Branding is an essential element of every business because it creates a positive impact on your customers and clearly outlines your company’s commitments and beliefs. Branding for a business is much like a reputation for a person. Typically, you earn recognition and respect by trying to do this right. The same thing applies to companies.  

If you want to set your business apart from the rest, then branding is essential. A good branding strategy creates trust, communicates your mission and vision, supports your marketing effort, generates more leads, and attracts customers to your business. 

However, branding doesn’t happen overnight. It is a process that takes a lot of time and dedication to yield results. If you are a small business in Canada struggling to build a brand, read on to discover our top five branding tips for small business owners.

• Table of Contents

  Toggle

  Define your brand identity

The first step towards building a successful brand is creating and defining your brand identity. Take time to identify who you are as a company and what you stand for.  Define your values, mission and the way you want customers to view your company.

Defining your brand identity is much like creating a general perception around your business, and that is what matters most. 

Before you move forward with more tactical steps in your branding strategy such as creating a business logo, you need to take time to define who you are as a business because that is the message that you want to send out there to your target audience.

• Design a good logo

What is the most memorable aspect of your favorite brand? It is probably business logo design, right? As soon as you see that small bluebird, you know its Twitter, right? This kind of recognition and subconscious association of a certain symbol with your brand is what you should be striving to achieve.

Hire a reliable logo design Canada Company to design a simple but eye-catching logo that offers a unique representation of your brand. Make sure your logo is easy to remember and if possible, include your brand name and slogan as part of the design.

Take time to create something that appeals to your target audience and resonates well with your business because it will appear on your website, products, social networks, advertising campaigns and almost everything that is associated with your business. 

• Define your target audience

It doesn’t matter how strong your brand identity is or how appealing your logo is, if you do not have a target audience in mind, your effort will go to waste. For your small business to survive, it must have a customer base.

Take time to define your target audience and have a clear vision of what they expect from you.  Before you define your market, ensure you examine your products/service, check out the competition, consider demographics to target, and create your ideal customer profile.

Once you have identified your target audience, tailor your marketing effort and branding strategy and target the right people in the right places.

• Create a solid social media strategy

For many brands, social media has become one of the most effective ways of communicating and interacting with their customers. With an ever-growing catalog of social media networks to choose from, there is plenty of work to do here.

To avoid being overwhelmed, start with establishing authority on one or two social media networks where most of your ideal customers are. You can start by posting one update per day and explore some of the things you can do to attract a broad audience.

From there, start spreading your brand message to other channels aggressively. Although this might take some time, do not give up if you don’t see results quickly. Take time to streamline your social media strategy, and this could become your main platform for influencing the direction of your brand. 

• Be consistent

Lastly, you need to keep in mind that your branding strategy will only be effective if you are consistent with everything you do. Create a branding style that will keep everyone involved on the same page so that your voice and visual messages are consistent across every platform, promotion, and project.

The primary goal here is to create clarity by using consistent colors, font, logo, slogan, and everything that defines your brand. Also, maintain a consistent tone in your messages and follow consistent image rules and structure.

Donny white