Welcome back! It’s time for your third lesson in the Small Business Branding Made Easy Crash Course. Today’s lesson is all about establishing the identity of your brand.

Brand identity is the message the consumer receives from you, your business or merchandise and now that you’ve thought about how you want customers to perceive your business, it’s time to start working on the components of its identity. These are things like the name, logo, tagline, style, and colors that work together that create an appeal and increase consumer recognition. This message should be consistent across all aspects of your business.

Let’s go over a few simple strategies that will help you establish a solid brand identity:

– Logo and creatives

Developing a logo is the first aspect of developing your brand’s visual vocabulary. In addition to the logo, you will need to create a specific look and feel for your brand that will be consistent throughout the various platforms you will use to promote your brand.
This means that every aspect of business, your website, your social media pages and even your business cards, should feature the same creative elements.

Don’t just choose a color because you think it is pretty. Remember that specific colors tend to evoke very specific emotions. Yellow for example is often associated with happiness, while red is often associated with anger or romance.

Always keep your target market in mind while selecting your creative elements. The occupation, age and even social status of the group you aim to target will influence how they view your logo, colors and more. Be sure to also test your logo by means of a focus group before you launch it.

Some logos, as creative as they may be, can be misinterpreted or even confused with the logo of a similar brand. Whatever you decide, ensure that your creative elements are so memorable that even if a client sees only half of the picture, they can still imagine exactly what is coming next.

– Social Media Presence

What good will it do if you build your brand if no one knows that you exist? Social media allows you to reach the right people, with the right message all the time. Additionally, social media is one of the most affordable options to reach your target audience. So why not make full use of it?

There are so many social media platforms just waiting to help build your brand. In fact, many successful brands invest heavily in creating a strong social presence. When your business is small it’s even more important to connect with consumers on a more personal level.

Many small business owners shy away from social media because they think it’s expensive and time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Just like any other type of marketing you just must keep your audience in mind. Take the time to post content that will appeal to them on a regular basis and engage with them as much as possible.

– Optimize Your Website

Your website (if you have one and if you don’t you might need one) should be loaded with useful content, easy to navigate and aesthetically pleasing. While building a website is beyond the scope of this course I feel it’s that you understand the importance of having a well-designed site that loads fast on multiple devices. A website is one of the few points of contact that you have full control over so make sure that you use it to your advantage.

Before your next lesson, take some time to think about how you can develop the different aspects of your brand identity that we went over in this lesson.

Here is an interesting article I recently read that may help give you a few more ideas:
https://www.inc.com/molly-reynolds/5-steps-to-building-a-strong-brand-identity-when-the-game-is-constantly-changing.html

That’s it for today’s lesson. In your next lesson, we will be talking about brand credibility and what it can do for your business.

Click Here For Your Fourth Video for Branding For Small Business

Until then,
This is Dave Glick at dave@g6webservices.com

P.S. Don’t forget, I’m here to help, so if you have questions just ask!
The fastest way to reach me is at dave@g6webservices.com