Jen the Dev ✨

Branding is an essential part of the success of every business, and small businesses are no exception. My Five top tips for branding your business are to stay consistent and authentic, define your values, develop your voice, and tell your story. These 5 tips will build your brand into one that will stand the test of time. Let’s expand on them, shall we?

Be Consistent

Consistent branding doesn’t just mean logo styles and colour schemes. It’s also about how you deliver service, talk about your company, and handle complaints. Consistency is important for creating a strong image for your business. This means ensuring that your message, look, and how customers experience your business are the same across all platforms. By doing this, you create a recognizable and trustworthy brand that encourages people to emotionally connect to you, what you offer, and how you offer it.

The brand elements like the brand logo, brand colours, the tone in which you speak, and the imagery you use reflect the core values your brand stands on. We will talk about those in a minute. 

Creating your own guidelines allows you to control everything related to your brand to ensure consistancy. Remember, as you grow, third-party businesses or contractors will handle your branding, and will need to know exactly how to respect it.

Be Authentic

Gaining the trust of your audience is an important aspect while trying to establish a relationship with them. It is very important to be authentic in your branding message and communication with customers. By being transparent and truthful in your interactions, you will gain trust and respect from your audience. The same can be said for avoiding misleading or deceptive business practices. 

By showcasing your sincerity in these ways, and staying true to your values, you can create a genuine connection with your audience, fostering their loyalty and trust in your brand with very little effort.

Define Your Values

Before identifying a brand’s values, we need to consider what the purpose of our brand is. It’s important to consider the emotional benefits that your products or services provide. How can your brand improve your audience’s lives by fulfilling a need, or solving a nagging problem? By connecting with these emotional benefits, you can quickly determine how that will align with your brand. 

Defining your brand’s purpose leads directly into the core values. They need to reflect your purpose, and guide everything you do as a brand. These values should be consistent across all your marketing messaging, visuals online and in print, as well as interactions with customers. Your brand is a reflection of the values it stands for. So, the branding and brand building strategies should be aligned with your brand values. It should also come across in the vision and mission of your brand.

Some common brand values include integrity, authenticity, trustworthiness, innovation, honesty and sustainability. 

Develop Your Voice

Similar to the visual elements of your brand (logo, signage, website, ads, etc.), your voice is extremely important, and should remain consistent across all platforms as well.

Let me give you a few examples. You own a children’s shoe store. Your tone/voice should be quirky, fun and easy to understand. Another would be, you own a restaurant that is very upscale and is considered ultra-fine dining. Your voice should sound a lot deeper and sensual, because you want to attract a niche audience who will likely respond well to that tone or voice.

The other side of that would be medical establishments, or support services. Your voice or tone would be matter-of-fact, slightly compassionate, focusing on explaining your products and services.

After deciding your brand tone, the next step is creating a brand story and tailored messaging that are compelling enough to catch your target audience’s attention.

Tell Your Story

A successful strategy for telling your brand’s story will build a bond with your target audience by encouraging engagement, and giving the consumer a ‘view’ into your world. The more you offer people to connect with, the bigger your reach will be.

There is a lot of noise out here on the internet, so now, more than ever, consumers are far more likely to engage with brands that have a compelling story. Here are some starting points for you to determine how your story will be told. What inspired you to start this business? What is your short-term goal? What are your core values? Who is your target audience? What is your long-term vision?

I hope you found these tips insightful! I will be speaking Twitter (X) Spaces on small business branding on Thursday, February 29th at 11:00 am EST. Please join us here. I will link the recording after the session! 

If you would like more information on branding, I wrote a book which takes you further in depth on the topics above. See the link below! I also offer consulting, please email me at jen@jendev.ca for more information.