Branding And Logo Design Tips For A Small Business

Whats Your Message?

Before you can start shouting from the rooftops about your business, you need to find your voice. In marketing terms, your voice is the personality you want your brand (aka your business) to have. Do you want it to be fun, cheeky, edgy, dynamic, serious, exclusive or something else entirely? Once you know the way you want people to view you your consequent promotions will start to take shape. Think of Virgin and Richard Branson. Everything the brand does, from its airline to its record company has Bransons own style stamped all over it!

Translating Your Message Through Your Design

If youre not creative yourself, its a good idea to brainstorm with a graphic designer or another artistthese professionals are well-versed in taking an idea and making it visual, and can show you a range of options to choose from in terms of styles. You may never have even known you wanted a certain image until it was shown to you in a certain way!

Maintain Consistency With Branding

Once youve got a logo or colours that make a statement about your brand, stick with it! The more people see that brand around the place, the easier it will be for your brand to become recognisable and synonymous with the product you sell!

Getting Your Message Out There

The question is, how to you make sure as many people as possible see your logo? Firstly, make sure its all over your website, stationary, business cards and (if you have a shopfront) your signage. But there are so many other opportunities for logo placement, and each one represents a chance to get seen! Think about putting your logo on your business car, delivery vans, billboards, key-rings, pens, paper bags, promotional drink bottles and anything else you can think of! This is why its important to make sure your logo is dynamic and easily recognisableitll stick in peoples subconscious as something familiar, and people are more likely to trust a brand that is familiar to them.

Is Your Brand Worth Protecting?

At the end of the day, if your brand or logo becomes wildly popular, you dont want all the strategic work and money you put into it to have been a waste of time. Once youve got a logo youre happy with, have it and your business name registered with the patent office to ensure that the only person to benefit out of your brilliant logo design is YOU!

No business is too small to have a good marketing campaign. Small businesses often shy away from a good promotion strategy for the simple reason that they always associate this with costs. What they do not realize is that these costs are actually investments. They should be considered investments because any company should expect a return on whatever they have invested on promotional campaigns.

Admittedly, full-fledged marketing efforts such as the ones employed by multinational corporations are way too much for a small business like a community meat shop or salon. However, as mentioned earlier, no business is too small to have a good marketing strategy. Every business, no matter how small, should be involved in some form of marketing activity. Here are a few tips on how to launch a marketing campaign without putting a dent on your budget.

1. Res Ipsa Locquitur – Let your product speak for themselves

Cleary, there is nothing more effective and more inexpensive than marketing through word of mouth. There is a Latin saying, ‘Res Ipsa Locquitur’, which means ‘let the name speak for itself.’ This should be the mantra of small businesses. Let your product, services or reputation do the talking. If you have a good product or fantastic service, this would spread like wild fire. Once customers find out about it and have actually experienced it, they would become your company’s mouthpiece. The good part is that they will do it for nothing.

2 Use online social networking sites

If you do not have an FB account or a Twitter, you are not yet able to harness the power of the internet. What you want to do is to create a following. Some companies have been using Twitter, an online blogging tool, to let customers know about specials or freebies or delivery schedules. One mobile food cart (think of a street vendor) actually uses Twitter to announce where their carts would be parked at lunch time. The good thing about this is that this does not cost anything other than your Internet subscription.

3. Email away

Email is fast and free. Use this tool to inform a good number of customers about new products or services or specials. What you can do is to create an email group of customers and then send electronic postcards with your special on it. This is much cheaper than actually engaging the services of a postcard printing company.

Each time you work with a customer, don’t be afraid to approach them about your business. Engage them. Ask if you can use them as a reference. Ask for their email address. Send them print postcards if you can. Ask for their feedback and be sure to do something about it. There are plenty of opportunities to market your business. But remember that the best ones are usually free.