There used to be a time when small businesses didn’t need to concern themselves with branding; instead, they relied on the small community the business was based in. This is no longer an option since every business needs to compete on the global level and branding is a necessity.
A great thing about small business branding is that the brand itself can make your business stand out and become more than the sum of its parts. This isn’t easy to do and it requires you to understand your key demographic and its relationship with your company.
Decide on tone and voice
This may seem like too much of an abstraction, especially if it’s the first thing you do, but it’s actually essential for making a brand. You need to decide what your business will appear to be like in the broadest of senses.
Once you have this figured out, other more practical aesthetic decisions will come more naturally and your marketing strategy will come into place. Have in mind that details can be changed later on, but tone rebranding may be impossible to do if it doesn’t go as well as you’ve planned.
On and offline
These days, most of the marketing efforts happen online and traditional marketing methods are overlooked or completely forgotten. However, making a coherent and memorable brand requires a small business to combine their online and offline promotional tools. They need to be interconnected both in terms of goals and purpose and in terms of aesthetic.
Try to cross-promote your business, using both offline and online branding techniques simultaneously. Sales, gift cards, and coupons could all be used in the stores, but they could also lead to a membership to an online customer club. Those kinds of methods create brand loyalty.
A website
A website is the storefront window for a modern company. It plays a key role in creating a brand because that’s how most customers come into contact with your business. The first step towards creating a brand is choosing a name and a reliable host that provides cPanel hosting in Australia.
The site should provide all the features a physical store or customer service would. It should also be available on both computers and mobile devices and updated to keep up with newest features your business offers.
The industry
In order to create a long-lasting and memorable brand, at least a portion of your marketing efforts needs to be oriented towards the industry you’re working in. Business-to-business marketing is usually less costly but it also reaches a much smaller group than traditional branding.
Hosting industry-oriented events, and writing in industry-oriented publications may cost a bit more of your time and money, but it pays off because it’s a way to position yourself as the leader of the industry. It’s also a place to mingle and make business deals that can last for years.
Innovation
Brands are about having a consistent look and feel about your business that will remain recognizable even when marketing campaigns are changing. However, this shouldn’t mean a business should avoid innovation and new trends in its industry. In fact, it should embrace it because that’s the only way to make it in the business world.
Try to stay on top of trends, especially when it comes to the technical innovations. Making sure your business is on the cutting edge will let the customers know that your business is here to stay and the brand will remain consistent even when the technical aspects of the industry change.
Conclusion
Branding is of great importance to a small business and it needs to be something that’s planned from day one. Try to think of a brand as something more than an aesthetic and approach branding as something that concerns customer services and your vision of the company as a whole.
