5 Tips for Branding Your Small Business

One of the most common misconceptions that new business owners make is believing that their business brand consists mostly of choosing the company colors and creating a good-looking logo. However, there is much more to it than that. Your company’s brand determines its overall reputation and identity, which means it consists of virtually every information out there that is available to your audience. We are talking about things such as your digital presence, quality of service, company values and much more. With that in mind, here are five tips for branding your small business that are known to work.

1.     Start by defining it

As we already mentioned in the introduction, the key to branding your business lies in revealing its identity to the world. First, though, you need to identify it yourself. What kind of services do you provide? What innovations are you bringing to your market? Are you a local brand or a global phenomenon? What are your short- and long- term goals? In other words, in order to show your business in the best light to others, you need to understand it yourself first.

2.     Make a consistent tone and voice

Even though a corporate identity is not the same as the personal one, it will be much easier for people to see your business as a coherent entity if you manage to create a consistent tone and voice. The best way to achieve this is to either deal with most of your company’s content and public declarations on your own or to have a single member of your team who focuses on this duty. Furthermore, even if you have a plethora of guest posters, you need to make strict guidelines and enforce them as much as possible.

3.     Come up with a good name

The ancient Romans had a saying that one’s name says it all (nomen est omen). Hence, even before they further inquire into your business, your potential clients will start judging you according to your name. First of all, you need to come up with something short and easy to memorize. Additionally, while it might be a good idea (keyword-wise) to use something descriptive, it might also be best to avoid some of the most common niche-phrases in order to be unique. Furthermore, you might want to do some research regarding the availability of the desired domain names so that you’ll be able to buy the domain later on.

4.     Learn from the best

In the era of the internet, you are bound to find so many contradicting tips, that you simply can never know for sure who to trust. Therefore, you might want to try and put aside your subjective impression of someone’s words and let their success do the talking. All in all, you might want to closely inspect the top-dogs of your business niche or the business world in general, and see what it is that they are doing right.

5.     Become omnipresent

Finally, you need to start increasing your company’s digital footprint by leaving trails of your existence everywhere. Register on all the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn and start sharing, connecting and commenting. At this point, anything you do raises people’s awareness, so make sure that your posts are always positive, informative and entertaining.

Conclusion

In other words, in order to be successful in branding your business, you must first understand it. Regardless of the money and effort invested, your business will still have its advantages and weaknesses and the degree of your success will be determined by how well you play around them. Furthermore, keep in mind that every single situation you might encounter is completely unique, which means that all the tips and great examples can only take you so far. The rest you will have to figure out on your own.