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The answer, of course, is yes. And even if you don’t have a logo, your business still has a brand.
However, few small businesses really understand what a brand is and why it is important to their overall marketing strategy.
Brand is the perception the world has of you and communicates your personality and influences your prospects’ opinion of who you are and whether they want to do business with you. A brand:
- Is everything you are, the value you deliver and the total client experience. Every image you project needs to consistently reflect the personality of your business.
- Reflects your business’s promise, message and values. Your identity should be consistent with, and reinforce, your purpose and your core message to your customers.
- Conveys the expectations and promises that you extend to your clients in terms of quality, service, reliability and trustworthiness, shaping their perception of you and your business.
- Helps the audience differentiate you from your competitors, positively influencing their decision to hire you.
A good brand communicates clearly, artistically and creates credibility. It enables you to provide customers with an image that can evoke feelings about your business, having a powerful impact on whether someone wants to do business with you.
- When someone looks at your business card, website or marketing piece, what does your image project?
- Does this image reflect your business’s personality and values?
- Is your brand consistent in every aspect of your company – from your materials, to your attitudes, to the way you answer the phone, to the way you conduct yourself in public?
How do you determine your brand?
If you have never thought about your brand and just let it happen, it would be beneficial to take some time to determine what your brand projects and whether it is consistent with your values. Ask customers the first words or images that come to their mind when your business is mentioned. If they consistently respond with adjectives that fit your business such as reliable, committed to excellence, or delivers quality on time and within budget, then your brand has been developed and you can now take it to the next level. When responses are inconsistent, ambiguous, or refer to attributes such as cost, it is an indicator of a weak brand image.
If you have a weak brand, determine what it should be and focus on marketing efforts that help build awareness around your brand. Remember that your brand is developed through an entire customer experience and needs to be reinforced consistently through your Web site, sales tools, promotional items, customer service, messages and other aspects of doing business with you.
Evolving your brand
If you have developed a good brand, it should continue to evolve with your business. As your business matures, so should your brand. Evolving your brand does not mean changing your brand but rather refreshing, updating, or clarifying the image you use and the emotion it projects. If you have had the same logo for several years, talk with a designer to see if you can update its look without changing the overall image it projects. If you don’t have a logo, consider having one developed. But if your brand is weak, a little evolution is needed before you embark on a new marketing campaign.
One last tip: Brands take time to develop so avoid totally re-branding your business unless you truly believe you need to (for example, if your brand has been associated with a negative feeling or event).
How well does your brand project your business?
Article source: http://masterful-marketing.com/do-small-businesses-need-a-brand/
