5 Things Small Businesses Must Know About Branding
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Branding Matters
The whole concept of branding is foreign to many small businesses. They view it as something that only matters in the ivory towers of global corporations.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Branding is all about making your business memorable, and it’s the small business rather than the big one that’s likely to get lost in the shuffle. Here are five core concepts that small business owners should know about branding.
1. Repetition and Consistency Are Key
Any parent knows that when you say something once it seldom sinks in, and parents who send mixed messages confuse their children … and perhaps themselves! The same dynamics apply to branding: the market needs to see the same imagery and the samemessage again and again and again.
2. Sales Reps Can Undermine Your Consistency
Even in large organizations, sales reps tend to develop their own way of talking about the company they represent. However, if every rep tells a different story, your customer base will ultimately have many different impressions of what your business does. This may cause customers and prospects to overlook key products and services — and perhaps look for them elsewhere.
3. Branding Is More Than Just a Logo
Every business should have a logo, but just as important are a consistent color scheme for the website and brochures, a strong tagline, and a consistent set of talking points for sales and marketing communication. Branding should dive deeper into the details still, in terms of consistent font styles, product/service descriptions, item numbers, and any other data and imagery customers see.
4. Branding Is Far More Than Window Dressing
Effective branding reflects and projects the core values and key differentiators of your business. A strong brand tells customers what you stand for and why they should buy from you. Are you the cheapest? The best quality? The most reliable? The most innovative? Your imagery and messaging must get to the heart of what you do.
5. Branding Must Be Focused
You must confine your branding to a few critical concepts. No amount of branding expertise can communicate that you’re the cheapest, best quality, most reliable AND the most innovative. The more you dilute your message, the harder it is to remember and the less important it sounds. This is counterintuitive for sales people and small business owners who feel compelled to tell the whole company story every time they have the floor.
Look Before You Leap
Some franchises have become such strong leaders in their industries that when you, the potential investor, are deciding where to put your money, it’s only natural that you’d consider them. But before you make any final decisions, make sure you’ve thought about everything, including these eight reasons not to buy based on the brand alone.
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