Building a brand

Developing a brand is more than just a logo – it defines you as a business and every single thing that leaves your business and ends up in front of a customer, supplier or other stakeholder.

A brand is about more than a name and logo - it encompasses the qualities, values and experiences that customers associate with a business and its products and services. In order to build a credible brand, you will need to identify what these are.

If your business does what the brand implies, then you will grow and win business. If your brand implies quality and great service but you do not offer this, then you will surely fail.

Be prepared to think about every part of your business - if your customer’s associations with your brand are negative or very different from the image you want to be able to project, you may need to change your offer, your customer service strategy or any other aspect of your operation that contributes to poor customer perception.

Involve your employees - they will have their own idea of what your business stands for and whether it is delivering on its promises. Besides, you will need their co-operation if you are going to change your operation.

Create a set of consistent brand messages that focus on the qualities, values and experiences that customers associate with your business, its products and services. Keep these simple and easy to communicate.

Employ the services of a marketing agency like SO Marketing to help you develop a distinctive visual brand, including your logo, fonts used in communications and packaging style. This must reflect your overall identity: if your company ethos is upbeat and dynamic, for example, your visuals should be bright and engaging. As part of this process you will normally have a few initial ideas to choose from, some of which then get developed and applied onto various marketing deliverables that you will use in your business moving forwards.

Apply your branding, including your visual brand and brand messages, to all of your materials - from packaging and signage to stationery, your website and marketing materials. With your brand defined, you can now apply this at every opportunity to everything that leaves your business keeping it consistent.

Ensure that you consider Intellectual Property protection in terms of trademarks and patents when it comes to your brand to ensure that your reputation is protected.

Remember that everything your business does is linked to your brand in the eyes of the customer. This includes the way your employees dress and behave with customers.

Allow your brand to take root and develop over time. As your customer associations with, and their expectations of, your offer change, you must continue to understand and reflect them. Don’t get this sentence!

Branding on a limited budget

For small firms with limited budgets, the good news is that it has become easier and cheaper to create a brand identity than ever before. Now with jpegs and pdfs, you can create and send visuals electronically and it's easier to get consistency across everything from stationery to signage and vehicle graphics.

Brand Consistency

Managing your branding is vital and you have to make sure everything is consistent, from typography to colour. Even simple signs and price labels in a store must have a consistent style. I've seen retailers, for instance, who use their branding in lots of different ways, changing fonts and colours.

This is not a good idea. You have to think about and plan for every branding eventuality. You don't necessarily want your staff using Day-Glo paper and felt-tip pens to advertise special offers in your store, for example, or interior signing that departs from the brand style.

You also need to reproduce your company colours consistently wherever they appear, whether on paperwork, in your shop window or on your van. The more exotic the shade, the more difficult it can be to reproduce, so when it comes to colour it can be best to choose classic shades. There are a few ways of describing colours used in a brand and they are as follows.

1. Pantone colours – this is the most accurate way of keeping your colours consistent. The only problem is that it increases the cost of production of your marketing items considerably, and it cannot be replicated on a screen very effectively.

2. CMKY colours – this is the way that your colours will be defined using the mix of the 4 colours that make up CMYK printing. This reduces the cost of print, but also is fairly well replicated using the screen.

Find out more about what SO Marketing can do for your brand - call us today on 01538 750 538!

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