Branding for Small Business

By: Johana M. Caba, M.A.

As a small business, you might think that you already have a brand. And, although that might be true, you cannot base your branding on having a logo, some marketing, some advertising, and customers. Branding and a business’ brand identity are much more than that. Whereas branding is about having a product or service that is distinguishable from other products and services in that category or industry, brand identity consists of the visible elements of the brand like colors, logo, fonts, images, etc. It is the process of creating content and disseminating that content with the brand name, its qualities, personality, identifiable elements, and distinctiveness. 

According to MarTech, a brand strategy is “built on a platform of differentiation, where a company can use its value proposition to create competitive advantages and satisfy customer needs”. Good branding can increase sales, it increases the value of a company, it can provide employees with direction and motivation, and it can make it easier to attract new customers. 

We all know that strong branding improves recognition. Think of your favorite brand. For example, we all know Coke from the distinctive red cans and glass bottles, cursive logo, and taste. That’s because Coke is considered a central brand in the soft drinks industry. Central brands are top-of-mind for consumers and they tend to serve as reference points for comparison. 

According to a Harvard Business Review article on branding, “striking the right balance between centrality and distinctiveness is critical, because a company’s choices influence not just how the brand will be perceived, but how much of it will be sold and at what price - and, ultimately, how profitable it will be.”

Branding is important for many reasons, and as a small business owner, you should consider taking a step back and determining if you have a brand strategy. Like I said before, a logo and some marketing are not the same thing as a brand strategy. The most important goal of your strategy is brand awareness. We want a solid, established, clear, and consistent brand across platforms and channels because we want to raise brand awareness within our target audience. 

On average, it only takes 7 seconds for individuals to form an impression of a brand, and it takes 5-7 impressions to begin recognizing the company logo. And like with everything else in life, first impressions matter. They are vital to developing a loyal customer base. How is brand loyalty formed? One way is by having shared values with your target audience because this helps to increase relatability and foster stronger relationships. How does a brand become more memorable in the minds of consumers? Think of color. Colors help improve the recognition of a brand in consumers’ minds by 80% because color is one of the first things our brains perceive.

So, how can your small business develop a brand strategy to increase recognition and raise awareness about your business?

If we think from a marketing perspective first, think of these questions:

• What is your customer’s pain point? What are they struggling with? What problem do they need fixing?
• What solution to their problem are you offering?
• What is the problem itself? Isolate the problem to determine if your solution is the right solution.
• How are you conveying this problem, pain point, and solution to your audience? This is your story. This is the experience you are selling and thus the branding you are conveying.

You can continue the process by thinking about the following questions:

• What will your brand stand for? Or what does your current brand stand for?
• What promises is your brand making to customers or clients?
• What personality will your brand convey throughout your marketing communications? Do you already have a brand personality? 
• What story are you telling? This is the key. You might be wondering why I’m asking you about the story you are telling. It comes down to one thing. Your brand strategy is the combination of your story, vision, mission, and goals. 

These questions will help you get your thoughts down before you begin crafting your strategy. 

What is a brand strategy?

Now, let’s take a step back for a moment. Let’s think about your product or service. In the world we live in today, competition is in every single niche. So, if your product or service does not resonate with your target audience, then you will not succeed. This is why you need to make sure that your product or service is the right fit for your market, it is solving the problem of your target audience, and your value proposition resonates with them. Value proposition is intended to make your product or service attractive to your target audience. That’s why I keep stating that your brand strategy is not just your logo, some advertising, and some marketing. Why? Because good branding is not just visual, it also helps your business raise awareness and attract customers so that you can hit your organizational and revenue goals.

A brand strategy can be defined as a long-term plan that documents specific ideas and concepts to help keep your branding consistent, memorable, and distinct throughout your marketing communications platforms. This plan will cover your purpose, vision, mission, beliefs, core values, attitudes, target audience, value proposition, and positioning. And, it will guide your marketing communications decisions to ensure that you remain consistent, memorable, and distinct.

How to create a brand strategy?
First thing is first, you need to research and understand your customer. You can do this by analyzing the data that you might already have on your website analytics or your social media insights. You can also do this by researching your competitors. Your brand strategy will depend on your ideal customer, so it is always a good idea to define your ideal customer and create personas to guide you. I have an entire section on ideal customer personas and the customer journey on my free guide. 

Let’s go over how to create your brand strategy: 

1. What is your business strategy? This is the first step because you need to clearly know and understand the overall goal of your business. Your brand strategy will help you accomplish your business goals. Your brand strategy objectives need to be aligned with your business objectives. Remember, all of your brand and marketing objectives serve one purpose, to help you accomplish your overall business objectives.
2. What is at the heart of your small business? Here, think about your purpose, vision, mission and core values. Your core values will be a driving force in helping you resonate with your target audience. 
3. Who is your target audience? You need to identify your target audience. Think demographics and psychographics. But, also think about what makes your ideal customer act. Remember to take note of where your ideal customers spend most of their time online. 
4. What is your positioning? How is your small business different from others in your market/industry and why should potential customers choose your products or services over the competition? To write a positioning statement, you need to be clear on what you are promising. It should be between 3-5 sentences and be realistic. You should make sure that you can deliver on what you are promising.
5. What message are you trying to convey? Your key messages are so important because they guide all of your strategies. You need to make sure that your messages are being delivered and translate your positioning to your target audience. If you have more than one target audience, you should make sure to tailor your messages to each audience. Different points will resonate with different audiences. Make sure to develop your value proposition, your tagline, and your brand essence (brand personality, voice, and tone). For example, is your personality serious and academic or innovative, is it conservative or preppy. These are elements that will help you with conveying your message to your audience. Your tagline is a sentence, word, or short phrase that is used to summarize your market position. For example, Good for You Candles. You can also look up examples of taglines for reference.
6. Do you have your visual system ready? Your logo, typography/fonts, photography, colors, and other visual elements. These items are not necessarily a part of your brand strategy, but they are part of your brand identity. Remember that your brand identity will help differentiate you from the competition. 
7. And, your brand guidelines? You should have guiding principles behind your verbal and visual branding. These will help you remain consistent as well as helping new employees or freelancers be able to pick up on how they should create content for your small business.

But, how do you  implement the strategy?

• You should create content that’s aligned with your brand. You can document your content strategy to serve as a guide for you, your employees, and freelancers or agencies.
• You should tell your brand story at every contact point with your target audience.
• Have an effective content distribution strategy in place. This will help you maximize the reach of your content. Repurpose when you can. Your blog posts can be Instagram and Twitter posts, and one long Instagram caption can be 2-5 Twitter posts. 
• Master your content creation by improving your content production. Create a media library to help your team with photos, videos, and visuals that they can use to create content. Make sure to keep a list of sales, events, and key messages that you want to share to help your team.
• Teamwork makes the dream work. So if you hire freelancers or agencies, help them out by having everything that they will need such as that content library and brand guidelines.
• Here is a list of books that can be helpful with tips on effective branding.

​Conclusion
The key takeaways for your small business are that you need a brand strategy to guide your marketing communications, you need to understand what your brand stands for and what story you are telling, and you need to define your branding and brand identity to remain clear, consistent, and memorable. An important point about your brand strategy is that it will serve as a guide for you, that way your marketing communications work without waste. Meaning, that you are not spending money without a clear objective, purpose, or story. In order to be the most efficient, and get the most for your money, you need to make sure that your message remains clear and consistent throughout all of your platforms.