5 top tips to build the brand for your small business

We all know that branding is key, it’s the reason you pay more for Coca-Cola over own-brand cola, or the reason you know that the tick is the sign of Nike as well as their tagline “Just do it”. And branding is just as important if you have a small business as it is for these giant household names.

The brand of your business is basically the identity that you create for your business. This is everything from logos, colours, missions and aims, and the promise to your customer as to what they can expect from you. It’s one of the defining differences between you and your competitors. Have we convinced you enough that it’s vital to a small business?

Here are our top 5 tips for building a brand for you small business:

1. Define your brand. What does your business offer as a product or service, who buys it, and who are these customers? You need to identify the needs and desires of your customers and build a service around them. And what are the characteristics that you want your brand to have and how you would like it to be perceived by these customers – are you reliable, modern, simple, technical?
2. Build brand guidelines. Get a logo, write down your key messages, work out where you customers are and how to market to them, get your colours sorted, create a tagline (“Just Do It” – recognise that one?), build a voice (a tone of writing to your customers). And then, be consistent, do these things the same always. Then your customer knows what to expect.
3. Consider your consumers. Listen to them, ask them, they’re the ones who make you a business so make sure you take their needs and demands into account (but make sure they’re reasonable and justified).
4. Don’t cheat. If you take the time to set your branding and business up to start with, it may feel like it’s taking away valuable time, but it will save you a lot of time in the future. You’ll always have those guidelines and identity to be able to steer future decisions.
5. Use it! Once you’ve developed your brand and identity, use it! Communicate with your customers, market to them, talk to them and showcase your business in the way that you’ve designed through your brand. If you have staff, make sure you get them on board and singing from the same hymn sheet.

The main thing you shouldn’t forget from this is that branding matters for all businesses regardless of their size! So make sure you think about the brand that you’re creating when you start a business. If you need help with brand strategy and logo design then drop us a message: hello@webfwd.co.uk