How to Manage Your Brand Identity as Your Product Suite Grows
As your business grows, you might be focused on refining your sales or funnel strategy, launching new offers, or even expanding your team to support more customers or clients. But here's something many online business owners overlook: managing your brand identity.
It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of new ideas — as an online business owner myself, I know how tempting it can be to want to execute on every new idea that comes to mind. But what happens behind the scenes? Your day-to-day tasks can quickly become complex, frustrating, and stressful if your brand identity isn’t organized and consistent.
In this post, I wanted to talk to you about why keeping your brand identity structured is just as important as focusing on growth.
Before we jump in, if you prefer to listen, this post is available as an episode of my podcast, Connect + Create! Listen below or follow the show on your favorite podcast app.
The sweet spot for solidifying your brand identity.
In the early days of an online business, flexibility is key. Many business owners rely on DIY branding in the beginning, and that approach works well for a while. In fact, I actually recommend it for most new businesses. During those first 6-12 months, things evolve rapidly, and the direction of the brand often isn’t fully clear. Because of this, it doesn’t always make sense to invest heavily in professional branding right away.
Plus, it can actually help to be a bit more hands on with your own brand identity as you’re going through that discovery process with your business. You get to steer the development the overall atmosphere of what you’re putting out into the world, rather than have something assigned to you that may or may not ultimately fit.
But there is a sweet spot where it becomes necessary to really solidify your brand identity. If you have at least one offer that’s working really well, and now you’re thinking about potentially expanding, this is a really good sign that you’re in that sweet spot.
This is the moment to ensure that everything from your visuals to your message is cohesive, both for your customers and for yourself.
But what happens if you miss that sweet spot?
If you miss this window, your business can start to feel very messy, very quickly. This is often where the wheels really start to fall off for a lot of DIY brands. With every new offer, product, or service, your brand identity becomes more fragmented. You might have different logos, fonts, and colors scattered across your content, making it harder to manage everything.
This kind of disorganization can have a huge impact on your brand recognition. Your audience is unable to make the connection between a lot of your offers, because they don’t appear to be related in any meaningful way. You might have potential customers or clients out there that have bought from you or engaged with your content in the past that would love to buy from you again. But when everything is disconnected, they might not even realize when they’re looking at one of your ads, or pins, or landing pages, because it doesn’t look anything like what they’ve previously seen from you.
On top of this, a messy brand identity doesn’t just impact on your audience — it also impacts your internal workflows. When you don’t have a clear system for managing your brand’s resources, you end up wasting time recreating assets, hunting down files, or trying to remember which colors or fonts you used. Maybe you’ve been there… or maybe you’re there right now 😅
So how do we actually manage things as your business grows in a way that takes advantage of that brand recognition but also feels easy to manage for you on the back end?
Introducing… the Umbrella Brand.
The Umbrella Brand is something that I discussed in a bit more detail in another episode of the podcast (catch both the episode + the blog post here), so check that out for a detailed breakdown. But for now, an Umbrella Brand approach means that instead of reinventing the wheel for every new offer, you create one overarching brand identity that all your products and services can pull from.
Strategically, this means that before introducing something new, you consider how it fits within your existing offer suite. Does it align with your customer journey? Will it complement your other offers or fill a gap in your audience’s needs? This way, everything works together under a unified vision.
And from a brand identity and design perspective, instead of creating a brand new identity for each product or service, you’re borrowing pieces of the top level brand. This doesn’t mean every offer has to look exactly the same — small tweaks, like changing up the primary color for that particular product, or adding a new accent color, can still give each one its own feel.
For example, you might use a consistent set of fonts across all your products, while swapping out colors or adjusting other elements like stock photos to keep things fresh.
The benefit? You build trust and recognition with your audience by consistently using core elements of your brand identity across all your offers. And on the back end, it simplifies your workflow since you’re pulling from the same pool of assets — no need to create entirely new branding for every single product or service. This saves time, energy, and keeps things organized as your business grows.
And now for some practical organization tips…
One of the biggest challenges for a lot of people, and one of the biggest stumbling blocks I see, especially when I come into working 1-1 with clients, is keeping brand assets organized. Whether you’re a solopreneur or working with a small team, having a system in place for your brand's resources — logos, fonts, color codes, templates, etc. — is essential for maintaining consistency and saving time.
Here’s what I’ve found to work particularly well both for myself and with my design assistance clients:
1. Create a Brand HQ folder.
Set up a "Brand HQ" folder in Google Drive, Dropbox, or whichever file storage tool you use. Inside, keep the essentials:
All versions of your logo in every color variation, saved as PNGs for easy use in social media posts, landing pages, or emails.
Font files that you can easily share with a team member or reinstall if needed.
A simple document or PDF containing your brand's color palette with HEX codes and any guidelines for how to use fonts, colors, or design elements. This doesn't have to be pretty — just clear and accessible.
2. Create a HQ folder for each product or service offer.
If you have multiple offers, like courses or services, you probably already have a folder for that somewhere in your system. In addition to your Brand HQ folder, each offer should have its own "HQ" folder.
For example, in my top level Google Drive for Emily Banks Creative, I have a folder called “EBC HQ”, where all of the stuff we just talked about lives. But I also have a “Products” folder, which contains folders for products like Starter Brand Success Kit. This folder has its own “SBSK HQ” folder, where I store:
Logos or font files specific to that product.
An additional document explaining any changes or additional guidelines for how colors or fonts are used for this offer that might be different to my umbrella brand.
Any other assets, such as custom icons, photos, or templates specific to that product.
This way, there’s no confusion about what assets to use for each offer and how. Plus, your team (if you have one) can easily access what they need without confusion.
3. Set up your Brand Kit and File Structure in Canva.
If you’re using Canva, either by yourself or with your team, take the time to set up your Brand Kit, and ensure that your files are organised in a structure that roughly matches what you’re doing in your Google Drive (or other system).
For your Brand Kit:
Add your logo files, fonts, and color palettes directly to the Brand Kit so they’re always available in any document you or your team create.
Set the default font styles for headings, subheadings, and body text. This helps maintain consistency without having to manually select fonts each time.
Adding any stock photos or icons that you regularly use to streamline your design process.
And for your file structure, try to replicate as best as you can (or as best as it makes sense - you don’t have to include files/folders that you won’t be designing for) the same structure you’re using in your cloud storage. Canva do NOT make this an obvious thing to do, and it’s super easy to just open the app and hit new instagram post, or new PDF, or new presentation, and close out of it when you’re done.
But I promise you — do this for long enough, and your account will become an impossible mess. Ask me how I know 😅
By organizing your brand identity assets from the start, you’ll save yourself (and your team) the headache of tracking down files or trying to remember design details. It may seem like extra work at first, but the time savings in the long run will be well worth it.
Bonus Tip: Communicating with your team.
If you have a team or plan to hire one in the future, it’s crucial that all of your team members **know just as well as you do how to execute on your brand identity AND adhere to your organization system. If they don’t, all that hard work you've put into establishing your identity and structure can rapidly unravel.
And this applies even if you’re only working with one or two other people like a VA, content writer, or editor — you don’t have to be operating at scale to run into these problems!
Here are a few things I recommend:
Onboarding. Don’t wait until a new hire is already working within the team to start explaining how to execute on your branding. Make introducing your umbrella brand identity and back end systems a part of your onboarding process.
Easy Access. Make sure your team members know where to look to find your brand or product HQ folders, and how to use the Brand Kit feature in Canva.
Review and give feedback regularly. When bringing a new hire on board, especially if they’ll be handling any visual elements like social media graphics or emails, review their work closely in the first few weeks. Provide feedback on how they’re applying your brand guidelines, and be clear on any adjustments or improvements needed.
Keep everyone updated. Any time you launch a new product or update your brand in any way, ensure that your team is informed and that all relevant brand guidelines are updated. Whether it’s a new color, font, or layout element, keeping your team in the loop will ensure that they’re consistently executing on your vision.
Final notes:
Scaling your business doesn’t have to mean constantly adding more complexity to your brand. By sticking to an umbrella brand, staying organized, and being intentional with your design choices, you can maintain a consistent identity while making your backend workflows so much easier to manage.
If you’ve missed that sweet spot and found yourself overwhelmed by all of your offers, assets and trying to keep them all going, it’s not too late to pull things together and get your brand back on track.
Here are some additional resources you might find useful:
Blog Post: The Ultimate Guide to DIY-ing a Brand for Your Online Business
Work With Me: 1-1 Brand Strategy Sessions
Work With Me: Long Term Design Assistance
And if you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast! You’ll get new episodes featuring branding advice just like this delivered right to you in audio format every week. Join now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or search “Connect + Create” on your favorite podcasting app.
See you in the next one!
Emily Banks
