Brand Building Tips for Small Businesses

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The right brand is essential to the success of virtually any business. Here are brand building tips for small businesses.

You need to work hard to ensure your business succeeds. This is particularly true if you’re a woman, a member of a minority group, or both.

Entrenched attitudes across a range of industries can prevent others from recognizing your potential. Thus, you must put forth a strong effort to prove the doubters wrong.

Growing your brand is one way to do so. The right brand is simply essential to the success of virtually any business. To better understand how to grow yours, keep the following tips in mind:

Understand What a Brand Is

A brand isn’t simply a name or logo (although those are elements of one). It essentially serves as your company’s “personality.” A brand consists of everything that comes to a consumer’s mind when they hear your company’s name. This includes both practical and emotional details.

For example, Disney is a brand. When most people hear the word “Disney,” they frequently associate it with certain key features and emotions: friendliness, childhood, Disney movies, the classic Disney logo, and more.

It’s important to thoroughly understand what a brand is before you begin the process of developing yours. Knowing what branding is simply helps you better appreciate its value and importance, while helping you more effectively draw brand advocates.

Understand Your Purpose

Your goal as an entrepreneur isn’t simply to make money. Yes, generating revenue is important, but it’s also likely that you have a personal mission driving your desire to succeed in business.

Identifying what your mission and values are will help you develop your brand. Consider famous examples if you’re having trouble getting started. For instance, when Steve Jobs started Apple, his goal was to ensure average people had access to the power computers represented.

This allowed him to authentically establish Apple’s brand, associating it with the counterculture. He wanted Apple to symbolize a revolution.

He achieved this goal because his mission was genuinely tied to the beliefs he and the other founders shared.

Your mission must of course be unique to you. Once you define it, however, branding becomes much easier.

Conduct Research

Asking yourself why you created your business in the first place is essential. That said, you also need to take certain practical steps when cultivating your company’s branded identity. Research is among the most important.

Make a list of your main competitors, and research their brands. How do they market their services?

In what ways do they promote their brands and maintain their consistency (such as a color scheme for visual content, a certain tone in their written and spoken marketing content, and more)? How do their brand names reflect who they are and what they do?

Again, your brand must be unique. You shouldn’t copy the competition directly. However, you can learn from the competition, helping you develop a more effective branding strategy.

Know Your Target Audience

A brand needs to speak to its target audience in a manner that resonates with them. It also needs to speak in a way that reflects its essential traits and qualities.

For instance, perhaps your product is a new HR software for major corporations. You would thus want your brand to convey a sense of professionalism and courtesy. It can be somewhat fun, but it shouldn’t be Coca-Cola.

On the other hand, maybe your target customers are hip young urbanites. In that case, you would want your brand to feel hip and urban as well.

Taking the time to define buyer personas won’t merely help you develop a stronger brand. It will also be useful when you begin to develop marketing campaigns.

Tell a Story

A brand is often most effective when it tells its audience a story. This helps to demonstrate to them why they should care about a particular company’s products and services.

For example, TOMS Shoes has achieved major success among its customer base. This isn’t solely due to the fact that the company delivers quality products. TOMS also donates to those in need every single time someone buys from them.

This fact is expressed consistently throughout marketing content. TOMS also uses images, videos, and stories of those the company has helped to tell a more general story about the company’s mission and values.

Your company can follow in the footsteps (no pun intended) of TOMS and other successful businesses. A strong brand will help.

Use these tips when creating yours, and developing that strong brand will be much easier than you might expect.

 

This post was written by Funding Circle