The Small Business Guide to Branding

Enjoy our short guide to branding for small businesses.

Transcript

1. The Beginner’s Guide to Branding a Small Business By USB-FlashDrive.com
2. The Beginner’s Guide to Branding a Small Business Branding and communications are essential ingredients for success when building any business. Experiencing success in business is not only dependant on how great, inexpensive or luxurious your product or service is. It’s about time, investment and a strong branding strategy to deliver consistent quality. Communicating your message accurately and in an engaging way may be the difference between failure and success. Here are some fun, easy facts about branded materials:
3. Fun Facts
4. Why is good branding vital? What is a brand, exactly? A brand is a company’s ‘promise’ to a customer. A company’s brand should communicate to a customer what they can expect from the products / services, as well as how one company differs from others. According to research, 75% of purchase decisions are based on emotion. As branding is primarily what influences a customer’s perceptions and feelings toward a company overall, this statistic highlights the undeniable importance of branding a new business effectively. How do you brand a small business effectively? While there are incredibly talented agencies out there who specialise in this, in the case of a start-up, funding is often limited. consider investing time in progressing with branding your company in-house, with the help of these guidelines.
5. Step 1: Do Your Research The best place to begin is by ensuring you’re not barking up the wrong tree from the get go. Conduct market research to establish who your target market actually is. This means researching who is actually interested in what your business is offering (and not who you assume is interested), their age group, demographic and any other relevant information. Also conduct a competitive analysis to learn about what other companies similar to yours are offering, and determine what makes your company unique and better than the others.
6. Step 2: Define Your Brand Archetype Archetypes, or common recognisable characters, have been used to help brand many successful companies. Some examples of archetypes include “the hero”, “the helper” and “the adventurer”. Adopting an archetype isn’t intended to dictate the entire identity of your brand, but rather help you flesh out your brand’s image and persona in a more streamlined manner. Major brands who have taken this approach include Microsoft (who identifies themselves as “the boy / girl next door”) and Apple (who consider themselves “the visionary”).
7. Step 3: Personify Your Brand Similar to adopting an archetype, it’s extremely helpful when branding a company to personify your brand in detail. Our personality is what determines what decisions we make with regard to our actions, our appearance and our speech. Having a solid, detailed understanding of who your company would be as a person will help you make more consistent branding choices across the board. This will contribute to a stronger overall brand. It’s also helpful to have a list of brands with which you’d like your brand to be associated, and keep this in mind when planning marketing and branding events.
8. Step 4: Define Your Brand Distinction Competition may be tight, so it’s crucial that your branding spells out what sets your company apart from the rest. Your “value proposition” describes why customers should choose you. Reasons may include the fact that your prices are the best or you have the widest range of products. This needs to be expressed in some form; on your website, social media or otherwise.
9. • Is it visually attractive? • Is it original? • Is it appropriate? • Is it simple? • Is it functional? (Can you use it on a letterhead, a poster and a business card?) • Is it timeless? (Have you used elements that are time/trend sensitive and that will seem outdated quickly?) Step 5: Create an Outstanding Logo A logo serves as the visual foundation of your brand. A great logo goes a long way. Brainstorm ideas with a few people and get their ideas and feedback on yours. It’s advisable to hire a professional to create your logo once you have an idea of what you like. Consider these key ingredients for a great logo:
10. Step 6: Refine Your Brand Language All copy associated with your brand should adopt the tone your brand would like to project.
11. Step 7: Create a Catch Phrase Select a brand message or catchphrase that you would like your brand to be known for. This phrase should be closely linked to your company’s mission statement and simple enough for people to remember.
12. Step 8: Embrace Uniqueness Embrace the current popularity of originality and authenticity with consumerism. Numerous chains are currently trying to create a more independent appearance in order to capitalise on this. Play up your independent operator status.
13. Why not consider doing something completely different? Design a USB Flash Drive as your “business card” and ensure your business is front of mind for your prospects at all times. (Tip: Make sure your drive offers a storage capacity worth keeping!) Step 9: Design a Conceptually Brilliant Business Card Most recipients of business cards will not give it another look. In most cases, these cards are fairly standard and the content is predictable. This is an excellent opportunity to make your company memorable by creating a card with some “wow” factor. For example, one law firm created fake folded million-dollar bills as business cards. The lawyer’s photo was featured on the back side of the note, along with contact details and a call to action.
14. Step 10: Be Consistently Consistent Consistent branding improves brand equity. Brand equity is the additional value given to your business’s products that gives you license to charge more for your branded product than what identical unbranded products command. Consider the example of a price of a can of Coke versus the price of an unbranded can of soda. The value in brand equity lies in the perceived product quality or the customer’s emotional attachment to a product they are familiar with.
15. Step 11: Start With Friends and Family Endorsement from family or friends is more valuable than your company’s owned media assets. This is because customers will always trust the opinions of their family and friends more than somebody who is trying to sell them something. As a result, it’s essential to consider your current customers first and foremost while branding. This may include employees, clients and friends. Generating excitement and positive regard for your brand amongst this group of people will help the message spread more effectively.
16. Step 12: Build An Online Presence Popular websites have what is referred to as an e-presence. E-presence is an essential ingredient when it comes to effective branding today. Growing a company’s e-presence is made easier when the following elements are in place: 1. Great design: The website looks professional, visuals are consistent with the brand in terms of overall look and feel, corporate image is reflected, and the layout is well planned. 2. Easily navigable: Users can find what they want on the site quickly and easily – ideally in 4 clicks or less. This can be done in a number of ways.
17. 3. Recognisable: The site is advertised on other sites in the form of banner ads. This helps potential customers to recognise the logo, catchphrase and colours that represent a brand. 4. Reason to visit: Specials and promotions are featured on the front page of the website and these change regularly. 5. Fresh content: A blog is active on the site and posts are published regularly. This can help build a brand’s reputation as an expert in its respective industry. Posts should be unique, insightful, informed and offer readers something of value (entertaining, informative, valuable opinion etc.). 6. Be active on social media: Make sure your social media platforms – ideally the ones your brand’s target market use most often – are kept up to date. These are used to engage with current and potential customers.
18. However, non-profit small-business advisory groups or Small Business Development Centers are able to offer companies their expertise. If you feel that your start-up could use the extra support, then consider reaching out to one of these organisations. Either way, effective branding has the undeniable ability to make a big difference to a small business, so be sure to leverage this powerful tool and watch your business reap the benefits. Step 13: Be Honest About Your Weakness Authenticity is essential when it comes to the values of a successful brand. Brand authenticity is boosted by honesty. If or when things don’t go well, it’s crucial that your brand voices the reality of the situation and actively works toward solving the problem. Branding a business can feel like a daunting task. Working through this approach step by step will help to give you an idea of what needs to be done, and how to achieve this.
19. What NOT to Do… Use this list to ensure you don’t unknowingly jeopardise your brand...
20. Good luck with your branding endeavours. Use this guide to brand your business, promote your services and help others get to know your values in a simple and authentic way.
21. USB-FlashDrive.com is the world's leading supplier of bulk, custom, personalised branded USB Flash Drives and promotional Thumb Drives. Offering an extensive range of promotional USB flash drives in bulk, which can be customer branded or engraved to any specification. Expect unbeatable prices, high quality USB flash drives and fast lead times. USB-FLASHDRIVE.COM