How to Brand Your Brand-New Business

The most important thing to remember about branding is that a “Brand is a Promise”. A brand promises consistency. A customer choosing a brand is expecting to experience the same thing they did the last time they purchase your product or used your services.

Strong branding can also draw in new customers by sparking an emotional connection even before a product is purchased. With some careful planning and hard work, any business can start to see the benefits of smart branding. To start, learn how to position your new brand, create the look for your business, and start establishing 

strong connections with your customers.

>>> Keep these questions in mind: What is your brand’s promise to your customers or clients? Remember, the promise is base on consistency. What will you consistently, over time, provide? Would it be the performance, reliability, convenience, luxury, price? These are just a few of the things that “Brand Promise” could and should deliver all the time.

This is often where the real fun begins when colors and taglines start to materialize and your brand finds its identity.  The way your business should look to customers should become more and more obvious as you’re developing your brand positioning. A website at this time becomes very important. It should reflect your brand which will help promote, getting it to be familiar in the market place.

Logo design, whether you’re doing it yourself or hiring a designer, make sure it’s as simple as possible. Simple logos are much easier to remember and will stick out in a customer’s mind more than a complicated one.  The same goes for colors, both on your website and your branding.  By choosing only two colors at most, your brand will better stick out from the crowd. Make sure to choose complementary colors for your website so you can create a consistent look wherever a website visitor clicks.

Brand positioning is defined as the practice of identifying where you want your business to be placed in your target customer’s mind and the benefits that your business offers them. 

The better you can show a specific benefit to your audience, the easier it is for a customer to be interested in your business. The more work you put into positioning your brand, the easier it will be to develop the way your brand looks and what your brand promotes.

You first have to figure out the audience that you want to reach. The more specific you can target an audience, the better your branding will speak to those potential customers. In other words, you must think about creating an “Avatar”.

>>> Side note: An Avatar  is defined as "An icon or figure representing a particular person."  In a business application, an avatar is a representation of your ideal client/customer.  A business may have multiple avatars representing several target demographics. Some prefer to distill this down to one person as an “avatar.”

Some common identifiers are gender, age, income level, education level, hobbies, etc. Querying your current customer-base will give you a good indicator of any future customers.  I believe this is the best way to figure out what they’re looking for in a business.  Once you’ve identified where your brand fits in the minds of consumers, then you can start making it look good.

Once you have built a brand name, then “Brand Management” comes into play, it has to be protected. You have to make sure that competing companies don’t use your name, especially for similar products. If you become successful, then you need to consider having it trademarked, although this should be part of the initial planning stages as you look into the future of what your company may achieve. 

The purpose of all this hard work creating logos and positioning your brand is to ignite deep, personal connections between your business and consumers. This effort will carry your brand for the long term.

Besides identifying with a smart tag line or well-designed logo, brands can deepen their relationships with customers by meaningful surprises. When a customer calls your business, surprise them with incredible customer service. If they’ve made purchases in the past, reignite their love for your business by sending them a free personalized gift, just for being a great customer.    The more interactions you can have with a customer that makes them feel special, 

the stronger the bond will grow.

If you’re running a service business, you can still benefit from strong branding.  It is sometimes harder to identify what your brand should be, but branding can build some of the same connections as an eCommerce brand would for your service business.  Often, a well-branded business can win out over competitors, even if it’s the only difference between the two businesses.

Think of a local A/C company, a potential customer calling on the services for the first time, with no knowledge of A/C and how it may resolve your needs, would have no way to discern one business from another other than by experience and price.  If prices are the same between two or more competitors and if the experience levels are comparable, how is the customer supposed to decide?  The business that speaks to the customer on an emotional level will book the client.  A business with a strong brand will win that battle every time.

Better brand recognition can be powerful for a business. Word of mouth is still one of the largest contributors of revenue for many small businesses and a stronger brand is easier to talk about with friends. To get your business on that path, start by positioning your brand, create a look that fits your business, and begin building relationships with your customers.

It can be tough to start giving a business some kind of brand identity, but if anyone can do it it’s you, the person that came up with the business idea in the first place.  Think of your business and what it represents to you.  Then think about what it means to the customers you’re trying to reach and how that is similar. Once you know how you can help customers, you’ll be able to create a brand around that concept and start to grow your business.

Always keep in mind:  A “logo” is NOT a brand. It is part of your brand. A brand is a total connection and the relationship a company has with its customers.   I cannot overemphasize it enough, it’s delivering on the promise made to the marketplace all the time.  A company’s logo and the rest of its corporate identity components are secondary and serve to support and reinforce its relationship with those that you have been servicing.