Do You Really Need To Brand Your Small Business?
The first thing to understand is the importance of branding. Branding isn’t just for big, multinational businesses. Why do you need to brand your small business? Your brand is all about what you do, why you do it, who you do it for, what they need, and how you’re different. Your branding needs to do all that for your audience.
Many small businessmen and women don’t know what all the fuss is about with branding, until they successfully create a brand themselves and realize the rewards an effective brand can deliver. When you brand your small business, it’s more than a logo or name. You need to really think about how your audience feels when they think of your brand. Here are 9 branding tips for small businesses.
9 Ways To Brand Your Small Business
1. Define Your Brand
When you first start to brand your small business, figure out what your mission is and what benefits you offer your audience. What features about your business are important to your audience, what type of customers do you want to attract and what qualities you want your audience to associate with you when they think of you?
Take the time to create a mission statement which includes what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, and how you do it.
FREE Checklist: How To Brand Your Small Businesses
2. Choose Colors, Fonts, and Images
What types of colors, fonts, and images are you going to use? It will depend on the industry your company represents, what the audience likes, and the feelings these things evoke. You can’t just pick the colors that you like because they may be colors that your audience dislikes. Different colors mean different things in different cultures. For example, in western countries white is the traditional color worn by brides to signify purity, innocence and virginity. On the other hand, in eastern countries, the color white symbolizes mourning and funerals.
3. Create a Logo
It’s usually best to hire a professional branding designer to create a logo. A logo is a legal representation of your business. By hiring a professional that is trusted, they can take your mission statement, audience information, and other information to help you create just the right logo that creates the feelings you want your audience to have.
4. Develop a Tagline
A tagline, or strapline, is a very short, memorable and catchy statement that explains your brand to anyone who first comes across you. Study the taglines of other businesses to get ideas. But remember that you must create something original for your business that encapsulates your business.
5. Integrate Branding across Channels
Whether you’re branding your business online or offline, your branding should stay the same. Whether it’s a tagline, the way you answer the phone, how you sign off on your email messages, or how your users use your website, social media, and more, make sure it all goes together and promotes the same message – regardless of where your audience finds you and engages with you.
6. Don’t Forget Your Brand Voice
It’s important to ensure that whether you publish a blog post, ebook, video, podcast, webinar or something else, the voice matches throughout. Is your brand conventional, traditional, modern, irreverent, or something else? Make sure that your brand voice works with your other branding and that it follows you wherever your audience sees you.
7. Create Templates
To keep your brand consistent, create a branding guideline that you can give to contractors or any staff that you hire. A writing guide, branding guide, art templates, presentation templates, and more will help you ensure that your branding is matched across all channels.
8. Deliver on Your Promises
It’s imperative that you live up to the branding you have created for yourself. If you say you’re transparent, then ensure that you follow up with transparency. When you promise 100%, no question asked returns, do it. If you say it, you must do it, or you won’t be trusted to live up to your branding – and word gets around fast these days.
9. Be Consistent
One of the keys to all aspects of business – including when you brand your small business – is consistency. Be consistent about your branding efforts across all online and offline channels. Whether you run a paid ad or produce free content, the branding is essential to ensure that you become a memorable business within your industry.
Free Checklist: How To Brand Your Small Business
Understanding your audience, their problems, wants, desires and values will help you develop branding that truly translates into giving your audience the feelings you want them to have. It really does matter more what they think than what you think. It’s all about them, after all – not you. There are many different aspects for building a brand. Download my free checklist, Creating Your Branding Business Plan that provides actional tips on how you can reach your target prospects, provide a positively memorable experience related to what you have to offer and improve customer retention.
