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Building Your Corporate Identity: The Steps

Many business experts have likened the struggles of launching a company to birthing and raising a child: full of pain and challenges, but also of joyful and rewarding moments. Your exciting journey begins with building a corporate identity, which should constitute these basic steps: Know who you are. Any effort to develop a brand should start with a thorough understanding of who you are. What do you want to offer your customers? Who is your target market? What value do you bring to the table? What are your principles, what do you hold dear as a company? Your answers to these basic questions should be the basis for any plans and effort to introduce your business to the public. If you are an existing company, you also need to know how your stakeholders – from your employees, to your industry partners and the general public – perceive you, especially in terms of such factors as desirability, trust, and accessibility. Know what you are not. A survey of the competition is also a necessary component of the identity-building process. Your goal in researching about businesses that offer the same things you do is not to mimic them. Quite the contrary, you should learn about your competitors so you know what it is precisely that sets you apart from them, and what you need to work on to give better products and better services to those who pick you. If your survey reveals that you are actually very similar to them, then that should prompt you to define your company more, as well as your target market and your offerings. Know what you want to be. The process should likewise entail a discussion of what you want to achieve in the future. What are your goals as an organization? In five, ten, even 10 years, where do you see your company expanding to? For the year, what are your marketing goals? What resources do you have to be able to achieve these? Work with the creatives. Once you have figured, internally, what your company is about, you can begin communicating them to a team of creatives, who will be able to translate your ideas to visual representations – from the logo design, to letterhead templates, to slideshows and signages. If you do not have an in-house team, you may opt to outsource to a graphic design agency, who should be guided by a brief. Create a manual. The final result of any corporate identity-building process is a set of guidelines for promoting your company. The document should outline the preferred ways to draft and print promotional materials, so that anyone from the company will be equipped with the information they need to be able to present the brand in a consistent manner. For example, the guidelines will state the only acceptable pantone colors for the various parts of the logo, or the format of all email signatures that are delivered as company correspondence. Looking to build your corporate identity? Our team here at GreyBox Creative will be happy to help! We specialize in developing and growing corporate brands, through creative branding materials and innovative marketing strategies.

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