Small Business Branding Guidelines

Small Business Branding Guidelines

Are you ready to get to work? Here are some tips to help you brand your small business.

Congratulations on starting your own small business. Using talent for a company that gives you more control, flexibility and ownership is a fantastic achievement.

Your brand is the most important thing to do if you want to grow and strengthen your business. Your brand will make you stand out in the industry and influence how people look at your products and services.

Building long-term customer relationships are much easier once you have a solid brand. This guide will show you how to create a strong brand. We will focus on the customer experience, the brand story, and the visual identity. Let’s get to work!

Consider Essential Things

Although most people think creating a brand is as easy as making a logo and a business card, there are many steps before you can design a visual identity.

Start by researching and identifying the tools that will benefit your small business when you create it. Then, you will have to make several decisions before moving on to the creation phase (yes, the logo design).

You may have done some of the work as a small business owner. Now is the time to document and use it to communicate with customers.

To get started, use the following trademark checklist:

  • Customer research
  • Make an ideal customer profile
  • Your process of communicating with the customer should be developed
  • Select a CRM tool
  • The personality of your brand
  • Choose the tone and voice of your brand
  • Document your vision and mission statements
  • Select fonts and color palette
  • Outsource icons and illustrations
  • Create photo style guidelines
  • Design a logo
  • Document the brand and style guide
  • All channels are welcome to your brand
  • Optimize and improve

Target Audience

A clear target audience is a critical element of any brand’s success. Your brand should not attract everyone. Instead, it should be able to resonate strongly with a small group of people. Before you build your brand, consider who this audience is and what they are looking for.

Your ideal customers are middle-aged and have a good income. Maybe they are passionate about outdoor activities and wellness. No matter who they are, customers will have different preferences, demographics, and interests. The first step is to research the market in your industry. Then you can determine how to detail your niche customers.

Once you’ve created a customer profile, think of other businesses and brands that target the same audience. You can find examples of brand elements that resonate most with potential customers by researching the competition.

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Brand Goal and Story

Once you’ve identified the audience you want to reach, you can now plan how you will communicate with them. You create your story and the mission of your brand. This will help determine how people will feel about your brand and the foundation of your long-term vision.

Consider the personality of your brand first. It might look just like your brand if you own a business. Your brand personality can be energetic, attentive, playful, or pragmatic. It will set the tone for your brand and guide you in everything you do, from company communication to your brand story.

Your brand’s story should include why you started your business.

What problems are you trying to solve?

What are your business values?

How do you see your business in the future?

These questions will help you create your business vision. Your vision is about what your business will accomplish in the future. However, your mission is why you offer your product or service. This should be the same in the long run. You can use a generator to create a concise mission statement if you have trouble writing one.

Branding

When you think of branding, the brand’s visual assets are often the first thing that comes to mind. If you think about Netflix, you might imagine a bold red logo inspired by theater. You will think of the red and yellow logo of DHL when you think of professionalism.

The brand’s visual elements can be used on physical marketing materials, such as flyers, custom packaging boxes, and business cards. Depending on your industry, they can be used more often on digital platforms such as your website, social media, and email.

Consider a consistent color scheme and font style when creating your brand’s visual identity. Your fonts should be easy to read online and in print, with compatible types that are appropriate for each.

Once you have chosen the colors and fonts, you can create your iconography, illustration, and style of photography. These visuals should be in harmony with the personality of your brand. A whimsical brand personality, for example, would look best when communicated using playful sketches and bright, airy photos.

The last thing you need to do is combine everything to create your logo. You don’t have to use all the elements, but combining your colors and fonts will make the best logo for your brand.

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Customer Experience

The foundation of your brand is built on providing an excellent customer experience. The visual and non-visual elements of your brand create an initial impression and brand awareness. However, your customer experience creates an emotional connection between your brand and customers.

According to 91% of customers, repeated purchases are more likely if they have had positive customer service experiences. How do you build a customer service strategy that works?

Develop efficient back-end processes to ensure you don’t lose customers or potential customers. Your entire team should be able to communicate effectively with customers, being transparent, receptive, and authentic. Automation can be used to send answers to questions quickly, thank you emails, invoices, and other information at the right time.

An all-in-one platform allows you to manage customer relationships, build automation, and deliver professionally designed brochures, contracts, and invoices. A system that integrates your visual identity and front-end brand can make it easier to create back-end processes.

Brand Strategy

It won’t go far if you don’t properly document your brand strategy. Even if you are your business’s sole employee, you must have all the necessary documentation to expand quickly when the time is right. Include the brand story and visuals in your guide.

Your style guide and branding rules will help others understand your brand and how to create elements. These instructions will be needed to update your website, post on social media, and develop marketing and advertising campaigns.

Brand Rules and AssetsĀ 

Be consistent with your brand rules and assets as you use them. This means following your style guide and the same guidelines across all channels. You will increase your chances of creating memorable brands that align with your brand.

Your brand should be visible on all channels, even the ones you don’t use very often. Don’t forget to include your internal documents. Your visual mark can be applied to your standard operating procedures (SOPs), presentations, and other documents, which will help strengthen it internally.

Your brand will not always be the same. It’s essential to keep evolving with your customers, industry, and business. However, establishing your brand will help you build the foundation on which you can optimize your small business and further improve it.

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