Creating a brand identity is an important part of the process of establishing any business. A brand identity creates loyalty, inspires trust, and allows for ease of recognition of you and your services. A complete brand identity can be comprised of several segments, not all of which will be present in all circumstances. Evaluate the following components of a complete brand identity to determine which will play an important role for your business.

Name. Every business should have a unique name, including independent consultants. Whether you choose to go by your own full name, your last name followed by a description of your services, or a completely fictitious name, you must choose a name that will be associated with your business consistently across all of your materials. Many consultants choose to either operate under their own name, or use their last name followed by "Consulting," or another descriptive term for your industrysuch as "Smith Management Consulting." It’s more common for groups of consultants to go by a fictitious name, such as "Peak Performance Consulting." That being said, it’s completely reasonable for you to choose any option, provided that it’s consistent, and isn’t already taken by another business in a similar category. Before you decide on the name, consider that whether or not you want a website now, if you ever want an online presence, you’ll need the .com domain of whatever your business name is. So secure your domain name at the same time you make the selection of your business name. You can either park the site and worry about it later, or start the process of creating a web presence right away.

Email. Your email address says a lot about you, and can impact your professional image. Rockerboy@hotmail.com may not convey a professional impression, and the free email services like yahoo or hotmail often append advertisements to the footer of your email communications. Use your business domain to set up professional business email. If you can’t get a real business email account on your own domain for whatever reason, at least set up a neutral email from an ad-free service like yourbusiness@gmail.com.

Logo. A logo is a visual symbol that represents your business. Typically a logo will contain the business name, combined with an image that is somehow relevant to the services offered. Often logos can be as simple as the business name that always appears in a certain typeface, placed in a box or underlined. When choosing a logo, be sure to select something simple enough that it will still look appealing when very small or in black and white. Complex logos often don’t reproduce well, and the visual appeal may end up getting lost. Fight the urge to design your own logo. Unless you are a graphic designer by trade, the creation of a logo is best left to other professionals. Logo design services are only a few hundred dollars and can make all the difference in your business profitability. Before you finalize a logo, fax it to yourself, shrink it down to tiny size, and try looking at it in different formats to be sure it will still look good under distressed but unfortunately common business conditions.

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