Essentially, a brand is what your audience and customers think about your business and what it represents to them. It is a feeling more than a logo or a name.
Knowing this means you have to really think about how you leave your audience feeling when they think about your brand.
1. Define your brand
To define your brand, find out what your mission is, what benefits you offer your audience, what features are important to your audience, what kind of customers you want to attract, and what qualities you want your audience to associate with you when they think of you. Take the time to write a mission statement that includes what you do, who you do it for, why you do it, and how you do it.
2. Choose Colors, Fonts, and Images
What kinds of colors, fonts, and images are you going to use? It will depend on the industry your company represents, what the audience likes, and the feelings these things evoke.
3. Create a logo
It is usually best to hire a professional to create a logo. A logo is a legal representation of your business and you can’t use stock photos, well-known slogans, or sometimes even certain fonts in a logo. By hiring a trusted professional, you can take your mission statement, audience information, and other information to help you create the right logo that invokes the feelings you want your audience to have.
4. Develop a tagline
A tagline is a very short, memorable, and catchy statement that explains your brand to anyone who meets you for the first time. Remember that you must create something original for your business that encapsulates your business.
5. Integrate the brand in all channels
Whether online or offline, your brand should stay the same. Whether it’s a tagline, the way you answer the phone, the way you sign your emails, or the way your users use your website, social media, and more, make sure it all goes together and promotes the same message, regardless of where. Your audience finds you and engages with you.
6. Do not forget the voice of your brand
It’s important to make sure that whether you’re publishing a blog post, book, video, podcast, webinar, or anything else, the voice matches every time. Is your brand mainstream, traditional, modern, irreverent, or something else?
7. Create templates
So you can teach all your staff or contractors about your brand, you can develop materials and templates to help anyone you hire. A writing guide, brand guide, art templates, presentation templates, and more will help you ensure your brand is matched across all channels.
8. Keep your promises
It is imperative that you live up to the brand you have created for yourself. If you promise 100%, no questions asked, come back, do it. If you say it, you must do it, or you won’t be trusted to live up to your brand, and word spreads fast these days.
9. Be consistent
One of the keys to all aspects of business, including your small business brand, is consistency. Be consistent with your branding efforts across all online and offline channels. Whether you run a paid ad or produce free content, branding is essential to ensure you become a memorable business within your industry.
