Which of the fashion brand is your role model?
If you have one, you probably have studied their way of establishment, targeting, branding, and marketing.
No matter what they do, people recognize them in one go, right?
This is what their brand identity did for them; creating a platform where everyone knows their essence.
Fashion brand identity creation takes strategic planning, consistent effort, and immeasurable patience.
If you are determined to do everything for that, let’s not keep you waiting anymore.
What is Fashion Brand Identity?
Fashion brand identity consists of elements that altogether express the business’ personality, core values, and unique selling proposition to nourish an exclusive perspective among the customers and differentiate it from contemporary brands.
The elements of a fashion brand identity don’t deviate from any other brands. It includes:
- Color
- Font
- Iconic logo design
- Different visuals
- Brand story
- Brand core values etc.
The Importance of Creating Your Fashion Brand Identity
Creating an online fashion brand identity will give you the upper hand in many ways. Below we describe the importance of fashion brands having a strong identity.
Grounds for Brand Image
Brand image is the one that convinces people to trust a brand. This is where brand identity comes in; to work forefront. If the identity performs well, your business image can thrive better.
Develops Emotion About Your Brand
What does looking at luxurious fashion brands like Gucci or Louis Vuitton make you feel? A sense of being classy, sophisticated, and more.
Branding helps evoke a feeling among the people that they desire and assure them of quality products with commitment.
Differentiate Your Brand From the Competitors
Exclusive brand identity helps you stand out from the existing competitors in the market. You get to create and establish your standpoint.
Builds Trust and Credibility
Brand identity helps create a value that lasts long. For example, it makes your brand believable and gains authority. Once a platform like that establishes, your goals will be easier to achieve.
Creating a Strong Fashion Brand Identity: 10 Essential Steps
A strong brand identity holds authority in the market, such as it is known for something or it stands for something.
So, if you wish to take your brand to that level, you have to gameplan from the get-go.
On that note, here we’ve listed 9 essential steps to develop a powerful brand identity on your aid. Let’s dive in.
1. Devise a Strategic Plan
Well-plan is half-done. Without planning, you can’t go much longer, and at some point, your journey will feel stuck.
So, ensure to draw a clear goal for your brand identity. Then, how you want to start, where you want to reach at what time— count everything that matters for your success.
Also, when you are developing your brand identity, you can have bit-size goals to achieve within a selected timeframe.
Here are some factors you can consider for creating brand identity.
- Feel free to take inspiration from what other fashion brands did with their guidelines, such as Gucchi, Fashion Revolution, etc.
- For ideation, You can check templates or seek assistance from websites like Corebook, and Zebrand.
- A wide range of software is available for marketers to design their brand elements, such as logo generators, color palette generators, font pairing tools, etc.
- Last but not least, if everything seems much work for your busy schedule, you can always hire professional Fashion Brand Identity Service providers to do the job on your behalf.
2. Determine Values and Mission
Every brand has its mission and vision to fulfill. So, your next step is to have a clear goal, what you want to achieve, and where you want to reach with your brand.
This is where you must stand firm with your core values & ethics and incorporate those into your branding.
These will give a promising and trustworthy vibe to those who come across your business.
An example of having a great vision is Lafayette148, a women’s clothing product brand that wants ‘To bring strength to women of impact and presence‘. On that vision to empower women, it offers products that emit confidence and comfort.
3. Audit Your Competitor
Before stepping foot on the market, do a competition audit. Auditing will help you gain some insights and understand your business position.
So, explore what your competitors look like, who they are targeting, how they approach, what makes them stay demandable, etc.
Here is a sample of how an audit report should look like:
| COMPETITOR A | COMPETITOR B | COMPETITOR C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Directory Information | |||
| Name of Company | |||
| Domain Name (URL) | |||
| Mission statement or purpose (Either listed at the website or in your own words) | |||
| Company’s Physical location (This can be usually found on the ‘about us’ page) | |||
| Principal owner or manager | |||
| For profit or non-profit ? | |||
| Accepts private insurance | |||
| Products and services | |||
| Principal product or service | |||
| How similar is your principal product or service is to you | |||
| List as many product or services as possible | |||
Download Sample Fashion Competition Audit Template
Depending on your brand, you can set a wide range of metrics to see what your competitors are doing. To get your business-specific custom report, contact Netgains.
4. Identify Your Target Audience
Identifying a fashion brand’s target audience is both easy and tough. People are now more fashion-oriented than ever, so it’s easy to target them. But who you want to purchase is tough to find.
So while you are at it, make sure to follow these specifics.
How to identity audience? Please start with using tools like Google Analytics, Google Trends, SEMrush, AnswerThePublic, etc, to find the target audience.
Post this, you need to also do a deep analysis on more specifics like.
- Creating a Buyer Persona
Based on your fashion products, you can make an assumption about who needs/purchases the products. Let’s say you are selling baby powder. Initially, you have 2 specific categories of people to target.
- Parents: Need the products for their baby’s skincare.
- Young Girls: Use it as it doesn’t have much chemical reaction.
Now, based on this information, you can create a buyer persona.
First, gather every information in a place, then seek the answers; just like Shopify has showed. You can also online tools like Hubspot’s Make My Persona to create one.
By incorporating your information details, you can come up with your buyer persona as well.
- Know Who You Are Selling
If you are selling premium quality luxurious products, your target audience would be those who are comfortable to spend more than the traditional prices.
So, make sure to study the demographic you want to convert well. Know their lifestyle, livelihood, age, gender, location and other preferences.
- Examine Existing Customers
If you are already in the fashion business and have gotten a clientele, it’s time to nurture the theme. Communicate and understand their interaction, and collect their feedback.
Try understanding their preferences, what they like and dislike, what they expect of you etc.
They will work on learning how and whom you can reach, how to approach, and ways to win a client.
5. Develop a Unique Product Line
Brand identity building depends a lot on the product you are offering. Products are the main factor, surrounding which you are doing everything and offers which you’ll achieve your targets.
This is the role of fashion forecasting. While market researching, find out what your target audience is looking for or what is missing there. Finding the missing puzzle helps you come up with a unique product line.
- Ensure Quality Products
Your fashion product supplier list is distant or you might need a specific category of products that aren’t available all time. Then, do your math. This is the only thing, that will help build your customers’ trust in you. So, stick to product quality no matter what the circumstances are. Never go for quality dropping.
6. Design Your visual
The next part of creating a fashion brand identity lies in designing your brand visuals. Visuals are the most influential contributing part of exhibiting your brand to the audience you want to reach.
Determine what you want to achieve with your visuals. You want to deliver a message, right? Then make sure your visuals follow your conceptualization with creativity.
Now, let’s know what these visuals we’re talking about include.
- Logo: Your brand logo is like a mark, symbol, or sign made of shapes, words, colors, images, etc., that sets you apart from others.
- Color: Every color evokes an emotion or arises a sensible feeling. Use a color that isn’t too overwhelming but rather clean.
A general rule of thumb is to stick to 5-6 colors, among which 1-3 dominant and additional colors under the following formats:
| Colors | Purpose |
| Dominant color | Main color. Represents the brand. |
| Dark color | Can be used on Text, Accent, or in the Background. |
| Light color | Choose 1-2 color, can be used as Accent or Background. |
| Neutral color | Combines the other color you’ll be choosing. |
| Contrast color | Accent to make other elements conspicuous. |
Source: The Look & The Feel
- Typeface: Font/typography is the visual language. Choose typography that is simple and understandable at a glance. Keep the typeface number 1-3.
- Tagline: A single-line phrase that demonstrates the brand’s statement of promise, action, or emotion.
- Illustration: On your way to express fashion brand identity, illustration should add value, not the other way. Ensure the illustrations are cohesive and consistent with your other elements.
- Iconography: Depending on the products, you can use these creative elements.
- Imagery: Have clear guidelines on the type of images you’ll use to develop the brand identity.
- The Importance of Photoshoots for Your Collection
To take shots, fashion products get styled in ways that catch people’s attraction. These shots include individual shots, group shots, lifestyle shots, close-up shots, and many more.
Images are the short, fast, and smart way to reach your brand identity to the maximum number of people, as it contains your products/ services, brand’s logo, font, etc.
The way you express your image will create an impact on people on how they perceive your brand.
Take a look at Nike’s Instagram profile. It’s obvious that the brand offers a vibrant, cheerful, active vibe through the images.
7. Develop a Brand Identity Style Guide
Once you develop your brand identity, you need some regulations on your branding aspect. You wouldn’t want random access, unauthorized use, or misinterpretation of your brand elements here and there.
This is where the fashion brand identity style guide comes into play. It is like a digital book that includes everything about a fashion store’s brand identity.
The style guide of your fashion brand should include the following:
- A compelling story for your brand.
- Guides about logo, color, fonts, and other elements.
- Clear, understandable & easy to follow a set of rules.
- Practical use cases such as web, videos, print, etc.
- In-detail explanation of designing to help designers replicate.
- Articulation of a brand’s voice, message, tone, mission & vision.
8. Don’t Do Everything
Building an online fashion brand identity, you might have to do a lot of work. But take note of things that can ruin your brand image. What are those? Let’s know.
- Refrain From Copying Your Competitors
As mentioned earlier, you need to analyze your competitors for understanding the market, and your opportunities, and learn the way. In the process, it’s natural to be influenced, but that’s it. Be influenced for inspiration. Not to be a copycat.
- Be Consistently Present
You can’t win customers in a single day or with a few activities. Consistency is the key to achieving what you desire. So, try to maintain a uniform appearance both online and offline. Be active and present with your promotion and interaction.
- Think Ahead Before Following Trends
Trends can be a way to reach a more relevant audience, not every trend will benefit you. So, it’s prudent to be farsighted before following trends. If it’s something relevant to the fashion industry or product, you can give it a thought.
9. Work to Establish Your Presence
Your branding success will depend on how far your name has reached. So, let them know your presence. To do that, make sure to reach all mediums. For that what you can do is to:
- Integrate Fashion Social Media
Nowadays, social media is the largest free platform that can make anything possible. Take advantage of this platform. Integrate your social accounts on your website. Promote your brands across social platforms as well.
- Hire Fashion Influencers
If you have financial stability from your online store, you can collaborate with fashion influencers on how to use video marketing for your fashion brand. You can gain quite a satisfactory amount of traffic.
- Participate in Fashion Events
Be informed about fashion-related events like fashion shows, corporate events, runway shows, etc. By attending those events you can get access to a fashion-related community which will help you to make your brand’s name known.
10. Monitor and Track Performances
Monitor your marketing and other promotional campaigns and track daily activities to know what’s happening within your store; if it’s good for your business.
Use FB and Google Analytics-type tools to check your fashion store performances, conduct surveys and polls, etc.
You’ll come across numerous statistics and insightful data. By analyzing these, you can understand if your store is working well or not or if you need to optimize anything.
The Way To Magnify Immensely As A Fashion Empire!
Building a powerful brand identity is more about consistency. The more your activities are present, the more people recognize you.
So, make sure to have a blueprint to follow from the beginning.
Give the way of your branding a good thought, so that even if the time changes, your brand emits the same vibe.
Also, always consider consulting field-level experts like Netgains Fashion Digital Agency for solidified solutions to build your brand.