Business Branding Basics
These 5 points will help you understand the importance of branding your business.
1. Brand versus Branding
Your business brand is the perception your customers and employees have of your business, and it is centred around your core business values and objectives.
Branding, however, is the action you take to communicate the values and objectives or your business. Your Business branding includes the creating a name for the business, the tone of voice, messaging and visual identity. The branding you undertake should define what your business brand is.
Start with a brand strategy to determine your business purpose and what your promise to your customers is.
2. Know who and where your audience are.
We know you care about your customers, but do you know who they are and how to reach them? By profiling your customers and understanding their habits it allows you to choose the right marketing material and channel, to target them. If your customers are more likely to be on online than reading the local papers, then invest in a great mobile responsive website and clever social media campaigns.
Likewise if most of your client/customer enquiries are via email then make sure you have well designed and targeted digital brochures ready to reply back with. Researching you who and where your clients are will result in producing valuable branding material that reaches your target audience resulting on more loyal customers.
3. It’s all in the branding guidelines
Branding guidelines is a guide for your brand identity. It indicates the best use of your logo, fonts and colour palettes. Your branding guidelines will display mock ups of how your logo could look on stationary, leaflets or signage and it should support your brand strategy. It acts as a reference point for any future promotional or marketing material you produce.
4. Consistency creates trust
Clarity and consistency in your business branding instills a sense of trust and familiarity with your customers. If you are rebranding ensure you change your identity across all your online and printed material. Don’t confuse your customers by mixing new with old logos, or with an inconsistent tone of voice.
From your business card, brochures and website your branding should be consistent through out, this means using the same brand messages, fonts and colour palettes and tone of voice.
5. Branding needs investment
Save time and money when you invest wisely in your business branding. Remember your branding should reflect your business and when it its done well your business will be remembered for the right reasons. In return you will build brand awareness, increase sales and grow your business. Find a creative branding team that understands the process and can deliver on branding your business effectively.
