5 Steps to Developing Your Small Business Brand
This article was authored by: Derek Goodman of Inbizability
Maybe you’re working to get your business off the ground - but you still haven’t defined your brand identity. If you think you’d benefit from brand strategy guidance from marketing experts, consider working with AMA Consulting Services! Furthermore, here’s how to deepen your branding wisdom through online education, determine exactly who you’re marketing to, and evaluate the success of your brand strategy.
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Invest in Your Education
What if your branding knowledge is lacking? You don’t have to try to figure out all of the intricacies of branding by researching it on your own. Here’s a good option: instead, you could take on an online business degree program. In a program like this, you’ll have the chance to study management principles, accounting, and corporate communications in addition to marketing and branding. By studying online, you’ll be able to complete your coursework on your own schedule while building your business.
Find Your Target Market
The best-branded content in the world won’t have the impact that you want if you’re not reaching the right audience. A strong branding strategy should directly communicate to your target market. These are the consumers who are most likely to patronize your company because your offerings can address their specific pain points.
Before you focus on any other element of your branding strategy, you have to identify your target customer. Figure out their income level, cultural background, geographic location, age, gender, and the problems they need your company to solve.
Check Out the Competition
Which branding choices will help you best connect with your target audience? To start getting some answers, analyze your competitors’ written and visual content. Take notes on their color schemes, tone of voice, messaging, graphics and visual brand symbols, and any other details that stand out prominently. Remember, you’re not trying to copy any other company’s brand strategy - you’re just trying to get a sense of which branding decisions could positively influence your target market to patronize your business.
Brand Voice and Aesthetics
Your brand voice and aesthetic elements are the two most important components of your brand. Picture your overall aesthetic and messaging as the foundation of your brand strategy. To work out your brand’s aesthetic, Honeybook recommends gathering visuals that would fit your business, assembling them into a mood board, assessing the board’s color palette, and then using this board as inspiration for your website’s design, logo, and social media graphics.
To cultivate a unique brand voice, Cutting Edge PR suggests thinking about how your target customer speaks and what kind of tone they will respect. Depending on your audience, you may need to take on a friendly, witty, or more authoritative tone.
Assess Strategy Effectiveness
Is your brand strategy boosting sales? To find out, you’ll need to collect sales and marketing data from social media platforms, email marketing tools, website traffic analytics, and other sources of business information. With so many potential metrics to track, which ones are really worth your attention? Marketing Evolution states that you’ll definitely want to consider customer satisfaction, repurchase data, brand salience, net promoter scores, and brand equity, which measures the social and financial worth of your brand. If your brand strategy has not been as effective as you had hoped, you may want to outsource certain marketing tasks to an agency.
Every company needs a brand, even small businesses! Don’t neglect to brand as you grow your company. Instead, use these tips to educate yourself on basic branding principles, create a strategy with your target market in mind, and differentiate your company from competing businesses in your niche.
Want to drive better results from digital marketing? Turn to AMA Consulting Services! Fill out the contact form on our website today to learn more about our services.
