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In essence, a brand is how your audience and customers think of your business and what you represent to them. It feels more than just a logo or a name.

Knowing this, you really need to think about how your audience makes you feel when they think about your brand.

1. Define your brand

To define your brand, figure out what your mission is, what benefits you offer your audience, what features are important to your audience, what type of customers you want to attract, and what qualities you want your audience to associate with you if they do think of you. Take the time to write a mission statement that includes what you do, who you do it, why you do it, and how you do it.

2. Choose colors, fonts, and images

What types of colors, fonts, and images will you use? It depends on the industry your company represents, what the audience likes and what feelings those things evoke.

3. Create a logo

It’s usually best to hire a professional to create a logo. The logo is a legal representation of your business and you cannot use stock images, well-known logos, or sometimes even specific fonts in the logo. By hiring a trusted professional, they can use your mission statement, audience information, and other information to help you create the right logo that evokes the emotions you want your audience to feel.

4. Develop a slogan

The slogan is a very short, catchy, and memorable statement that explains your brand to everyone who meets you for the first time. Remember, you need to create something original for your business that encapsulates your business.

5. Integrate the brand across all channels

Your brand needs to stay the same whether online or offline. Whether it’s a tagline, how you answer the phone, how you unsubscribe from your email, how users interact with your website and social media, and more, make sure it all fits together and reinforces the same message—it doesn’t matter where your audience finds you and interacts with you.

6. Don’t forget your brand voice

It’s important to make sure the tone always matches, whether you’re publishing a blog post, book, video, podcast, webinar, or anything else. Is your brand traditional, traditional, modern, irreverent, or something else?

7. Create templates

So that you can educate all your employees or contractors about your brand, you can develop materials and templates to help everyone you hire. Writing guides, brand guides, technical templates, presentation templates, and more help ensure your brand is consistent across channels.

8. Keep your promises

It is important that you live up to the brand you have created for yourself. If you promise 100%, no question asked, do it. When you say it, you have to do it or you won’t be trusted to live up to your brand—and talk travels fast these days.

9. Be consistent

Consistency is one of the keys to all aspects of doing business – including branding your small business. Be consistent in your branding efforts across all online and offline channels. Whether you run paid advertising or produce free content, branding is essential to ensure you become a memorable company in your industry.

Branding is important for both small and large business owners. If you’re on a tight budget, a smart brand is probably the most cost-effective business tool you can create.

Credit: John Allo