Branding Your Small Business: 7 Elements to consider

Branding is a lot more than concocting a brand name and creating a logo. There’s more than meets the eye. Well, it shouldn’t be as complicated. If you are having trouble figuring out how to build your brand, read along.

Think of branding as a form of language. This language aims to communicate who you are, what you stand for, and other aspects of your business.

"Your brand is what other people say about you when you are not in the room" Jeff Bezos

So it's vital to note that your brand is a voice that communicates to people. For example, Café Javas as a brand displays excellence and class, which has contributed to its success. Therefore, your brand is not something you can build overnight, unlike a logo or a brand name.

What is Branding?

Branding is a marketing process wherein the firm tries to create a unique image of the product in the customer's minds and establish a differentiated presence in the market with the intent to retain customer loyalty.

This article will show you a step-by-step process of what you need to look out for when building a brand for your business.

Key elements involved in branding for small businesses.

Building a brand takes time and creativity. Here are guidelines that you can use when building your brand.

1.??Study your audience and competition.

Your audience

?When building a brand, your target audience cannot be emphasized enough. This is because your brand cannot exist without the audience. It is in the mind of the audience that your brand is established.

Perhaps your business idea stems from a given problem that you encounter in your daily life. Or, maybe it is through innovative ideas. Selecting a particular group from the population to whom to deliver your product or service is vital. It gives you a sense of purpose and direction and guides you on critical elements when establishing your brand.

For instance, you can quickly tell who the Café Javas brand targets. It shows in their pricing, locations, etc.

Your competition

Always factor in other industry players when building your brand. You can do this by conducting market research to establish whether similar companies produce what you intend to offer.

If so, what can you do differently from them to be able to stand out?

2.??Map out your brand.

From the idea that a map guides you in places that you are not familiar with, this is the same case with mapping out your brand. You must write down your vision, mission, and values as a brand.

These are vital for a start-up business because they form the brand's core and provide the brand with a sense of purpose and direction.

Vision

The vision will provide direction for your decisions. It will help establish the short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals that you hope to achieve.

For instance, your short-term vision could be to grow into the number one player in the industry. This guides how you approach your marketing and sales activities, how you handle the competition, etc.

Mission

Having a mission will help define your company's business, objectives, and how to achieve them. It will form the basis for which all employees operate, promotes unity, and encourages other stakeholders to act accordingly.

Values

Values are what you as a company stand for. Having brand values helps you make decisions when faced with challenging situations. It reminds you of what matters to you as a brand and to the people you are serving.

NOTE. As your brand grows, you will find that your Vision, Mission, and Values will change from time to time.

3.??Choose your name, colors, and typography.

After identifying your audience, competition, and mapping out your brand, the actual creative work begins. Why is that so? The name, colors, and typography you choose will play a big role in your company to attract targeted clients.

Brand name

Every business ought to have a brand name that distinguishes it from another. The name must be authentic, unique, and memorable since it is the first element encountered by the customer.

Your brand name doesn't need to communicate what your business does. You can use taglines and imagery for that. For example, Mr. Price, as a brand name, does not directly communicate clothing.

Colors

Colour Psychology shows that color affects human behavior. Every individual identifies with color. Choosing the right color combinations is for your brand is crucial because it’s not just a visual aid but conveys emotions, feelings, and experience.

When choosing brand colors, two key factors to consider are:

Audience demographic: Who are you targeting. Young millennials? Older populations? Businesses? High-end consumers? Whoever your ideal audience is, you must choose colors that relate to them.

Industry: What does your industry generally represent, and what colors do your competitors mainly use? You want to be unique enough to stand out but not too unique in that consumers cannot easily connect you to the industry.

For example, most fast-food chains use orange and red, while most financial companies use blue.

Typography

Typography enables you to create a given personality for your brand. It can range from vintage to modern typography, from shy to confident or rigid, from romantic to non-romantic.

Whatever your choice, you must maintain the typography elements (font size, color, spacing, and so on) on all your brand communications.

4.??Choose a Slogan

Slogans communicate more about the product and create an idea to the consumer of what the offering is all about. Slogans should be memorable, conceptual, state a mission, predictable and actionable.

For example, KFC's "It's finger-licking good" doesn't need further explanation.

Choosing the right slogan that reflects the personality of the business is vital. With a good slogan, customers are more likely to remember you at the point of purchase and eventually buy.

Note that companies change slogans from time to time. So, don’t be afraid to adjust yours if the need arises.

5.??Create your logo

Logos are the face of the company. It takes the form of an abstract or figurative design or may take the form of a company’s name. Individuals can identify a given company by just looking at a logo. Therefore, your business must have one.

Pro tip: Try and have a simple logo design because it will make your brand easily identifiable, memorable, and versatile.

You can get a logo for your small business fast and at an affordable rate here.

6.??Collect Brand Imagery.

Images create an idea about what your particular brand is. Selecting appropriate images for your brand helps communicate directly to the consumer what your product is all about.

Remember, your brand name may not depict what your company is all about, and your logo may not be identifiable for a start-up business. So, completing these two with images that represent your business will do the trick in raising awareness.

7.??Identify your Branding assets.

Wondering what that is? Well, it simply refers to the elements that identify a specific brand. As you all know, an asset is something particular that belongs to you. Brand assets are those colors, typography's, slogans, sounds, among others, that can uniquely identify you as a company.

Therefore, it is not an asset if it identifies another brand similar to yours.

For example; From the apple logo of a bitten apple, one can tell that a given product is manufactured by apple when they see the logo. Further examples include Nike, Amazon's unique packaging, among others.

BUILD THAT BRAND!

You must carefully select your colors, logo design, brand name, among others, when branding your small business. All your choices should represent who you are and what your business is all about. They should be easily identifiable, memorable, and simple.

Nobody said it would be an easy process, but branding does pay off in the long run.

“Brand is the single most important investment in your business” --Steve Forbes

You may choose to handle all your brand assets by yourself or hire professionals to do it for you. As the saying above shows, it will probably be the one reason customers choose you over your next-door competitor.