in line with current trends, and outside customers would react negatively to such instances.
Similarly, if the website channels the company has are either not present online, or have domain names that are not up to date regarding their SEO so that a google search returns the desired results, it can hurt an organization’s brand identity.
3. Keeping in Mind the Target Audience
When it comes to a brand identity, the target audience is a specific subset of customers, or customers in general. However, a corporate identity utilizes a broader group of stakeholders, which includes shareholders, as well
Moreover, a corporate identity does not fluctuate or change as often as brand identity does, meaning that once it is created, it only needs to be maintained rather than having dedicated teams working round the clock to consider changing trends. That also means that the target audience largely remains the same.
A corporate identity looks at aspects that the organization generally does not provide to the public directly, but is still prevalent in its interactions with the public. For example, all aspects of public relations, trademarks, adverts and advertising, are all elements of corporate identity.
4. Ensuring that Employee Word of Mouth is Positive
When there are employees working for large organizations, people will be curious about working there and ask those employees about it; former or otherwise. Employees there will react based on the organization’s internal processes, meaning both its people and policies in place will matter. Remuneration, benefits, corporate environment, corporate culture, policies, employee retention practices, etc., all matter here, meaning that positive word of mouth will only be spread by positive employee treatment.
5. Focus on Projects that Create a Positive Public Perception
Going green and using sustainable products within your business, or conducting missions for Corporate Social Responsibility that benefits the public at large, are aspects of public relations and corporate identity that can positively affect an organization’s public perception.
6. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a broad term that encapsulates a significant number of varying activities, from conducting charities to benefit the poor and needy, to putting together events to raise awareness or funding a particular program.
While in most cases, it is corporate identity that encapsulates CSR from a public standpoint, it can also be used to disclose the value-focused ventures of an organization through its CSR branding.
However, that also means keeping communication channels open, and ensuring that CSR disclosure and communication matches the overall corporate identity, as being open about CSR far more than other aspects can have a negative effect for the audience. This can, at times, include only customers within the stakeholders that negatively react to CSR, as disclosure of CSR can lead to a perception of gaining a competitive advantage rather than it being perceived as the intended act of altruism.
7. Using Sustainable Means of Production
If you are an apparel brand, for example, you might realize as an organization that you are part of an industry that has a constantly growing need to switch to sustainable production means, simply because of how damaging the process of creating raw materials is to the environment.
Using sustainable means, however, brings your corporate identity into a positive light, meaning that not only do you provide what your customers need, but also do so while having minimal environmental impact. This can also raise shareholder confidence, bring in new investors, and benefit the overall corporate identity.
Conclusion
Creating a corporate identity is similar in principle to a brand identity. You make sure that the organization’s public perception is on the positive end of the spectrum, and the steps to do so are mentioned here. However, if you still have any questions related to the blog we’ve shared, feel free to share in the comments section.
