A brand describes the visceral and sometimes intangible aspects of the identity of your company, as well as many visual ones. This encompasses everything from the voice and character of the company, to visual stimuli and psychological connections.

The cornerstone of many successful businesses is a well thought out and established brand identity, especially for online businesses that traditionally lack the physical brand elements of brick-and – mortar stores.

We’ll discuss what a brand is in this article and describe the main elements of effective online brands. That way, when it comes to creating your own brand, you would have a reference point. We will also dive into a few brand examples that demonstrate how these ingredients can blend together to cook up some of the most popular and successful brands in history.

The four elements of a brand

Vision

Your company vision is perhaps the most critical component of your brand: what is the aim of your company, above and beyond profit generation? What feature of your business is going to set you apart from the competition? Is it about the way you want to function? For clients, would it be meaningful?

Usually, those who seek to enhance the quality of life for others while still performing day-to-day business are the most popular examples of business vision or mission statements.

Google is a clear but ideal example of this description. “Their brand mission is very clear:” The mission of Google is to organize knowledge about the world and make it universally available and useful.

Emotion

Emotion is one of the most challenging, but critical, elements of your product. How your business and your identity are felt by both existing and future clients, or even the general public. You will have a very popular brand in the making if you are able to create a specific and persistent emotion within your audience.

The Coca-Cola Company, which has spent the last 100 years branding around one basic emotional idea, is perhaps the best example of good emotional branding: happiness.

Consistency

To create a positive brand image, it is important to remain consistent in your branding. Ask yourself this simple question: is this connected to my brand, its vision and the image we are creating

?

For internet branding, this is especially relevant. You can analyze and scrutinize any aspect of your business and its public interactions online. One bum note and, for all the wrong reasons, you might go viral. For this reason , it is important that anything you do stays aligned with the identity you are building or on message.

If you send out a tweet with a funny joke or image from the company Twitter account, consider first if that particular message aligns with your brand. If not, or even if it’s a bit of a gray area, the audience can only be unsettled, frustrated, or simply confused. This might, in turn, decrease brand loyalty and visibility in the future for your company.

Perception

Despite all your best efforts as a company to mold your brand identity to a specific form, realizing that ultimately it is customers who determine how your brand is viewed is crucial.

Ultimately, how your audience and clients view your brand can determine how good your brand is. In the end, it is customers who create products, not businesses. To some degree, public opinion, of course, has its origins in reality. But it is important to understand and document what your brand ‘s actual perception is. In the future, this will then guide market and branding decisions.

A great historical example of how public opinion can influence big brands is the American automotive industry. These perceptions were recognized by businesses in order to recover popularity.