A beginner's guide to brand identity for small businesses

Your brand is how people view you whenever they interact with your company. The marketing practice of giving a product a name, symbol, or design, that distinguishes it from other items is known as branding. Maintaining a good brand is very vital for a business because according to research, 75% of purchase decisions are based on emotion. As branding is primarily what influences a customer’s perceptions and feelings towards a company overall, these statistics highlight the undeniable importance of branding a new business effectively. Having understood the importance of maintaining a good brand, it is vital to outline the steps required by small businesses to build a solid brand.

What is your brand’s purpose?

You must have a 'Clear Vision for Your Brand': The only way to build a loyal customer base is to continually deliver value. As a result, you must make it clear to customers what you are delivering and why you are in business. If you're in business to help people or to make them feel good, chances are you care about your customers more than money. A vision statement is required to codify what that reason is. Your vision statement informs employees and consumers alike about who you are, what your mission is, and what your basic values are.

Who is your ideal customer? And use your knowledge carefully.

When it comes to branding your business, you'll need a clear handle on your target audience, just as you do with your business goals. 'Who are you attempting to market to?' is a question that many people ask. your answer should not be “everyone”. To start you can study the customer base of your competitors, and use the information to build your average customer persona. This is very important to be able to build a brand that resonates with the customers. Questions like;

Their age range:

what age group does the majority of your customers fall into?

Are there more males or females in the group you're trying to reach?

is it high school, college, post-graduate?

What is their educational level:

Are they self-employed, employed by a corporation, or the owner of multiple businesses? Are they looking for work?

What type of employment do they have:

what do they do for a living and in their spare time?

Their way of life: ?

Their challenges: what do they struggle with? And how can you help them

Brand Distinction

It is very important for your brand to spell out what sets it apart from other companies. It can be your pricing, wider range of products, or effectiveness. This needs to be expressed in some form on every platform through which you are advertising your company.

What element of branding will you use?

Some common elements of branding are; logos (principal logo, secondary logos, and icons), color palettes and schemes, typography, other images to be used, and the voice and tone used in writings must all convey a message that clearly represents your company's essential beliefs. There must always be consistency in the messages your company passes out at all times. Develop a color palette from which you can pick colors for each of your brand elements. There should be a consistency in the fonts used, images and every other element must always represent the company’s ideas at all times.

What tools will you use to spread the word about your brand?

It is usually easier for larger corporations to build and maintain their brands, mostly due to the availability of funds, to employ media experts and run advertisement campaigns, but that is not to say all hope is lost for smaller businesses. The internet provides a lot of free and inexpensive options for business publicity. Social media platforms and instant messaging apps, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, are some examples of platforms that small businesses can utilize to create awareness for their brands. There are inexpensive tools for graphic design that can be used by an inexperienced user, websites that give royalty-free images, and many more. Creating a website is also easy via different platforms like blogger, WordPress, etc. All this makes it easy to push out your brand to a larger audience. It should however be noted that there is a great need to consistently express your brand, post images, write-ups, etc. Consistently put your brand out to the world.

How can you delve deeper into your brand and grow it?

When you create a brand identity for yourself, it’s important to have a “learner’s mindset.” Stay open to the needed tools and ideas that are working to build memorable brands today. Learn about the habits of your consumers, follow your competitors, the changing market needs, the technological and social media habits of your customer base, etc. Try to understand your competitor’s campaign strategy and always try to stand out with your campaign strategies.

Conclusion

Proper branding of your business should be a pressing concern for you, especially if you have not previously considered doing that. This post has tried to explain the importance of branding your business — and more specifically what really constitutes good branding practice — and how to achieve that. Let’s have a recap of the steps you will want to follow:

Define your key goals to provide a foundation for your branding efforts.
Take into account a suitable target audience such that you know exactly who you’re aiming your brand at.
To unify your efforts, create a personality and identity that is connected to your target audience and goals.
Make sure your marketing strategy as well as social media pages are in order for you to start building a solid conversion funnel.

Branding can impact your company’s success greatly, whether in the short or long term. The good news is that branding your business doesn’t have to be difficult