No matter the size of your business or your industry, branding matters. Your brand shapes how your customers view your business, products, and services. A strong brand promotes sales, and also leads to more favorable relationships with vendors, partners, investors, and lenders. Branding, when done well, improves your market position.
The question is, what can your small business do to strengthen its brand? There are a number of approaches you might consider, and in this post we’ll round up a few of the essentials.
1. Get your business structure right
As you consider a strong brand for your small business, one important factor is the legal structure you employ. This may sound counterintuitive: After all, what does your legal formation possibly have to do with how your business is perceived by the general public?
Quite a lot, actually. Your legal structure provides you with a chance to show that you’re not just treating your business as a hobby,, but as a serious, credible, professional business. For example, registering your small business as an LLC conveys to your customers, investors, and lenders that you’ve gone through all the legal processes needed to establish a viable legal entity. Going to the trouble of becoming an LLC is a show of strength.
To find out more about steps for registering an LLC, check with your local Secretary of State or Chamber of Commerce, as the process varies depending on your location. To form an LLC in Texas is one thing, while forming an LLC in New York might look a little different.
2. Define Your Brand
Choosing the right legal structure for your business is an important branding activity, but there’s something even more basic you need to do: Define what kind of brand you’re looking to create.
You need a brand identity that sets you apart from the competition, and demonstrates why customers might trust you to address their problems or meet their needs. Spend some time generating brand messaging and a brand story that can guide your efforts. Create your mission statement, lists of company values, and unique brand positioning.
Of course, these messages will be most meaningful if they are shaped by real-world data. Both consumer personas and competitor research can help you identify potential opportunities to set your brand apart.
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3.Develop a strong visual identity
Branding isn’t just about words. It’s also about aesthetics. The imagery you associate with your company can reinforce your brand messaging, especially when you employ imagery consistently across your various assets and online properties.
Think in detail about general color palette, fonts, and other aesthetic preferences that speak to your brand identity. Create a kind of internal style guide you can use for all your online branding. Develop a website that truly reflects your brand values, messaging, and imagery.
Remember that consistency is the most important concern here, so stick to your style guide and to that core palette you’ve set, whether that’s in logo development, website creation, brochures, or social media profiles.
4. Maintain a Strong Online Presence
Speaking of social media profiles, one of the most important ways to strengthen your small business brand is to actually be present on the web, ready to connect with consumers across various stages of their buyer journey.
Social media represents one of the best ways to do this, but blogging can also be important. Sharing regular content about your industry is a powerful way to establish your topical authority,and develop a brand built on trust and authority.
Consistent content creation and social media interactions are vital to any small business branding initiative.
5. Engage with your audience
Branding involves conveying information about your business and its values, but it also involves active listening. To put it differently, branding should be conversational. It should be a two-way street.
For example,when you take the time to answer questions and address concerns that your customers voice over social media, you build a reputation of helpfulness and for customer service.
It’s also meaningful when you collect reviews and testimonials, incorporating them into your branding to further signify goodwill and trust. Customer validation can go a long way toward establishing yours as the brand of choice among consumers.
6. Improve customer experience
One critical way to improve your brand positioning is to ensure that your customers have a frictionless experience from beginning to end. Of course that means focusing on quality control in all your products and services. And it means ensuring responsive customer service during the product research phase, throughout sales transactions, and even on the back-end.
Another way to boost customer experience is by making sure you have a website that performs smoothly and seamlessly. Verify that it loads quickly, and that it’s optimized to work well across all browser and device types.
7. Monitor your brand
A final point: Branding is never set-it-and-forget-it. It’s a long-term process, and it’s important to monitor what people are saying about your brand and to make revisions or adjustments as needed.
This might mean focusing on quantifiable metrics like website traffic or digital impressions. It may also involve qualitative data, whether that’s online comments or Google review trends. Of course, you can also use polls and surveys to actively request feedback from your target audience. Not only is this a great way to gather information, but it can help your customers feel seen and heard.
8. Make branding a top priority
To establish a strong market position for your small business, branding is a must. From choosing the right legal structure to embracing a consistent aesthetic palette, from demonstrating thought leadership to regularly monitoring your brand perception, there are plenty of ways to fortify your position. Use the guidelines here as your jumping-off point.
