For many, whether as sole traders, entrepreneurs, or marketing departments in larger companies and corporations, branding is perhaps one of the most impactful ways of engaging with customers and clients and showcasing what your business is.
Branding is often equated with a business logo, but it goes much deeper than that. It involves conveying the value of your product or service through the coordinated use of colours, fonts, graphics, and other elements. More profoundly, it should tell a story and instantly resonate with your target audience.
There’s a reason why Macca’s uses yellow as one of its core colours – it’s a colour associated psychologically with hunger and appetite. Just seeing the golden arches in bright yellow evokes hunger and instantly connects with most people. Your branding should likewise tell customers what your business is about as intuitively as possible.
Here are five quick tips on how to get your business branding right:
Your business should have a vision, mission statement, and values written out (or at the very least, you should know what they are). These define what your business represents and give you a standard for what you endeavour to achieve. Broken down in a more granular fashion, work out who your target audience is, e.g. only men/women, children, adults, retirees, etc.
Your unique selling proposition (USP) is what your business does that is unique; it’s a marketing term justifying why customers should shop with you over a competitor and defining what sort of value your product/service adds.
Your product or service, whether it be a highly niche artisanal item or a standard product or service, is what customers come to you for. Your branding should be capable of telling a story, conveying to customers an emotional connection that is authentic and genuine.
Drawing on heritage is always one avenue for established companies, but for newer companies (and established companies alike) your branding should showcase the connection between your business and the good/service received by the end customer.
In this regard, the use of graphic symbols, meaningful colour palettes, and typology that reflects the “feel” of your company can all have a tremendous impact. Think, for example, of Coca Cola. Although the company has for the most part kept its branding the same throughout its history, the few attempts it made at redesigning products (e.g. New Coke) were met with huge criticism and customers felt that it deracinated the product from the company.
When it comes down to the physical media (and digital) used by your business, it’s essential that everything matches and is done uniformly. You don’t want to have letterheads with an old logo and colour palette whilst advertising on social media with new branding – customers could be confused as to whether you’re the same business!
Make sure that you uniformly implement branding across everything from letterheads to business cards, envelopes, web design, and more. Commercial printing services should always use the same branding even if the purpose of the printed media is different!
Social proofing is essential for making sure that your branding is recognisable. This is often much harder for established businesses (think of the aforementioned Coca-Cola example), but for new businesses, it’s perhaps your first go at branding so it’s perhaps much easier.
Propagate your brand by launching digital marketing campaigns and/or sending out printed materials, brochures, etc. to customers. The more that people see your brand, the more they associate it with your company and what you offer.
Always entrust the important task of printing all of your newly branded materials to a reputable print-on-demand shop near you such as Print on Demand. Our team can assist with the preparation of any necessary stationery and printed materials to ensure your brand is consistent and high-quality.
Contact Print on Demand today.
