Branding Your Small Business: What’s the Big Deal?

Imagine the following scenario:

You walk into your friend’s party–alone–pessimistic that you’ll meet anyone even relatively your “type.” But, as you take a sip of your drink of choice (we’ll say a cold Kokanee), your eyes meet the gaze of someone across the room oozing in physical attraction. You smile; they approach and ask your name. You think you’ve met a real catch … until the conversation begins. On the outside, this person is the full package. Yet, they have the personality of a cardboard box. This is poor branding personified–looks good but doesn’t deliver.

Developing your company’s brand is vitally important to your company. Branding drives the efficiency of your marketing (and marketing drives sales) (and sales drive that new car you’re eyeing). Therefore, your brand impacts your sales. Branding, however, is more than just a trendy logo or a few well-written messages. Rather, it’s the carefully constructed interplay of both.

Small business branding relies heavily on strong written messaging and eye-popping, drink-dropping, sock-offing graphic design pieces to represent your company to its full extent. They work in stereo to create the brand personality that your ideal clients will salivate over.

So, where do you begin? Some startups stumble into the mistake of paying a graphic design firm to make them a logo, right out of the gate. While it may seem intuitive to begin your small business branding journey with imagery, it is more effective to first identify brand messaging that your clients will find irresistible. Who, exactly, is your business, and what makes it special, really special? Fleshing this out first with a pro branding team will establish the direction, theme and attitude you want your brand to portray to new and existing clients. THEN it’s time to move into some visuals. This way the designers will have an intimate understanding of what your business is trying to accomplish.

Don’t let your brand make a fool of herself in the world of small business branding by looking or sounding like a fool … or a poindexter … or a bum … or anything other than credible and capable.

Ready to get your brand up and running so it can soon have customers swooning? Let’s have a conversation about your business and your dreams. Start here.