THE SMALL BUSINESS BRANDING CHECKLIST:
Branding & Identity is one of the most vital steps. Branding in marketing is the way of identifying your business, it is about how your customers recognize and experience your business. It is the practice of promoting a business structure’s brand instead of specific products or services. While branding, you need to identify your business and all its functions from how the average consumer perceives your business as a brand. If you focus on the promotions of the product and services your business offers, you are advertising your business rather than on branding promotions.
Business branding is about creating a full-scale message for your company and product or service. By using names, logos, and slogans just to make people remember you and your business. Creating a business structure for your business may require special skills like designing, coding, development, and most importantly, marketing.
Within the branding & identity system, multiple elements work together within an ecosystem. The role of the brand identity system is to appeal visually and quickly to the audience. Digital advertisement is really helpful while creating branding and identity for your business
For example, Hershey’s bar branding has gone beyond a sweet, crème, and a distinct tanginess. Over the years they tried to make their brand about spreading happiness, smiling, and togetherness. Take a look at their recent slogan “There is a smile in every Hershey bar”. Hershey associates share the chocolate bar with your loved ones and keep on smiling.
YOUR BRAND STORY:
Humans value humans over a brand that’s why word-of-mouth referrals always triumph over any kind of marketing. But a brand is not human but there are humans behind the brand and if you do not tell their story of who they are, why they have started the company, and what their mission is then no customers are going to care. That’s why founder stories are so powerful . for example, Colonel sanders started Kentucky fried chicken as a side hustle in retirement and after a lifetime as a salesman and a gas station manager he started KFC in a converted gas station in North Corbin. Almost 10 years later KFC was the largest restaurant chain in the world. This was the human story that people remember, they feel this in their hearts. So think about your brand story.
BUILD A CUSTOMER PERSONA:
A customer persona is the one when you formulate an image of what your average customer looks like. A customer persona represents an entire group or audience of users as a UX designer. When a designer starts the design process by conducting user research. Building empathy with your target users and identifying exactly what they need from the product you are designing. Based on this, you can easily determine which branding & Identity exercises you should adopt for your target audience.
BRAND LOOK & FEEL:
A brand is not only a logo. To build a strong branding & identity you have to focus on Branding design. Create your brand with intentions. You need to create the look and feel of your brand not only by logo but also with a color palette, specific fonts, photography and illustration styles, texture and patterns, and layout styles. Branding in marketing is difficult for small businesses but not impossible. You have to use all the styles, patterns, and animations religiously and consistently from day one. The biggest mistake made by the small business is that they do not invest in branding designs at the beginning and when they came to know the whole thing is an inconsistent mess of logos, styles, and colors.
BRAND VOICE:
Just like you have to create a visual appearance for your brand. You also have to make a conscious decision about how you are going to sound, and what is your brand voice going to be. You have to choose between soft or stem, sensual or friendly, and comforting or cautionary voices. Your voice needs to align closely with your brand story and resonate with your customer avatar and what they need from you. This is what you called strategic branding and marketing for social media.
IDENTIFY YOUR UNIQUE SELLING POINT:
A USP or unique selling point helps you to differentiate your business, product, or services from your competitors. Identify your unique and most popular selling point that will be going to attract your target audience to your brand. Also, decide the branding message you want to market your business with.
BRAND PROMISE:
What are you bringing the customer that is an irresistible solution to their problem?
What is the brand promise that you are making and what is your mission? How are you one step ahead and unique from your competitors? This promise to your customer has to be chanted like a mantra by every person and employee in your company. Your product has to deliver on it and your services had to deliver on it. The brand promise is forever. PPC advertising is going to help you a lot in building up a brand promise for your small business.
RISING WITH A SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE:
To promote your branding in marketing strategies, your presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest is very important. Social media marketing is the key element to promoting and growing your small business. The reason is that the number of people who have a social media handle is increasing day by day. To stand out from the crowd every business should avail of social media advantages.
BRAND EQUITY:
Branding & Identity equity is the result of everything you do. When you show up consistently when you look and sound authentic when you deliver that value and make good on that brand promise equity is the result. Brand equity is built over time and once you have built that the customers going to share you with their friends via word-of-mouth marketing. The word of mouth marketing is brand building because it passes down from generation to other generation. Strategic digital marketing is going to help you a lot in building brand equity.
BUSINESS NICHE:
Define your industry and expertise. Narrowing down your business to one specific niche will keep you standing higher and ahead of your competitor’s industry. By specifying your business niche you will have a clear focus on marketing, researching, and identifying your target audience.
BRAND ENGAGEMENT:
This is a big change in branding. Branding in marketing is not a one-way street anymore it requires the engagement of the brand with its customers. Nowadays a brand creates content, do live streaming, host events, and conferences, post stories on social media platforms, and do many other things to engage people. There are an infinite number of ways to engage and building brand identity is now much more of a two-way street. The customer has a voice and they should have a platform for making their voice heard. To build strong brand equity with your customers you have to engage with your customers.
CONCLUSION:
Creating a brand identity is not easy but by following the above-mentioned points any small business and create a strong brand identity. Social media marketing and social media management are going to help you a lot while building up a strong brand identity among your customers.
