We have come to the final post in the Small Business Branding Made Easy Series. I hope you have learned a lot about creating a solid brand for your business. In this post we are going to touch on some of the more common small business branding mistakes so you can avoid making them. We will also discuss how you can use branding to increase sales.
As we know, branding is more than just a pretty logo. Branding is about creating a seamless experience for consumers so that they will know, like and trust your business the instant they see it.
Remember your brand is a promise to consumers that you can meet their expectations. It is important that you build it carefully, deliberately and be prepared to invest a lot of time and effort maintaining it.
– Wrong Target Audience
One of the biggest mistakes I see when it comes to effective branding is a failure to target the right audience.
Before you begin branding or selling anything it is essential to know the audience you are speaking to. Take time to get to know them, understand their problems, their wants, needs, the places they like to hang out, the brands they follow. Once you have a clear understanding of your target audience, your branding and messaging will automatically be more consistent and will return a high ROI (Return On Investment).
– Failure To Research The Competition
Failure to research the competition is another big mistake. This is especially important if you are a new business. Researching your competition will help you get a handle on what established businesses in your industry are doing right and what they are doing wrong. It will provide you with opportunities that will give your business an advantage.
Look at their products, services, websites and social profiles. Pay attention to their target audiences. What are people saying about them? What can you do better?
– Feedback
Taking feedback from the wrong or limited sources can cause a lot of damage to a brand. Consumer feedback is very important and should be leveraged to boost your brand but it is important that you take feedback from the right sources.
Every business owner wants great feedback. It is a natural instinct to focus on the good things being said. But limiting our sources to only positive feedback can cause more harm than good. Positive feedback only will not help you set measurable and appropriate goals. We need negative feedback to push us to do better and to help guide us in what we need to fix.
– Inconsistency
We have discussed brand consistency already, but I am putting it here again because it has a huge impact on your business. Consistency helps raise awareness, loyalty and credibility. If there are inconsistencies in your brand consumers will become confused and lose trust. The more consistent you are with your image, promotions, communication and every other interaction you make with your audience the stronger your brand credibility will be.
Building and managing a brand is not always easy. There are many businesses that think a brand is something you establish and then it takes care of itself. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
If you want your business to be successful you must be ready to adapt to the constant changing needs of the market and you should constantly improve and refine your brand to provide better quality and consistency for your customers; Because ultimately your success depends on them.
