Branding your Business

What is ‘branding’?  What is a ‘brand’? 

Dictionary.com indicates a ‘brand’ is “a trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer.”  Branding is simply the use of a ‘brand’ to promote consumer awareness of products and services.  Everyone is familiar with these iconic logos:

 ®  ®  ®

They belong of course to Coca-Cola, Nike, and McDonalds respectively.  What about these famous taglines: Have a Coke and a Smile, Just do it, You deserve a break today.  Same three companies of course – Coca-Cola, Nike, and McDonalds.  Each of these logos and taglines and many hundreds of others trigger recognition of company name, summarize a product or service offering, or create a desire to purchase.  That is the very simple concept behind creating brand recognition in your client base.

If branding were so simple, wouldn’t every company do it and be successful? 

Yes, that statement is rhetorical and obvious.  Unfortunately, creating brands such as the ones above involve a great deal of money, time, talent, and effort.  Smaller businesses must be more creative in their approach and focused on their market niche when creating their ‘brand’.  Following some basic steps will assist in delivering a brand experience that existing customers will identify with and also intrigue potential clients.

What about a small business logo and tagline?

Your first step involves self-examination:  What is your product and what is its place in the market?  What is your business story?  Are you a charitable organization or a for-profit company or a little of both?  Sometimes the product or service offered benefits society as a whole and makes a great story line for branding.  A company dedicated to fundraising efforts for chronic illnesses such as MS or ALS (because of an affected family member) may be an example of brand based on an intriguing story line.

Brand names & logos

Often linked together, each invokes an emotional response in individuals from the apathy to dislike to excitement.  Shakespeare famously penned “What’s in a name?” several hundred years ago.  The answer is simply – a whole lot!  When GM chose the name Nova® for a car many years ago, it planned on exporting the car but did not consider the impact of the name in Mexico.  In Spanish, the words “no va” literally mean “no go.”  No surprise that Nova® sales were terrible in Mexico.  Not only were GM’s sales hurt, but its ‘brand’ was damaged as well.  The lesson here is to consider carefully the company and product names chosen and the taglines associated with them. 

Visual images (i.e. logos) are important factors in the human psyche and can yield positive or negative emotions.  Another issue to consider is how or if the logos and names will be combined in some manner.  Examples of successful combinations are IBM, BMW, and A&P.  The logo helps indentify your company; it can be classic, modern, glitzy or subdued.  If professionally done, a logo should be consistent with the overall branding strategy and work with colors, wording, layout, and names to communicate a comprehensive brand to your customer base.  If a logo is designed by an amateur, the result will tend more toward a work of art.  There is nothing wrong with this approach per se, just be aware of the company image you are trying to convey and how the logo will affect that image.  Cost is always a consideration for a small business and must be weighed against the value of professional development.

A quick word about color: choose a color that is not used by your competitors.  Every item used in your branding approach (mailers, logos, artwork) should be chosen from the same color palette to avoid confusion in your customer base.  Build a culture of familiarity and consistency with your brand to build trust and a comfort level with your clientele.

Taglines should reflect not only a corporate attitude, but a personal one as well.  This is your company, commitment, livelihood, and dream.  Be vested and honest in the values that your taglines state.  Whether you choose “jumpstart your heart” or “taste the smell” for your new coffeehouse, be sure the product and service follows that creed and you believe 100% in what your company expresses.

Other things to do

Focus on your PRODUCT.  It’s simply naïve to assume even the best product will sell itself – even with strong name recognition behind it.  Remember Sony’s Betamax® or WordPerfect® or IBM’s OS2®?  Each of these products was arguably superior to their competitors but ultimately failed the rigors of marketing.  Consider what makes your product special or unique.  Does it provide some kind of physical benefit to your customers, eliminate problems or become the next “gotta have it” thing?  As a newer company, you can’t afford major advertising campaigns and depend mainly on referrals. Become the buzz, the talk of the coffee clutch or water cooler.

Become an EXPERT.  You just developed a major time-saving kitchen appliance – you are now the expert on that appliance - what it does, the story behind the development, how it benefits people, your customers, and THOSE WHO WON’T BUY YOUR PRODUCT.   A true expert understands as much about the product’s buyers as the non-buyers and the reasons for both.  The expert conducts industry research to determine the issues and delves deeper into untapped markets.  Perhaps a simple lack of color choice for the appliance is keeping some potential buyers out of the market.  Offer cyan, burnt umber, fuchsia, and sell more of your innovative appliance.  Experts also do additional follow-up research to 1) make customers feel good, 2) determine additional future product offerings, and 3) BUILD THE COMPANY BRAND.

Deliver on a COMMITMENT.  When your company sells a product or delivers a service to a customer, an expectation is created.  That client in turn relates their positive experience to others and your company’s reputation is initiated.  It is critically important that your commitment to clients via the product or service is consistent each and every time.  In essence, your company offering is a promise and brands your business as reputable or not.  You must deliver 100% on your promise 100% of the time.  Since your product or service is making a person’s life better or easier and is consistently delivering at the same level, customers will return.  With repeat clientele, a brand is established.  Congratulations.

The logos and taglines on this page are registered trademarks. Use of the logos and taglines here does not imply endorsement of the organizations by this site.

One of the single biggest ‘critiques’ about web sites revolves around cosmetics.  In our opinion, a single font should be used throughout a site; the eye does not track content as well when wanting to assign ‘meaning’ to the font changes.  In turn, this causes the reader to jump around on the page.

Most desktop publishing articles/books suggest that no more than two fonts should be used with a maximum of 4 font size changes in a ‘publication’ - read that as ‘web site’.  In contrast, it is acceptable to use a little more diversity in the number of ‘changes’ that appear in a particular page - read that as web page.

On the extreme side are those who advocate no more than 2 changes per page and on the lenient side of the debate are ones who suggest that up to 4 changes per page is acceptable.

But even the most lax state that content readability demands changes due to need for emphasis or to separate divergent ‘subjects’.

As an aside, when laying out a magazine spread, the lenient side is more acceptable than the extreme when considering font size.  Generally speaking, readers won’t be happy with pages that include font type changes.

Note that font type (‘family’ in http parlance) refers to Ariel, Times New Roman, Courier, etc.  Size refers to 8 point, 10 point, 12 point, etc.

Also note that text color can also be used very effectively in place of font changes.