Your client’s brand can be compared to their DNA.
That’s because a brand is so much more than logos or color palettes. A brand is a complete identity. Whether your client is a solopreneur with a personal brand or a multinational corporation, every business needs a solid brand to make their mark on their market.
When you hear a company’s name, what is the first emotion that comes to mind? This is just as much an integral part of branding than all the visual aspects of that business.
Branding is made up of several elements, including (but not limited to):
When done right, a company’s brand identity will tell you where they came from, where they are headed, and what purpose drives them forward.
But why does this matter?
If you want your clients to succeed, they need to have a solid grasp of their brand identity. That’s because people don’t just buy from companies – they buy from people.
A brand identity doesn’t just humanize your client’s business – it also allows them to stand out from the competition. Many customers will choose to buy from one company over another just because of their brand identity, even if the product isn’t the best of its kind.
In a way, a strong brand identity doesn’t just differentiate your client from their competitors – it eliminates the competition entirely, because no other brand will be exactly like theirs.
Branding questionnaires aren’t just useful to help your clients succeed. They are also an amazing tool that you can use to understand where your potential clients are at in their brand development.
For example, if you run a marketing agency that only helps clients who already have a solid grasp on their branding, you’ll be able to tell whether or not the client is ready to work with you from the branding questionnaire alone. If they are disorganized and lack clarity, this could be a sign that they need to hire branding experts before working with you (unless this is a service you offer).
It works the same way for copywriters and copywriting agencies. Unless you offer a branding strategy and development packaged with copywriting work, it will be difficult to write effective copy without a clear brand identity to work from.
On the other hand, if you do offer branding development, this questionnaire will let you know exactly where your client is at. That information will help you map out the milestones, timeline, and objectives for your project in a realistic way.
Before you sit down and create your own branding questionnaire, you first need to figure out what you need to know about your client.
And here’s the truth – the more you know, the better. But you need to start somewhere.
At the very least, you’ll need to uncover more information about the following:
Yes, the visual identity will include colors and logos, but beyond that, it should answer the question: what do people feel when they see the visual side of this business?
Everyone and every brand speaks (and writes) in a different voice. For example, if you compare posts on a style blog to the posts on a wellness blog, they won’t feel like the same voice.
Personality will shape the visual identity and the voice of a business amongst other things. If a business was a person, what words would you use to describe them?
How does the company inspire their customers to take action and buy from them?
This includes the ethos of the business, as well as the uniting purpose that drives everyone in the business forward to the same objective.
Depending on the nature of the work you do for your clients, you may want to uncover other things as well, such as growth goals in the next year. However, these types of questions may be better off in a client onboarding questionnaire so that you can keep the branding questionnaire… well, branding-related!
At first glance, it might make sense to separate your question categories in the five groups based on the elements discussed above.
But that’s not necessarily the most effective way to move forward.
Many of these five elements may include overlapping questions. So here are the groups I suggest instead:
Chances are, your client is already comfortable with the story of their business. This will help them start the branding questionnaire on the right foot and will create a smooth transition for the more difficult questions.
The ideal customer avatar and audience comes before the unique selling proposition, since the USP should be driven by what the audience needs. Competition comes next because it is difficult to know who you are competing with unless you have already established what it is you do and who you help.
Finally, I suggest ending with visuals for a simple reason: visuals should be a representation of the other elements, and not the other way around.
If your client lets their visual preferences guide their unique value proposition and ideal customer avatar, chances are the brand will stand on shaky ground.
On the other hand, a visual identity that leans on a solid foundation of personality and purpose will be much more meaningful than visuals chosen at random.
Want to know exactly what to write in your branding questionnaire? Here is a breakdown of all the questions you should include, separated by the categories we discussed above.
There are customizable templates for each group of questions. You can use them if you decide to only ask your clients questions about a particular part of their brand identity.