Five Ways to Build Your Small Business Brand
What is branding and why is it important to small business growth? Learn three important elements to building a small business brand.
Branding is the ability of people to associate a business with a word or a few musical notes. The end result is to get customers to take action and choose your business. Corporations spend millions of dollars on building brands, but small businesses can take a lead from them and spend less to build a successful business. Here’s how to build the five key elements of a business brand.
1. Logo – The logo is a graphical representation of your company. A logo can contain a picture or words or a combination of both. The logo must also use color effectively. This could mean using colors to create an emotional response or use the lack of color (using only black and white for stark contrast) with one splotch of color for emphasis.
Suggestion: Keep logos simple. Use color effectively. Use words sparingly. Choose a simple, clean font. Use a contrast of regular fonts mixed with bold fonts for emphasis. Do not make your tagline part of your logo, because you may want to change the tagline in the future.
Recommendation: Start with a “words only” logo that is your company name.
2. Tagline – A tagline is a short phrase, not a sentence, that conveys what your company does. Include a action verb and clarify what product or service your company provides.
For example: my original company name was Instructional Design Consortium. My idea was that training is a team effort. The downside to my company name was that it was confusing, hard to pronounce and a logistical nightmare for website domain. I decided to create a shorter name and create a “doing business as” or DBA so it would still be my company’s legal name. I chose Design2Train, an overall choice. So, now the new name gave me an opportunity to create a tagline that told people what my company does, we create training. People are looking for quicker ways to create training using online training options. So my tagline: creating training at the speed of business became my new tagline.
Recommendation: Brainstorm with friends to come up with several options to choose from instead of working in a vacuum. Take their input and suggestions to help you decide which tagline best suits your company.
3. Capability Statement – A company resume that states your business in a one page summary. Include NAICS codes, contact information, and a summary of previous work. The goal of the capability statement is to offer a quick read to potential contracting agents to introduce your company. Create the capability statement in Word, then save and distribute as a PDF.
Suggestion: Name the capability statement file with a date, so you can keep track of your latest version. For example: capability_011710 Store the capability statement, both the Word and PDF versions online, so it is easy to locate the most recent version, for future updating.
4. Coordinated Marketing Literature – Pattern the same colors from your logo into corresponding marketing literature including: business cards, rack cards, flyers, brochures and downloadable website documents.
Suggestion: Use a printing service that does not print large quantities, so you can easily change marketing literature to meet current needs.
5. Coordinated Website – Use the same colors as on print literature. Prominently display your logo with tagline to build company brand recognition. Make your website simple, easy to navigate and provide the information that potential clients will want to see. Test the links to make sure your download links work.
Your blog is pretty good and impressed me a lot. This article along with the images is quite in-depth and gives a good overview of the topic.
Great tips for any business trying to get their branding off the ground. #3 is an especially overlooked item. I see a lot of new companies try and brand themselves without having the clarity that they need to have behind their business to make their brand effective and meaningful.
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