Online courses are a fantastic way to amplify your business and add value for your clients.
But, they need to make sense.
After all, a mechanic can show you how to maintain your vehicle, but probably not how to perform open heart surgery!
It is essential that your course material fits with your overall brand identity.
How can you make that happen?
Well, read on and we’ll tell you exactly how.
What Is A Brand Identity?
How can you make sure your course fits in with your brand identity if you aren’t really sure what that is? Well, in short, you can’t really! So, let’s get clear on what that is first.
A brand identity encompasses all the things that make your business unique and special. It refers to the visual, verbal, and recognisable elements that you use to present your business to your potential and current clients, and what distinguishes it from your competitors.
Your brand identity includes your business name, logo, tagline, colour palette, fonts, visual elements, voice and tone. But more than just the practical aspects, your identity is made up of your values and core principles, as well as the personality of the people behind your business.
Why Is A Brand Identity Important?
Your brand identity plays a crucial role in shaping how your business is perceived by your audience. It helps differentiate you from your competitors, allowing people to recognise and distinguish your brand amongst numerous other options in your industry.
A well-crafted brand identity is very memorable. It can also help to build credibility with potential and current clients - people are more likely to trust a brand that maintains a consistent and professional image.
Beyond the compelling elements, a brand identity can be very emotive. By sharing your story, mission and values, you can draw people to you through an emotional connection, cultivating loyalty and positive experiences.
Does Your Course Fit With Your Brand Identity?
As you can see, a brand identity can be a pretty important aspect of your business. So, how can you make sure your course aligns with your identity and helps to amplify it?
Here’s how you can check:
Confirm your identity
The very first step is to know what your brand identity actually is. If you’ve already done some work on your branding, then you’ll have a lot of this detail in place. If you haven’t yet done so, you’ll need to define your identity as the first step.
Look at your website and social media pages to see what stands out in terms of consistency and performance. Note down your core business values and business mission. Consider what tone, style and personality you want to convey, and don’t forget to define your target audience too.
Align your course
Now it’s time to match your course to your brand identity. Here’s how you can do that:
Topic: Choose a topic that makes sense for your brand and audience, and ensure it aligns with what your business is known for in the marketplace. It should reflect your expertise.
Content: Check that the content within the course aligns with your business’s goals and values and reflects your business’s personality.
Visuals: Your course should look like the other visual elements of your business. You should use your brand colours, fonts, and logo across all of your course materials including any videos, slides, handouts, and the course platform itself.
Tone: Ensure that the content contains the right tone and language to match your brand voice - whether formal, fun, casual or friendly, maintaining consistency is key.
Name: Craft course names and descriptions that are in line with your brand’s messaging. Use language that draws your audience in while staying true to your brand identity.
Structure: Even the structure and layout of the course can help your students recognise your brand identity. Design the curriculum so that it mirrors your brand’s style, organisation and logical thinking.
Engagement: Consider engagement strategies that align with your brand. So, if your brand is known for being innovative and interactive, make sure your course includes activities or quizzes that reflect that.
Align the other stuff!
It’s not just the course material that should reflect your brand, it’s all the accompanying aspects too. This list will help you align all of these too:
Community: Building a community around your course helps with engagement and lets your students get so much more out of the experience. Create interactions and a space to connect that fits with your online presence and personality.
Feedback: Collecting feedback helps you to improve your course overall. But you can also use it to ensure your course is still aligned with your brand. Analyse the feedback in the context of your brand’s identity to enhance your alignment.
Audit: Over time, your brand will evolve. So, it’s important to check that your course still reflects the right identity well after its release. Periodically audit your course and make any updates or changes if necessary.
Marketing: One of the most crucial elements of a successful course is good marketing so that the right people find it online! You can make this happen by promoting your course using strategies and channels that are consistent with your brand. It could be social media, email marketing or paid digital advertising.
Need some help?
Aligning your course with your brand identity is important for many reasons. A consistent brand identity can enhance trust and recognition among your audience, so it’s worth investing the time and effort to ensure your course reflects your identity and vibe correctly.
Sometimes it can be challenging to make that happen when you are so close to your own business! Often, it can help to get an external perspective on your entire course to confirm that it does indeed represent your brand.
That is exactly what we do at Task Diva. We have comprehensive course creation assistance that helps you produce fantastic courses that sell. We handle all the technical aspects of course creation so that you can concentrate on creating great content to wow your students.
Get in touch with us today to see how we can help with the strategy and execution elements of aligning your course with your brand identity.
Task Diva Support
If you’re interested in setting up a course or want to know more about how it all works, sign up for your FREE four-page online course planning checklist.
Perhaps you just want to get started on your online course, then my Online Course Planning Session might be just what you need.
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Author
Debbie Mills Robertson
Online Course & Thinkific Specialist
debbie@taskdiva.co.nz
027 345 7000
