Creative Branding For Small Businesses, Startups & Beginners

Branding for small businesses is equally important. It helps in increased revenue, bigger customer base, increased sales etc. Large companies spend millions on their branding.

Branding is defined as a marketing practice through which a brand creates an identity for their business by using a name, symbol or a logo. It is one of the most important aspects of marketing as it helps in distinguishing a business in front of their audience. Branding for small businesses makes you stand out from the competition and communicates with your audience about the unique things that you have to offer.

Branding for small businesses is a necessity. But, smaller brands can also create an amazing branding strategy without breaking the bank.

Branding for small businesses: 11 ultimate tips to create an effective branding strategy

1. Evaluate Your Target Audience

Your target audience plays a key role in your branding strategy as they are the receivers of your communicated message. For an effective branding for small businesses, you should have a good idea about your target audience. If your target audience is male from ages 14-35, your branding strategy should be about attracting them to your brand. When you have a good idea about your target audience, it can be used to create an effective branding strategy for your startup business.

2. Starting Small

It shouldn’t matter how big your company is to develop a brand identity for your brand. Smaller things such as coming up with your brand’s mission, vision and guidelines is something to be done from the very beginning. These things lay the foundation of your branding strategy as it helps in communicating what you are as a brand to your customers.

3. Start with a Logo

A logo is the identity of your brand and basically the most important aspect of creating a stunning brand identity. A logo communicates your brand’s vision to your customers through various design elements such as icons, fonts and symbols. It is the foundation of your brand strategy as it helps in attracting your customers, creating a strong first impression, making your brand memorable and fostering brand loyalty in your customers.

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4. Staying true and creating authenticity

Your brand messaging is what makes you unique. The best thing you can do while working a branding strategy is staying true to your brand. Never put any false information in terms of offering more to your targeted customers. Also, another thing is that your messaging should be unique. Be authentic to your customers while developing your brand identity.

5. Hire a branding designer

If you are struggling with the design aspect of your brand strategy, it will be a great idea to hire a branding designer for your business. Branding designer can be an agency, a designer or an online platform like Designfier to help you get creative designs for your branding strategy. A good designer always presents you multiple designs for a single task and with us, you can get multiple professional designs in no time!

6. Making a brand style guide

After taking care of planning and design, the next step towards creating an exceptional brand identity is by creating a style guide for your brand. A brand style guide is a rulebook containing all your messaging requirements in order to create a more consistent message for your brand. A good style book saves a lot of time in explaining your messaging requirement to your stakeholders, your new employees and your branding designers.

7. Enforce the use of Style Guide

What is the use of having a style guide if you don’t use it? Your brand identity has to be strong, consistent and easily recognizable. So it is deeply encouraged to use the style book while on boarding a new employee so they can also be up to date with your brand design and style requirements. Use the style guide on each aspect of your messaging such as social media posts, website content design and blogs to give your brand a consistent look. Also, keep on updating your style guide regularly to stay updated with the latest trends for your business.

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8. Making a Press Kit

A press kit is defined as a page on your website that contains resources and information for reporters, publishers and influencers. Having a press kit makes sure that your brand is represented accurately and it is a highly recommended branding tip for small businesses.

Some of the things that a press kit can include are:

·         PNG Logos

·         Messaging

·         Your Company Bio

·         Press Contact

·         Pictures of your staff, products and services

·         Press Releases

·         Company Facts

9. Branding for Each Marketing Channel

As a business grows, the branding requirements also increase. This stands true majorly while branding for smaller businesses as they grow faster. So your brand strategy should consist of working on branding on each of your desired marketing channels. Choosing a marketing channel effectively depends on your marketing budget, ideal channels and the type of content you work with. Smaller businesses usually go for digital marketing as it’s easy to set up, works on its own and provides faster feedback.

So, start by choosing the right platform and come up with effective guidelines in terms for creating content based on each social media channel (Text, Images and video).

10. User-generated contest and Hashtags

In order to get the most of your branding strategy, using your customers is a great way to acquire new customers and build strong relationships with your existing ones. So you can create branding hashtags, user generated contests and hashtags to make your audience create better opportunities for your business growth. For a successful branding for small businesses, try to explore latest social media trends and guidelines.

11. Testing your concepts

If you are working on rebranding, try your concepts before you actually use them in your branding strategy. Start by using social media to try out new visuals and messages. Have a close look at your engagement and like to find out if it’s even working with your target audience.

Try to engage your customers while you work on rebranding by putting up polls, going through the comments and messages to provide your customers with something that they prefer. This way you create a branding strategy that is already liked by your audience.

Branding isn’t difficult. Once you follow these small business branding tips in creating a brand strategy, you will easily hook your customers and see your brand grow faster!

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