Strategic, beautiful marketing is not just for big brands — it’s for small businesses too. A cohesive brand and web presence radiates professionalism — integral to building brand awareness, recognition and loyalty for small businesses to grow a sustainable business of happy repeat customers.
If you’re like most small business owners, you know you need it, but may not be 100% clear on what it really means and why it’s important.
This article is broken down into four parts:
- What is branding? Branding is more than just a logo
- Why is it important? (Why your business needs a cohesive brand)
- Hire a pro or DIY?
Your brand promise.
Branding should communicate to people what they can expect from your business before they become a customer — or even before having any interaction with you. It is your promise of quality, service and results. The visual parts of the brand indicate…
REWRITE Branding can take the form of your business’s core values, brand voice, marketing, visuals, or really any format in which you present your brand to the public. Keep in mind that the theme among all of these forms, though, is creating trust with your client or customer.
Why your business needs a cohesive brand.
REWRITE Branding is all about creating consistency within your business’s’ public persona. When people begin to perceive consistency in your business’s image, verbiage, and marketing, they start to understand what they can expect from you and learn to trust your brand.
REWRITE Strong branding also helps your audience envision what working with you or purchasing from you would be like. In our age of market saturation, it’s essential that your brand sets you apart from the competition by strongly representing who you are, what you do, and what people can expect when working with or purchasing from you.
Branding is more than just a logo.
It begins with deep diving into your business identity: who you are as a company, what you do and why you do it. What are your business’ mission and core values? Spend time considering your business structure, your ideal customers and how to best serve them. You can spend big bucks on fancy visuals, but without strategy, it’s not going to serve your business.
Be strategic…
Hire a Pro or DIY?
While there are now more resources than ever available to Do-It-Yourself…
https://foxtrotbranding.com/blog/what-is-branding
BE STRATEGIC WITH YOUR BRANDING
Once you’ve worked hard on that strong sense of your business’s core values and structure, you can then move forward into expressing those elements in your visual branding. We are passionate about visual branding at Foxtrot Branding because it’s so important to create visuals that are not only beautiful but also highly strategic.
While your logo is a vital part of your visual branding, there are so many more elements to consider, such as the colors and fonts you use in marketing materials, your website design, and your print collateral, like fliers and brochures.
Essentially, every medium that expresses your brand is part of your visual branding. The most important things each of these elements should do are:
- Reflect who you are as a company
- Be designed with the intention of attracting your ideal customer
HOW SOON SHOULD I HAVE MY BRANDING FIGURED OUT?
Branding may seem like a part of your business you can work on later, and as business owners ourselves, we completely understand how difficult it can be to prioritize your own business on your task list.
Nailing down your branding, however, should always be high in your priorities to complete before you even begin marketing yourself. You need to project a strong and consistent image and voice from day one with your customers, as it will create brand recognition and trust, which is essential for your business’s sustainability.
HIRE A PROFESSIONAL
We said it once and we’ll say it again: your brand is your promise to your customer. The first step is to define your business’ core values, mission, ideal clientele, and your “why.” Really get nitty gritty when describing who you are, what you do, and why you do it.
Next, hire a professional to help you design beautiful and strategic visual branding to represent your business’ best self. Not sure where to begin with hiring a designer? Read our other post “How To Choose The Right Graphic Designer For Your Brand.”
Finally, after some time and deliberation, you and your designer of choice should have developed a strong, intentionally built brand that will help your business thrive, reach its ideal clientele, make more money, and change more lives.