9 Key Branding Tips for Small Businesses

Did you know that it takes up to seven impressions for a customer to remember a brand? Yes, you read that right. So, it pays to have several handy branding tips and tricks up your sleeves to make your brand stand out.

Interested in branding tips for businesses?

If you are running a business, there are several branding tips you should know. Learn more about small business branding today!

Table of Contents

1. Find Your Target Audience

First of all, it’s key to find and market to your target audience. For instance, let’s say that you are attempting to sell a product to a much older, conservative audience. In this case, it’s extremely important to have “semi-conservative” messaging that your audience can connect with.

On the other end of the spectrum, “millennial marketing” should be as hip and fun as possible. Just make sure to build it around the tone, voice, and culture of your audience.

2. Start Small With Branding

Here’s the deal – there’s nothing wrong with starting small with your company’s branding. This means first nailing down your core message: mission, vision, and brand direction. After all, the cornerstone of your brand is to create who you are and what you stand for. Please don’t skip this phase!

3. Write a Mission Statement

Your mission statement is the “here and now” of your business. In other words, it’s all about what your business is doing and why it’s doing it. To make your mission statement, ask yourself the following questions:

What is my business doing for its customers?
How does my company have an effect on employees?
What’s my business doing for its owners?
How am I influencing the community?
What is my business doing for the world?

When you have these responses, combine three to six sentences to make your mission statement.

4. Choose Key Decision-Makers

“Too many cooks in the kitchen” makes branding almost impossible to pin down. Instead, designate one or two individuals to sign off on the final branding, so you don’t end up with an indecisive holding pattern.

Of course, doing a survey or asking a number of workers to offer their opinion is okay. To tell you the truth, the most innovative outcomes are often delivered by innovative brainstorms. In the end, you’ll be able to pick the right branding elements for your small business as long as you have a team lead.

5. Stay True to Your Message

Just because you want to be portrayed a certain way doesn’t mean that it’s actually who you are. That’s why it’s so important to stay true to yourself and your brand message. In the end, your guiding principles will make it easier to define and remain true to your brand personality.

6. Create a Style Guide

At this point in the process, it’s really important to create a style guide that summarizes your brand. This includes everything from visualization and stylization to editing and the overall message that you want your audience to perceive.

Pro tip: make sure that you pass your style guide out to all of your social media staff to make sure that each post syncs up with your brand message.

7. Enforce Style Guide Usage

Branding is essential for any company, especially for smaller ones. That’s because you’re most likely competing with other brands and struggling to develop leads. Not to mention expanding your business takes up time and money as well.

That’s why your branding needs to be on the spot, readily recognizable, and reliable.

First of all, use a visual guide for any social media post. Then, pass your brand book over to social media influencers so that they know how to talk about your company properly. Next, use this for referral partners who need to know how to pass on your information in a way that is true to your business.

In a nutshell, use it as the guiding light for everything that you do. That way, everybody is going to be on the same page and your ads will never waver from channel to channel.

8. Make Your Own Press Kit

Check this out – turning your branding into a press kit ensures that every publication and blogger represents your business. The press kit should contain the following:

PNG logos
Messaging
A brief bio of your company and every product or service you deliver
Press contacts
Pictures of your employees, goods, or services
Company facts
Links to your press release

At the end of the day, your press kit is really critical. Don’t forget this crucial step!

9. Build Nuanced Branding

Brand tone and voice are a big part of small business branding. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. As you scale your company, branding for small businesses also needs to develop.

This means establishing brand guidelines for each marketing channel. To do so, come up with a list of guidelines for social media, email, website material, video, guest posts, and any other material you create. For example, your tone can be a lot more casual on Instagram than it is on LinkedIn.

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