As a small business owner, you are uniquely positioned to create an influential and recognizable brand that will help communicate the values and mission of your business to the world. Your brand must be intense whether you are a start-up, a well-established company, or somewhere between. A successful small business brand comes from recognizing your target audience and crafting a persuasive tone of voice to engage them. In this blog, we discuss the critical principles for effective small business branding that will help you capture the hearts and minds of your audience.

Utilizing an Alaska web design company that understands online marketing, brand design, and branded content will give you a small business marketing budget and the biggest bang for your buck. Brand recognition grows over time, and ensuring your brand is consistent across all your online and print channels is even more important than your budget for marketing services.

Logo Design

A logo is the visual representation of your business, and it could be seen as the backbone of your business. Therefore, the design process should not be taken lightly. If you want to create a unique design to help you stand out from the competition, you must follow these five steps.

1. Know your audience

It would help if you determined who your target audience is. In other words – who are you designing for? This will help narrow down what colors, font styles, and styles you will use in your logo.

2. Get inspiration

Sketching may sound easy, but some people find this step extremely challenging because they lack imagination and creativity. Even though everyone has different tastes in art, there are tons of resources online that will help jumpstart your imagination process. One of my favorite places I go for inspiration purposes is pinterest.

3. Create a rough draft.

After you have decided on the general idea for your logo design (color scheme, text placement, and so on), it’s time to start sketching programs, using Adobe Illustrator, or digitizing your ideas. I prefer drawing on paper first and then transferring my sketches onto a computer later on in the process.

4. Finalize the design

Now that you have created a rough draft of your logo design, it’s time to finalize everything, such as typeface, color & composition

5. Prepare Final Files

Once all five steps are completed satisfactorily, it’s time to prepare final files to be used in print or web projects!

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is a great way to market your business and create brand awareness. Content Marketing allows you to sell your brand by telling stories or creating high-quality content that drives loyal customers to your site. This type of marketing also helps build relationships with new prospects. Here’s how it works: You create an article or video about what makes your brand unique. Here’s then publish it online. Then, you can share this content with social followers likelier to engage with the post (i.e., they’re interested in your brand). Your followers will then be exposed to more info they’re about your company – increasing awareness of what sets you apart in the marketplace.

There is a feel and vibe from the word choice companies use on their websites and social media. Depending on your business type, you may have a more fun and light-hearted vibe or a more severe and informative feel. Your company’s message can be easily construed on each online channel with carefully chos company’s and font choices. Press releases, weekly blogs, and social media content will allow your branded content marketing to be helpful and keep your brand consistent. It will also help steer all the media about your business.

To sum it up, Content Marketing is an effective way to connect with new prospects and turn them into customers by creating and sharing quality content that educates and entertains them. The result is more traffic, leads, and customers that become loyal fans. As a result, you spend less, and you’ll achieve better results.

Analyze Your Brand

You can’t know if your brand is effective unless you’re constantly looking focan’tt’s out there about your business. Check your likely places your business name will come up, including sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Angie’s List, and any review site specific to your type of business. You can see what people say, but knowing it will help keep your brand consistent.

Analyzing your small business brand is a way to help determine how well your brand is positioned to attract potential customers. By looking at your company brand, you have the opportunity to evaluate the following areas:

Brand Effectiveness

Determines how well your brand’s image matches its product or service. For your brand’s image to match its product or service, you must know your distinguishing characteristics and how those qualities will be reflected in how the company is represented visually. Brand loyalty and memorability are also essential to consider when measuring brand effectiveness. Understanding your brand effectiveness is a powerful marketing tool to help increase sales and customer satisfaction.

Brand Clarity

Determines whether or not your brand has a clear message that aligns with your goals. Your audience should immediately understand what you do, even if your niche is highly technical. Not only that, but they should also instantly know why it matters.

Brand Consistency

Determines whether or not you have used consistent marketing materials in your branding endeavors. A consistent brand can distinguish between your audience recognizing and remembering you or being distracted by a less savvy business. For example, whether it’s your logo, website, or social media branding – are you using the same colors, logo/company name placement, and wording? In addition, having a clearly defined set of aesthetics can remove unnecessary distractions for your audience.

Contact us today to see how we can help with your brand!

Bianca Frank Design offers a comprehensive small business brand development package that can be utilized to begin or reinvigorate your small business marketing strategy. So whether you need small business marketing strategies, graphic design, brand design, or web design or need consultation on where to start, drop a note, and we will be in touch soon.