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View Winners → ADvocate Jan 07, 2022
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Your brand is the face of your business. It serves as the visual association for consumers to quickly associate certain colors and fonts with your services. Branding is critical for business recognition and marketing success. As you build your new business, it is essential to make branding a top priority in your promotional efforts. Consistency across digital platforms, at your brick and mortar location, and in your marketing paraphernalia (think mugs, phone cases, and stickers) helps build consumer recognition of your brand.
Beyond simple fonts and color schemes, business branding is your promise to the customer. It is the underlying implication of what you intend to accomplish with your presence within the community (your local market). Whether it is integrity, loyalty, or consistency, you want your brand to be associated with positive attributes. These values then work in tandem with the visuals of your business brand. Your ideal scenario is a customer (or potential customer) viewing your business ad and immediately feeling that desired positive emotion regarding your services. This requires consistent effort and clear direction in order to brand your new business for success.
Clarify Your Mission
Before you jump into the nitty-gritty elements of branding, take the time to firmly establish your mission. A clearly communicated collective vision is often the defining factor of a successful business. Remember how you began this business journey. Think back to the specific experiences and emotions that orchestrated the company you have today. As you build your online presence, include an “about us” page on your website. Here you can share your company mission statement and origin story. These elements of personal touch add a level of humanness to business and help you stand out from larger competitors.
Develop a Brand Manual
If you are a creative type, you likely already have endless ideas and elements for a brand manual. This practical resource serves as the guiding light for all consequential marketing efforts for your business. Brand manuals contain key points on company logos, colors, slogans, and approved fonts. Your social media team and graphic designer will be forever grateful for this creative bible. Consider also including target audience profiles and brand voice within this manual. Demographic profiles consist of a detailed summary of your ideal consumer (think location, socioeconomic status, and shopping habits). Your established brand voice drives the copy and media associated with your company (think fun and casual or business and professional).
Study Your Target Audience
As you develop target audience profiles for your brand manual, you will find that this research is extremely beneficial to your marketing strategy. Once you generate a concise representation of your intended consumer, you can better drive ads and promotional content to this demographic. Your target audience plays a key role in your marketing efforts, as it determines exactly where you should focus your time and energy. Maximize the results of this research by employing various ad campaigns across your digital platforms and tracking the overall performance. Experiment with adjusting your targeted audience pool by age, location, interests, and gender.
