We have developed a short Guide to Small Business Branding below.
Many small business owners hear the word branding and think it is something best left to industry giants like Apple, Google, and Starbucks. But the truth is, it doesn’t matter how big or small a business is, branding matters! While larger companies have significantly higher budgets to spend on branding, a business doesn’t need deep pockets to build an effective strategy from the ground up. There are many things that can be done to help a company stand out and make their business memorable to consumers without having to spend their entire budget.
There is a lot of content available online to help small business owners do their marketing. Unfortunately, such self-help articles are often written by marketers or professionals within the industry adept in analytics, content marketing, and other technical jargon. This is when it is helpful to turn to a website design professional. Our experienced professionals can help navigate data analytics and SEO, ensuring the business brand continues to grow.
How to Create a Guide to Small Business Branding?
Building a robust brand is essential for the success of any small business. To guide you through the process, consider the following steps when creating a comprehensive guide to small business branding:
Below is Guide to Small Business Branding with four simple things a small business (or a business of any size) can do right now to help grow their brand.
Define Brand Identity
Branding is more than just the logo that appears on a business’s website or print media. Branding helps to define who the company is, its values and mission, and what they represent. Branding also encompasses the way a business speaks to and treats its customers. So, before a business can move forward with the visual elements of branding, such as logo design, defining who they are as a company is essential.
As a brand, a business is speaking to human beings (their customers) who share similar ideals to the company. These customers also want or need the product or service the business provides. If a business does not know who they are talking to or trying to reach, they will inevitably have difficulties reaching their target audience, and their branding will suffer as a result. Creating a buyer persona can help a business identify the individuals they are attempting to market to.
But what is a buyer persona? Put simply; a buyer persona is a description of the person a business is trying to reach. In many cases, there will be more than one. When a company has a clear understanding of who their target market is, they can use it to guide their branding strategy. The end result will be a brand identity that connects best with the customers the company is trying to reach.
Establish A Tone of Voice
Tone of voice is the phrase used to describe how a business communicates its marketing message to their target customers. Depending on the company (and its product or service), their tone of voice may be professional, casual, or even, in some cases, funny. The tone a business chooses to use should be representative of their message and resonate with the audience they are attempting to reach. If a business is outsourcing their content to a professional design service such as Bianca Frank Design, it will be important for their writers to use the brand voice across all platforms as well.
Clear Business Brand Values
It is essential for a business to establish what their brand stands for. This can help marketing the company immensely because it helps to communicate those values to the customers the business is hoping to reach. But what is the easiest and most effective way to do this? The team working on marketing and branding can first take the time to write down the most important things to the company. For example, are they concerned about the environment? If so, let potential customers know about the choices being made at the business that align with this value—for instance, using green energy in the office, only buying packaging that is made of recyclable or reusable material, or even providing products in multi-use containers. Clarifying these values across the business brand can help potential and current customers understand what the business stands for and how the business “lives its values. “
Maintain A Consistent Blog Presence
Blogs, together with a strong social media presence, are immensely important to a company’s marketing and branding strategy. According to statistics published in early 2020, companies with active blogs get 97% more links to their websites than those who do not. In addition, 77% of internet users read blogs, and 81% of U.S online consumers trust the information and advice they receive from blogs.
Current and relevant blog content can do far more for many small businesses than any (significantly more expensive) advertising campaign. Blogging can also help business owners connect with their target audience. When choosing content for a blog, it is most useful to write about the things that matter to customers, such as the topics they have questions about or a product or service that can enhance their lives somehow.
We hope this short Guide to Small Business Branding helps to give you a start to branding your business and shows you the areas of most importance.