Branding For Your Small Business

By Author: Alan Williams
Total Articles: 4
Comment this article

Branding is more than just a logo and your website. It is one of the most important processes you will undertake for your business that will unify various different aspects of your organisation. Whether you are a B2B enterprise who serves a specific segment of your market, or a small trade business or retail outlet, an effective brand is necessary to define who you are as a company and let your customers know what they can expect from you.

It is sometimes hard to define branding, but if you focus on the intended consequences of the process, it should be easier to picture your own brand. Firstly, the brand of your small business will provide you with a sense of identity and character that your customer base will come to recognise you for. If you provide good services, they will continue using your brand in an increasingly competitive market.

Additionally, a strong brand gives your employees a kind of ‘culture’ and identity to operate within. If you effectively outline your core principles and values, then your team can get behind your brand and help to support the growth of your enterprise more easily. Let’s ...
... explore more about what your brand means to your new business.

Defining your products and services

A brand identity can help to define the kind of business you are and the services that you offer. It is also a promise to your customers and clients about the kind of approach you will take to your operations. For instance, if you develop a friendly and customer focused brand that cares about the ‘small guy’ then you are promising your customers that you will be approachable and helpful for customers no matter who they are or what their budget is.

Equally, if you set yourself up as a cutting edge and innovative brand that doesn’t settle for mediocrity, your customers will expect this to be reflected in the way you do business. Importantly, it is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from competitors.

What about the visual branding?

Ultimately, your visual branding, such as your logo, website and graphic elements are an important part of your business branding process. However, it should only take place once you have established who you really are as a business. First, you should outline what your core principles are and what you want to achieve as a company, before you can sit down with a designer and discuss logo options. This is because your visuals need to be rooted in something tangible and for a good brand designer to do a good job, they need to be able to draw from a body of knowledge that is associated with your business.

What is brand strategy?

Your brand strategy is how you plan on implementing your branding and communication activities once your brand identity has been developed. It includes things like your marketing and brand messages and maps out how you will be implementing various advertising or social media activities to support the brand that you have established.

There is no use creating a world-leading brand and then not implementing it consistently across all your channels. If just one of your platforms is singing a different tune to your other platforms, then customers may get confused about what you stand for and this weakens your brand.

It has been proven time and again that consistent, strategic branding and identity leads to a strong brand equity, which means added value brought to your company's products or services. In commercial terms, this allows you to charge more for your brand than what identical, unbranded products command. Just consider how much Adidas can charge for its simply white branded T-shirts compared to any old sports apparel company selling the same product simply because of the respect that their brand has earned.

The added value of your brand implies to your customers that your products come with an added quality, even if this is merely superficial.

Servicebrand global is a leading provider of services including branding and identity for companies that want to reach their true potential. Drawing from an extensive knowledge of several commercial markets and an understanding of the Values Economy, it provides solutions for companies of all size who are looking to take their business brands to the next level.