Making Your Mark: Five Essential Components of a Small Business Brand
Why care about branding? Having a trustworthy brand will help your business achieve a solid customer base and the profit margins that go with it. Your community and your competition make judgments about your company based solely on the power of your brand. Because branding is essential to the modern business, it’s important that you pay attention to the details even if you have a non-traditional way of marketing your business. Here are the five essential components of a great small business brand just as 5 ways of branding your website.
Logo. What’s in a logo? This one little graphic may have more impact on your success than any other aspect of your business. Your logo is the face of your business. It will be prominently displayed on the signs on your door as well as just about every piece of paper that leaves your office. Don’t sell yourself short by saddling your new business with a logo that holds you back instead of giving you a much needed boost in branding.
Scheme. Along with a logo, your small business will need a visual scheme that is both attractive and unique to your business. This includes a color scheme, a set of complimentary fonts, and any other special images that you plan to use as part of your business. Make sure these complement and go well with your logo, as both elements will be used together on a daily basis.
History. People love to buy products that have a story, and from businesses with an interesting history. In fact, they love it so much that they are willing to pay more. Build a personal business mythology that customers can identify with. This will make them want to support you, because it makes them part of your interesting, compelling story.
Community Presence. How involved are you in your community? In the beginning, most small business owners are forced to stick to low cost and no cost ways of being visible in the community, but as your business grows it is essential to be a visible and benevolent force in your field and in your neighborhood. Whether you are partially sponsoring a fun local event or allowing night poetry readings in your lobby, you must make sure your potential customers see you and your business as someone who cares.
People. This includes not just you, as the owner of the business, but also your employees and any virtual assistants. It’s essential that you and everyone that your customers interact with as part of your business be corresponding parts of your brand, from appearance to attitude. Decide on an image that complements your overall branding strategy and allow no variation from it. In the end, your personal interaction with the public will have a larger effect on your small business branding than any other aspect.
As you can see, it is not difficult to build a small business brand, and this process is essential from the very beginning of your business. Modern consumers don’t just buy products and services; they buy images and stories. No one can afford to be without branding, so give your small business a great start by paying attention to these details.
Although we tend to associate branding with large corporations, it can also be a very personal endeavor that is best suited to smaller businesses. In fact, in many cases, a small business owner can give their company a very successful brand by working on their own personal brands.
Personal branding is a topic that was once limited to celebrities, but more and more we are hearing about it in the business world. Microsoft is forever linked to former CEO Bill Gates, while nobody can see Richard Branson without thinking about Virgin. Even if you are not a rock star or socialite, your small business brand will be indelibly marked by your personal image, which is why no owner can afford to neglect their brand. Here are a few ways that you can give your small business that all important personal touch.
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Be Authentic.
Most people can smell a fake from miles away, so make sure your personal brand is completely and genuinely you. This doesn’t mean that you have to showcase every flaw, but merely that you should not try to be something that you aren’t. Ask friends, family, and people who know you well to honestly and openly tell you what makes you “you”. Take the most positive characteristics from this list and play them up as much as possible.
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Maintain A Personal Online Presence.
Most small business owners understand the importance of having a website, blog, and social networking accounts for their business. You can build a small business brand in much the same way. Keep a personal blog and build a social network of both friends and business contacts. Be present and accounted for on the World Wide Web.
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Link Your Personal Brand To Your Small Business.
If you want for your personal brand to enhance you small business one, you need to begin linking the two in people’s minds. This means linking them in every way possible. Make sure your personal blog, website, and social network link to your small business ones and vice versa. A word of caution: be very careful that you do not post overly personal information or things that will detract from your image. Your personal image needs the same careful management as your business image! Which brings us to the next tip…
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Monitor Your Brand.
For the most part, the best way you can monitor your personal brand is to post positive information about yourself on a regular basis and to respond immediately and proactively to negative feedback. This is done mainly through your own personal website, blog, and social networking accounts. However, negative information about your personal brand can appear almost anywhere, so you may want to use Google Alerts or even a paid service to notify you whenever you are discussed on the internet. The key to responding to negative feedback is to be positive, rather than getting in arguments with critics.
This may seem like a lot of work, but it is a labor of love that will pay off in the long run. If you have a strong and positive personal brand, almost anything you do in the business world will benefit from being associated with you.
Can you brand your company through logo design? While a great logo alone won’t carry your company—usually—it certainly can give you the advantage you need. Here are a few things to ask yourself about your logo that will help you determine if it is as effective as it could be.
1. Does my logo make my brand more credible? A logo should make your business look credible and trustworthy in several different ways. First, it should be professional so the customer knows that they can count on you for a professional quality job. Second, the logo should be designed using colors, shapes, fonts, and images that make the customer feel more inclined to trust you. Logo design speaks on a subtle level that leaves a lasting impression.
2. Does my logo make my brand look professional? Having a professionally designed logo makes you appear to be more professional and helps you stand out in a crowd of imitators. No one wants to be branded as an amateur, but a less than perfect logo design does exactly that.
3. Does my logo have emotional impact? Customers should look at your logo and have an emotional reaction. If they don’t, there clearly is a problem. There are a variety of ways a logo can impact your audience. It can command them to act, calm and soothe, or even create warm and fuzzy feeling. Know exactly what emotions you want to invoke before beginning the design process.
4. Do my logo and my brand fit my current customer base? It is not at all unusual for your customer base to evolve over time, but you will have to change with it. If you realize one day that you are trying to sell a youth brand to people in the early thirties, it’s time to re-evaluate the way you have branded yourself. It’s okay to occasionally re-evaluate and ‘tweak’ a brand and a logo a little; in fact, it is one of the way the large international companies stay so relevant.
5. Does my logo help me make sakes? Ultimately, trust and credibility combined with a superior product add up to sales and profits. If you aren’t getting the sales you need, you can bet that the problem lies either with your product or your brand. Maybe it is an unprofessional logo that makes your customers question your quality and professionalism. Maybe it is a combination of color and shape that are communicating something other than what you want to say. Sometimes there is a disconnect between the brand presented by the company and the actual products and service. Your logo should help your bottom line, not hold you back.
Your logo should be an ambassador for your brand, telling your customers what to expect from your business and making a promise of quality and service. If your logo design isn’t living up to its job description, it’s time to have a professional logo designer create one that will go the distance.