5 Ways To Brand Your Small Business

According to Entrepreneur, branding is “the marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products.” Branding your small business, which is often touted as one of the most necessary aspects of marketing, can be executed more easily than you might think.

Rather than branding being an extra step that you take in your marketing efforts, the secret to branding is simply about being consistent in how you communicate with customers and potential clients during existing touchpoints, defined in ‘This is Service Design Thinking,’ as, “every contact point between a customer and the service provider.”

Most, if not all, business owners have already developed their company’s brand identity through the careful curation of a corporate voice, a recognizable logo and a memorable tagline. Once you’ve created your brand identity, you should make your brand work for you by leveraging it at every available opportunity:

1) Website. For many businesses, a website is the primary touchpoint, the first contact point with a potential customer. Your website functions on several levels; mostly, viewers visit your site to learn more about your services and/or products and to glean what differentiates your business from your competitors. Leveraging your brand identity, at this point, ensures that potential customers will leave your website with both a clear understanding of your offerings and an enduring impression of your business.

Let your brand permeate your website and leave its mark. Colors, fonts and page design should be consistent with your company’s logo and any branded images that appear on the site. Additionally, the voice of your company, the personality that your company’s brand personifies, should always accompany the content on your page. Whether that’s a professional, straightforward voice or an informal, funny or sarcastic voice (think Groupon), the goal is to integrate the tone of your brand identity into all written content.

2) Social Media. Social media platforms are an extension of your company’s online profile and another major touchpoint with existing and potential customers. While your website functions primarily to inform viewers of your products and/or services, the ‘what we do,’ your social media profiles chiefly communicate your brand, the ‘who we are,’ to followers and friends. Through consistent and determined social media management, you can leverage your brand to generate a true following of customers who will connect with your company on a more personal level.

Consistency in brand marketing is still paramount. The same tone that you evoke on your website should be adopted in every Social Media post, instilling a sense of personality to your business with which your customers can interact. By carefully choosing images, links and reposts of other content, which correspond to your company’s brand, you will increase your brand equity and maximize the efficacy of your social media campaigns.

3) On Site Location. While brand marketing can tremendously increase your company’s online performance, integrating your brand identity on site can further enhance customer relationships with your business. Many times, companies start their brand marketing efforts onsite and define their brand identity (voice, logo, tagline etc.) based on how they are already interacting with customers. On site brand marketing, whether it’s at your storefront, restaurant, office or warehouse, is, perhaps, the most important touchpoint, as it is usually the setting where your company is actively serving your customers.

Ways to make your brand work for you on site include the same efforts that you employ during online brand marketing. The key to effective brand marketing, in any industry, is consistency. Maintaining consistent designs, logos, colors and voice across every touchpoint increases the level of brand recognition that your customers experience with your company. Be sure to integrate those elements into the layout and design of your space and into the way that you engage with customers.

4) Sales Collateral. A basic principle of branding is to employ it everywhere. This includes within all the sales materials that your company may create, such as menus, coupons/ads, and newsletters. While these items are meant to educate potential customers, they can also work to communicate your brand identity by including your company’s brand elements into the content. This will increase both the impact of the content and the brand recognition for your target audience.

5) Events. Events serve as a unique way to interact with potential customers in a new medium, such as at a webinar, expo or trade show. You should interact with attendees with the same voice, tone and company personality that you promote online and on site. By applying the elements of your company’s brand identity (such as design, logos, taglines and voice), you’ll promote a memorable experience that your audience will recall long after the event ends.

Embrace these five touchpoints, answering the important questions about your business—what you do, who you are, how you do it and where you do it, and branding will be an everyday and commonplace occurrence. Being aware and consistent with your branding through each consumer interaction will allow you to strengthen your relationship with potential and current customers, one contact or touchpoint, at a time!