Branding Strategy For Small Business
Online Marketing Strategies

Branding Strategy For Small Business.

2016-03-25 | 3779 Print Friendly Version of this pagePrint Get a PDF version of this webpagePDF


Branding Strategy used by Corporate Branding

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Branding is a pedal stone every small business owners will love to achieve, and in doing so it only means that a lot of people are now talking about your business, its every where they turn to. Branding is a permanent stigma that makes people to unconsciously target a particular company for its service, eg everyone knows to search for something online you use "Google"...in this context Google can be said to be a brand for online searches, in fact you must have heard the word Google it from some of your friends when you ask a question they don't know.

That is the impact level branding can bring to your small business, so in order to build such a brand using inbound marketing via the web can actually be of best interest, but there are some cogent branding strategies you might want to take a look at in other to build a strong recognition for your small business.

What is brand strategy?

By definition, brand strategy is a long-term plan for the development of a successful brand in order to achieve specific goals. First, let's clear up the biggest misconception about brand strategy: Your brand is not your product, your logo, your website, or your name. In fact, your brand is much more than that -- it's the stuff that feels intangible. But it's that hard-to-pin-down feeling that separates powerhouse and mediocre brands from each other...as defined by hubspot.com

Defining Your Brand Identity

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Defining your brand identity means you have to understand what makes your business unique, you might need to give it some serious reviews and comparison with similar product/service. If you can answer most of the questions below then you are a one step closer to defining your brand:

  • Do you know your company's mission and vision statement?
  • What are the benefits and features of your products or services? do not mix them up, benefits are what your customers gain from using your service/product, ie the solution you provide, why the features are characteristics found on your product/service, this will make it easier for your customers to differentiate you from competitors.
  • How do your customers and prospects perceive your company?
  • What qualities do you want them to associate with your company?

Do your research. Learn the needs and wants, habits and desires of your current and prospective customers. And don't rely on assumptions on what they think. You need to Know what they think.

Once you've defined your brand, how do you get the word out? Here are 8 Branding Strategy For Small Business:

1. Create a great logo (Brand Identity).

​ Placing logo everywhere is not an ethic method of growing brand identity, the future of branding is fluid and engaging — respect your customers' intelligence by not giving everything away up front. Generate some intrigue and allow them to unearth more about your brand for themselves. This is the way to foster ambassadors who revel in telling other people what they have discovered.

2. Let your brand Speak Volume (Brand Identity). 

What are the key messages you want to communicate about your brand? ...these are mostly used as slogans which are intertwined with mission or vision statements of the company. They represent the voice of your corporate identity, most big corporate branding firms know the importance of adding a voice to a brand in a form of catchy slogans. This voice should be applied to all written communication and incorporated in the visual imagery of all materials, online and off.

3. Integrate your brand (Brand Identity). 

Branding extends to every aspect of your business--your customer supports, after sale service, your design choices, your e-mail signature, virtually everything that makes you unique. Most predominantly your branding color seems to be the most integrated aspect of branding, this might sound off topic but when it comes to branding, color seems to be the most perceived by customers and I will talk more on the psychology of using the right colors to represent your brand below.

4. Develop a tagline. 

Write a memorable, meaningful and concise statement that captures the essence of your brand.

5. Design templates and create brand standards for your marketing materials. 

Use the same color scheme (we shall talk more on colors below), logo placement, look and feel throughout. You don't need to be fancy, just consistent.

6. Be true to your brand.

 Customers won't return to you--or refer you to someone else--if you don't deliver on your brand promise.

7. Be consistent. 

I placed this point last only because it involves all of the above and is the most important tip I can give you. If you can't do this, your attempts at establishing a brand will fail.

8. Loyalty, Rewards and Contest.

You can build a strong brand with special offers and coupon generation for your brand marketing, utilizing this branding strategies using contest campaign or raffle draws depends on the magnitude of your audience reach, you could incorporate co-branding technics with other synergy product/service provider, such as a washing machine and a detergent, an insurance company and a car dealer ship. You can build a strong brand identity with such inbound marketing, promoting loyalty to consistent and repeated customers.

This also helps to spread the word of mouth about your product/service, as Good news also travels fast and will always lead to people talking about your business.

 

UNDERSTANDING COLOR

  • Color plays a significant role in brand perception.
  • Color is the most influential element of our natural senses, followed by shapes, symbols and lastly words.
  • Color plays a major perception in a logo and brand, if designing a brand.
  • Color do not discriminate and its important to get it right format the start.

How brands uses color...it's best to always make a research when designing a logo for your brand as this will help you understand the concept behind such brand design.

Color Trends

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According to Forbes, from study, color can increase a brand recognition by 80%. The amount of companies that makes use of two or three color combination -- 95% utilize one or two colors, especially when starting off it makes it easier to recognized as 5% utilize more than two colors and 41% make use of text while only 9% don't use their company's name, trust me you have to be a very big brand for you not to use your company's name.
Our brain preferred recognizable brands and it influences our decision and perception of the company itself, making color a key factor when branding.

COLOR BRANDING TEST

Apple -black is used to invoke some sort of sophistication, black works well for brands that wish to promote that luxurious high end value, it represent things like prestige, value.
Microsoft utilize different colors to represent precision, uniqueness, broad and elegance and the font is a segoui.

Google also utilize multicolor representing a diverse portfolio.
Coca cola utilizes red which deficit hunger (same as orange and yellow used in food chains like McDonalds and KFC) it stimulates appetite and passionate. Frank Mason Robinson was a book keeper who designed the logo for coca cola in 1885 and at the time utilized the two C's  as a design interception adopted by John Pemberton (inventor of coca cola).
Blue is used by Sam Sung, General Electrics, Facebook and IBM a simple logo which is said to represent confidence and superiority, the blue shade is set to represent  strength and dominance of their brands same used by tech companies and designed by one of the great designer (designed by Paul rand).
Yellow is used by McDonalds and it represent like hope optimizing and energy and very eye catchy, used to represent in light and warmth in a lot of fast food chain.
Toyota utilizes both gray silver color and red, using white to depict purity in your brand.

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Top 10 most branding companies according to Forbes

Other Corporate Branding
Green is used by Starbucks from their brown color logo which was used to deficit the coffee making brand to green and basically went wordless and wanted to make the brand more recognized and more wordily received.
Green is very much synonymous with calmness, freshness and health and various shad of green and deeper green and lighter green, move from affluence to more serene, from health to wealth.
Purple is used by hallmark which means royalty and stands for mysterious, rich and elegant and sophistication and spirituality with purple.
Pink is used by Barbie logo and the brand date all the way back 1950 in New York toy shop and has the minimal style, softness and gentleness of a sweet young feminine and all this quality makes it fit for the Barbie logo.
Initially the type of writing was used to represent a young girl's hand writing.
Orange is used by Nickelodeons which is fun and youthful and majorly targeted for youthful typography theme, orange is interesting as it is the mix of red and yellow so it takes on the two traits as well and associates itself with vitality and brightness.
The other area of branding with color we can take a look at is negative space in design, this can be seen from FEDEX design you will notice in their design that they do have a sort of arrow space in their logo, which was actually placed in there. 
It was created not by mistake by the designer, but during the design you need to be careful for negative space in design.

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If you will like to build a brand identity or corporate identity for your business or organization it is best to sort out competent branding companies that can envisage the true concept of your corporate identity or brand identity and build a brand strategy channel it into a successful brand marketing.

Build a brand is a consistent virtue and denotes a success ringtone which can not be exchanged or bought off your prospects or customers, you need to be totally committed to the success of your business both physically, mentally and financially. All aspect of your business administrative component must resonate this beliefs.


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Olatunji Adetunji

I am a seo web analyst and have a love for anything online marketing. Have been able to perform researches using the built up internet marketing tool; seo web analyst as a case study and will be using the web marketing tool (platform).

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