Corporate branding is a very intimidating phrase and many small businesses shy away from the very mention of it. But branding your business, no matter how big or small, is very, very important.

You should start building your brand identity (another phrase that confuses or scares small business owners!) very early on in your business development – it is how your customers will know you, remember you and, if you do it right, keep on coming back to you.
Branding is not the same as advertising, don’t confuse the two.

When you advertise you are trying to promote a product or service and, of course, beat your competition in terms of sales.

Building your brand identity, however, is about defining your business, getting your clients to view you as the only place to go to get their requirements fulfilled and building credibility so your clients feel safe. This involves name recognition and a consistent look in everything you do.

So how do you go about defining your business and presenting to the world the message you want?

To build a brand to gain your client’s and prospective clients’ loyalty and trust you must start by answering the following questions:

– What is your slogan?
– What are you a specialist in?
– Who is your target market?
– What words do people use to describe your business?
– What words do you WANT people to use to describe you?
– What is your unique selling point (USP)?
– What need do you fill that others don’t?

If a prospective customer or client were to ask you any of those questions and you didn’t have the answer you would already be on a loser. Define your company to yourself and you can define much better to others – AND differentiate yourself from the competition.

Several of the answers to the above questions will feed through into your physical branding. This includes your logo, business cards, letterheads, website and your product packaging.

Brand identity design now becomes important as you want the image your company presents in all its dealings to mirror the opinion your customers and clients have of you – to direct it even.

Employing a graphic designer or graphic design agency to produce your logo and slogan based on what you want to achieve is a very good idea here.

They will produce a choice of logos, promotional print design and colour options that you can choose from.
When you’ve made your decision, your logo, slogan and overall branding in terms of colour, fonts and styles can be rolled out to everything your company sends out – business cards, letterheads and your product packaging.

If you require an online presence then a digital agency will be able to produce a website design based on the decision you make regarding your logo design and build it for you.

This may all sound expensive, but it doesn’t have to be and it is well worth the investment. Your brand identity says who you are, what you can do and why you’re better than every other company in the market.

Author Bio: Trevor Richards is writing on behalf of Fluid Creativity in Manchester, a full service graphic design agency specialising in brand identity design.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: brand identity, brand design, corporate branding, graphic design