The Essential Branding Guide for Small Businesses

Shareium March 3, 2022 No Comments

You’re launching a small business, and you’re eager to start promoting your products and services so you can make your first sales. But you’re just not sure how to connect with the customers you hope to target. Establishing a clear, coherent brand should be a key aspect of your marketing strategy. By putting out advertisements in line with your brand through platforms like Shareium, you can reach local customers.

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If you have never heard of the concept of branding before, you might be confused about what it means, or how you can create a brand for your business. These tips will walk you through every important aspect of branding for small businesses.

What Is a Brand?

First, it’s important to understand what the term “branding” really means in the context of marketing. Oberlo states that your brand refers to the public perception of your company. What values does your company profess? What kinds of visual design choices and language do you use to convey these values to your customers?

Your branding choices can give your customers a certain “feeling” about your company. For example, they might think of your brand as forward-thinking, bubbly, minimalistic, disruptive, innovative, or uplifting. As you build the foundations of your brand, think about what kind of impression you want to make and how you would want customers to describe your brand.

Define Your Target Market

You can’t establish your brand without defining your target market. Maybe you already have a general idea of who you’re trying to sell to, but you need to get specific during this part of the process.

Start by nailing down the demographics of your target customer, including their age, gender, marital status, location, cultural background, and income and average net worth. Next, you need to think about their lifestyle attributes. For instance, are they retired, or are they still in the workforce? What kinds of hobbies do they have? What can you predict about their shopping habits? Do they buy any products from competitors in your niche, and if so, how can you differentiate your offerings?

When it comes to distinguishing your company from your competition in the eyes of your target market, you will want to hone in on a few key factors. Could you sell your products at a price point that provides better value? How could you improve your service compared to your competitors? These will all be important considerations for your target customers.

Visual Branding Elements

Now, you’re ready to start outlining your business’s brand. You can begin with several visual elements. First, you can develop a color scheme that reflects the mood you want to create. If you want your brand to come across as cheerful and playful, bright colors or pastels could be a good fit! On the other hand, if you want to create a more serious aesthetic for a mature audience, you may want to go with darker colors or a neutral color scheme. Marketing Insider Group also recommends creating a logo and choosing specific fonts that you want to use in your marketing materials.

Messaging and Voice

Your brand consists of more than just visuals – you also need to conceptualize your brand voice! Almost all of your marketing materials will likely include some sort of messaging, whether it’s through a well-placed quote, a script for a short video, the text in a content marketing blog post, or a caption under a photo posted on social media.

Think about which language choices and vocabulary will sound familiar and trustworthy for your target customer. You want to convey a sense of expertise while making your customers feel as though your brand is a little bit like a reliable friend – they can turn to you when they’re in need.

Devise Your Go-To-Market Strategy

When you’re in the ideation stage for a new product, you’re also thinking about how you can successfully introduce it to the market. If you have never launched a product before, you might be surprised by all of the complexities that can crop up throughout the process. To make sure that you don’t miss a single detail, you should download a go to market strategy template before you begin the planning process.

You do not have to spend time putting together a template from scratch – instead, you can invest in an organized, pre-made template. With this template, you will have room to input information about your overall business plan, your ideas for marketing tactics, and other details about your product’s release.

Leverage Ads for Awareness

To raise initial brand awareness, you’re going to need to launch your first ad campaign. An ad campaign can include promotions across social media, email, your website, or other marketing channels like radio and print. You can create video ads, banner ads, animated ads, or simple visuals.

To devise a successful campaign, you will want to start with a specific goal in mind. How many sales do you want to make? How many leads do you want to generate? Next, make sure to design all of your materials with your brand standards in mind. It’s important to ensure that all of your branded content looks cohesive across different mediums.

In-House Projects vs. Outsourcing

If you don’t have the skills to tackle a particular branding project in-house, you could always outsource it to save time. For example, you can personally develop your brand guidelines and set up a basic website, but you may want to turn over graphic design, content writing, and social media management to an outside contractor or marketing agency.

Developing your brand can be a creative, collaborative project! Even if you’re completely new to branding, the general principles are quite simple for entrepreneurs to grasp. By getting a clear picture of your target market, planning out the visual elements of your brand, and establishing the tone for your marketing materials, you can draw in more customers and grow your small business.

Want to advertise in your community? Turn to Shareium for digital ads! Submit an ad through our website today.

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