Big Time Branding - How Small Businesses Can Brand Themselves Like the Big Guys

Big Time Branding - How Small Businesses Can Brand Themselves Like the Big Guys

 

Often times, small businesses launch with all their focus on the quality of their product and branding becomes an afterthought. Here’s how to prioritize and re-imagine branding to meet your business goals.

It doesn’t matter how good your small business is if people can’t remember it. Your brand identity represents your small business, denoting your offering as well as your vision to potential customers. It comprises a key differentiator in competitive markets. As a small business, you might think that due to the disparity between your marketing budget and a much larger enterprise’s that the cards are stacked against you, but there are many ways that you can successively compete against big businesses by copying their most triumphant branding tactics.

1. Get a Logo

All big companies have logos. They comprise a focal point around which to build a brand. Logos are instantaneously recognizable. They are the visual cue that embodies everything about a business, from its products to its values. In today's world where the average person has an attention span of about eight seconds, communicating to consumers in as little time as possible is crucial. Creating an eye-catching logo that stands for your small business and placing it on all your marketing content and products is vital.<="" p="">

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2. Get a Professional-looking Website

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<="" p="">You might think you can cut corners and save money by getting your cousin's wife's son to make your website for you, but unless he is truly talented you might be costing yourself revenue by getting a subpar website. All big firms possess professional-looking websites and you should too. The look and feel of your website might not seem that important to you, especially if you own a brick and mortar business. However, in today's connected world, your website is often the first way in which a client finds out about your small business and assesses your offering. According to statistics, approximately 48 percent of people have cited a website’s design as being the number one factor when judging whether a business seemed credible. Furthermore, a whopping 94 percent of people cited a website’s design as being the reason they mistrusted or rejected a site, and by implication the validity of that business. The data speaks for itself, an expertly-crafted website is worth the cost.

3. Give Stuff Away

Big brands are known for handing out freebies, ranging from free products, free trials on their services, or even free apparel. Why do they do it? Because according to statistics, it works. Data gathered by the Promotional Productions Association International demonstrates that consumers are more likely to remember a company's name if they got a freebee from them. That makes sense given that according to the same figures six in ten consumers are likely to keep a promotional product for up to 2 years. Furthermore, the study proved that promotional products have an undeniable correlation with both customer acquisition and retention. As a small business you should give freebees away, after all promotional products have a huge potential for top-of-mind recall, thereby growing and sustaining your brand awareness.