If you own a small business, you might think that branding is best left to big brands like Apple or Google.
But the truth is, no matter how big or small your company is, you have to think about branding. Of course, bigger companies have bigger budgets to spend on branding.
But here’s the thing: You do not need to have a budget as large as Apple to create a highly efficient branding strategy from the ground up.
There are plenty of things that you can do to make your business stand out, grab your customer’s attention, and make it memorable without blowing your budget.
Now, we will look at the nine branding strategies that will make your small business branding easy.
Start by defining your brand
Branding is more than just the logo that you place on your site. It is who you are as a company, how you treat clients, your values, and mission.
So, before you can move on to more tactical steps like creating your brand logo, do take your time to be clear on who you are as a company. In other words, you need to start defining your brand.
The brand character that you build should promote your business, connect with your existing customer base, and differentiate you from the rest of your competitors.
So, it is high time to review what are the kinds of products and services that you offer. Identify the space in the market that it occupies, and dig deep to the needs and concerns of your customers.
Find your brand’s tone of voice
Having a consistent tone of voice will help reinforce your business’ character to customers. It clarifies what you are offering to them so that they know what to expect with your product or service.
Remember that what you say is important, so do not overlook how you say it. Your company’s tone of voice is the language and personality that you and your team will use to deliver your brand message to reach your customers.
Remember that the most successful brands speak with a unique voice.
Think about all the brands that you look up to. How do they communicate with your customers, and what makes them unique? What’s the thing that you like most about their voice?
Figure out your target customers
The most common mistake a lot of small businesses make is to focus so much on the kind of products and services that they want to deliver, yet they fail entirely to figure out who they are trying to sell their products and services to. As a result, their branding suffers.
You have to take the time to know who is your ideal customer. Who are they? What matters most to them? What’s their predominant demographic? How old are they, and what’s their average income and education? What are they looking for in a company? When are they using your products and services, and why do they need it?
By knowing who your target market is, it serves as a guide in your branding strategy. The result is a brand that your audience will truly want to work with.
Develop buyer personas
As a brand, if you do not know who you are talking to in the first place, you will have a problem reaching your target audience.
Building buyer personas help bring those individuals to life, as you figure out a way how you can market your products and services to them.
At its core, a buyer persona is just a description of a customer that you are trying to reach. You can give that persona a name, and think of features that matches that specific persona. That way, when you do your marketing, you already have that “person” in mind, helping you address your message more specifically.
Create the look and feel of your brand
Once you have clearly defined who you are, your target customers, and what is working well for your brand, the next thing that you need is to create the look and feel of your brand.
Here are some things that you will need to create:
- A brand style guide: A brand style guide is an excellent way to organize your design details. Start figuring out the details such as your brand’s color palette, design dos, and don’ts, and so on.
- Logo: Your logo will serve as the face of your brand, and will serve as a jump-off point to other visuals on your site, such as your website and business cards.
- Business cards: Ideally, your business cards should match your design assets and logo.
- A website: when people visit your site, the look and feel should be consistent with the overall branding.
Build your social media presence
After you already have a defined brand strategy, the next step is to start connecting with your customers on social media.
Pick the social platforms that you know most of your audience is active on, then make sure that it is bringing a lot of high-quality leads for your company.
Create a consistency of communication with your audience, whether it is formal or informal, slang, or not.
The same way goes with your images, whether you prioritize something fun, serious, high-quality, relevant, and so on.
Stay true to your brand with every comment, like, or post.
Reward customer loyalty
As a brand, you should be doing everything to promote customer loyalty.
Sales are crucial to your business and are a driver of growth, and yet a lot of businesses forget the bread and butter of their income ? their existing customers.
Offering customer loyalty programs not only provide companies with various benefits, but it also becomes an expected part of the customer experience. This marketing approach provides rewards to customers who engage and purchase from a brand repeatedly. This ensures that customers stay loyal to your brand.
Add emotions to your message
As a brand, you need to establish an emotional connection with your customers.
Here’s how you can build an emotional connection with your audience:
- Think of the emotion that you want to evoke in your message. Is it freedom, pleasure, status, security, health, etc.?
- Use the right words that help stir up the emotion.
- Freedom: Career, wealth, travel
- Health: Participate, be active
- Safety: Protect your family, loved ones
- Status: Achievement, exclusivity
- Craft your message according to your audience.
- Use the right images to trigger these emotions.
Ask for customer feedback
When running a business, you have to do your best in satisfying your customer’s needs, please them, and make them stay loyal to your brand.
The most important driver of your business is customer feedback. If you do not take the time to find out what your clients think about your service, you will not be able to give them the best customer service.
These opinions are helpful so that you can adjust your business to fit these needs more accurately.
Over to You
When it comes to branding your business effectively, you do not need to spend a large sum. All you need is a little bit of creativity and follow these tips. Now, it is time to go out there and start branding!
About the Author – Kevin Urrutia is the founder of Voy Media, a Facebook Advertising Agency based in New York. He aids businesses in effectively improving sales and conversion through the effective utilization of Facebook advertising. Voy Media is an expert in determining the best approach, coming up with a unique solution for each client.