What’s your favourite brand? When I ask this question, people often say Apple, Coke or Google. These brands are all around us everyday but this helps create a myth that establishing a brand presence is expensive, all about a flashy logo and something that only that big corporations can afford. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Branding isn’t just for global companies, it’s critical to the success of your small business.
Why is your brand so important?
- A clear brand is all about being consistent. It helps to attract your ideal clients to your business.
- It helps people recognise and remember your business each time they come across you, and to get to know you so they can think about doing business with you.
- It helps clients know what to expect when they work with you, so they’re confident that experience will always be the same, with no nasty surprises.
- And, most importantly, It helps you to stand from your competitors.
Your brand is about so much more than a logo. It’s about every single experience that clients, and potential clients, have of your business, including:
- Your online presence – Your website, blogs and social media accounts.
- Emails you send – Are they polite and clearly written? Do you reply when you say you will?
- Phone conversations – Do you actually answer the phone? What do you say when you pick up? Do you return clients’ messages and calls?
- Your product or service – Does it deliver value for money and live up to the promises you make about it?
- Follow up service – Do you check that a client’s happy with the service they’ve received from you? How do you respond to queries or complaints?
- Your business cards and other printed materials – What initial impression do they give of your business? Are they professional and do they all look as if they belong to the same business?
- You – How you behave, even when they meet you in the supermarket or the local pub. As a business owner, you’re inseparable from you’re business, so you’re never off duty!
Every time someone comes into contact with your business, they form an opinion of you and whether they trust you enough to do business with you. So even the smallest business needs a planned approach to their brand.
It doesn’t have to be costly, like many things in business, it just needs to be well thought out.
If you haven’t thought about your brand for a while, don’t panic! Here’s a simple exercise you can do now to see how you’re doing.
- Take a few minutes to write down what you want your brand experience to feel like for your customers. You might want to use my earlier blog post on values to help you.
- Then take 30 minutes to pull together all your printed and online material mentioned in the list above.
- Does everything look and sound like it comes from the same business? If not, make an action plan to make it all consistent. Prioritise the items and start with the most important ones first.
Investing some time and effort in a plan now will make things easier and help you to create greater impact in the future.
What questions have you got about your brand? Post them in the comments below and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.
Photo credit Bill Williams