Building a small brand from scratch is a long process, but nonetheless a rewarding one. Even if you’re trying to come up in a highly competitive niche, there’s still room for a brand that is genuine, unique, consistent, passionate and brand customers will trust and love. But, the only way to deliver on all these promises is to maximise your branding efforts.
The following tips will help you maximise your efforts and build a successful small business so get your pen and paper.
Define your audience
Not every person will be interested in your brand, product and service. Just like we as people are not for every person out there. But in the end, we all have our own tribe. The same can be cusapplied to the process of defining your audience. You need to define your audience and talk directly to them. Who is your ideal customer? What do they do? These and other questions will help you create a buyer persona. Once you do, you’ll know how to approach that person, give them unique value, solve their problems and make them loyal to your brand.
Question – Why would customers choose your brand over any other?
By asking this question and answering it, you will define what makes your brand stand out. What are its uniques qualities that will persuade your ideal customer to come to you for a solution, product or service? Why would they come to you and not that major brand millions know about? Your uniqueness will make you stand out in the crowd. Invest in the right design, logo, visual identity on social media and provide unique value to your customers.
Provide value and unique customer experience
To be unique you need to provide value and create a great customer experience. But what value can you give your customers? Start with free solutions to their problems like free ebooks, free consultations, tutorials and other useful tactics that will drive traffic to your website which ultimately increases the number of leads and sales.
Work on your visual identity
To get through to your audience, you need to have a compelling visual identity that is not like anything out there. This is definitely something you should develop as a team by joining forces with a creATIVE branding agency. We can look at Australia for example because small Aussie brands pay a lot of attention to their visual identity. They team up with an innovative branding agency from Sydney to come up with compelling designs. The results of such a partnership will make an impact on your customers. An agency can help you tailor your visual identity, verbal identity and help you develop your visual identity.
Be consistent with your community
If you want to reach your ideal customer, you need to build a community. Social media presence can help you attract people who need your service or your product. You can use social media presence to share your content and visuals that provide value and answers some of the frequently asked questions. This will help people recognise your brand as someone they can trust and turn to if they need a solution. But, the most important thing about your online community is consistency. Be consistent on social media channels, communicate with your followers, build trust in a positive voice and use your copy and content to stand out. Don’t just sell, but communicate with your community.
Don’t forget to build your products or service along your branding journey
The fact that you finally have a product or service you want to put out there, doesn’t mean you should stop improving it. Building a brand is a long term project, but your product should also evolve along the way. While you build your business and your brand, be consistent with your products as well. Make sure everything is of the same quality, if not improved over time. People who buy once will definitely return. That’s why you should be consistent with the quality of your product and improve it over time.
Advertise
You should use different forms of advertising to build brand recognition and create leads. But, make sure to use those channels that your ideal customer uses and don’t overdo it. This can lead to ad fatigue, so always add some unique new offers to your ads.
Pay attention to your competition
By keeping tabs on your competitions you’ll know which ones of your branding strategies should be given a priority. You need to follow current trends in your unique way. Do not copy, just use it as an inspiration to provide the same or even better value to your shared audience. It’s all about standing out and attracting customers who will benefit from your service or your product. Your competition can help you recognize what your audience needs.
Building a successful small business will be easier if you have an outline of your branding efforts. Our tips will help you create an outline and help define a starting point. This will help you maximise your branding efforts and create a strong brand presence.