Building a Strong Brand for Small Businesses

Branding is the most powerful marketing tool you can use. Your brand is the face of your business, it is how you stand out from the crowd. Building a strong brand builds credibility and trust with your customers. Branding is what entices them in and builds loyalty.

Building a brand can feel like an incredibly daunting task when starting out as a small business. Firstly, it’s good to know what a brand is made up of. A brand is built on all of your beautiful imagery and design, your logo, all of your marketing, messaging and tone, your product or service, your customer service and absolutely everything in between. Branding encompasses the whole experience you offer to your audience. If you get it right; your business can thrive!

Here are a few ideas to start building a brand that you and your ideal customers will fall in love with:

Step 1: Communicate WITH your audience

Get to know your customer. Connect with them, chat to them and survey them to learn what they value, what they love, their mindset, their goals and challenges. By knowing your customer and identifying their obstacles or pain points you can create the perfect offering that adds value to their lives. The benefits your ideal customer gains form your offering will help you get clear on the purpose of your business.

“If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand.”

– Howard Schultz

Step 2. Define your purpose

Consider how you can offer something unique to your audience and why you want to offer it. Strong brands are built on so much more than profits, they have a clear purpose to guide them. Working out your ‘why’ and your core values will keep you inspired, motivated and give your ideal audience a deeper reason to connect with your brand. To help you discover your brand purpose and core values I have created a free workbook.

“A brand’s strength is built upon its determination to promote its own distinctive values and mission.”

– Jean-Noel Kapferer 

Step 3: Communicate that purpose

Looks matter with branding. Show your audience your values and your ‘why’ through your brand identity. This can look like a beautiful, cohesive and consistent brand aesthetic that visually demonstrates what you stand for as a brand. Your visuals are the first impression your potential customers have of you, so make sure you are making the right impression. Think about all the ways in which you can show your audience what your brand is all about. This could be colours, typography, tone of voice, style of imagery, textures or a particular illustration style. All of the design elements speak to your audience and tell your brand’s unique message.   

Step 4: Consistency, consistency, consistency

Keep coming back to step 1-3 so your brand message gets stronger and stronger. Consistency builds trust. There is no point in a beautiful branding if you are communicating mixed, confused messages. Repeating the same brand message and brand identity in the same style that your audience can rely on, will develop a strong and dependable brand that your ideal customers love.

Tip: A brand style guide is a good way to set out guidelines to make sure you offer beautiful consistent branding to your audience. This helps ensure your that your fonts are consistent, using the same colour pallet, layout, imagery style, tone of voice, marketing style and showing up in the same way across all touch points of your brand.  

If you want help building a strong core foundation for your brand, have a look at my free brand values workbook. This helps you step-by-step discover a clear understanding of your purpose, your core values and how you could communicate this message to your ideal customer.

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