Category: Blog

In the 1970s, two young college dropouts made themselves pioneers in the computing world. Driven by a creative vision for the future, they founded Apple, a brand that today is basically synonymous with forward-thinking technology and the modern technological aesthetic.

When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007, he used Apple’s reputation as a pioneer and creative visionary to tell a story: The iPhone was going to be something big, the first of its kind—a touchscreen, an iPod, a phone, and online device—and it was up to consumers to use the new device to carry that story forward.

Using the iPhone, consumers themselves could represent the forward-thinking principles of Apple and participate in a new technological and aesthetic revolution to tell their own stories.

Over the decades, Apple’s masterful brand storytelling has allowed it to enjoy a huge amount of success. The context, mission, and inspiration behind their branding have ensured that Apple is more than just another drab and dry tech company putting out the latest consumer products.

Instead, Apple’s story has guaranteed it a special status and a whole bunch of devoted customers—people committed to the creative, high-end, and futuristic technological vision that the company brings.

What is a Brand Story?

If you take a closer look at today’s companies, you’ll find that some of our favorite brands, like Apple, are inseparable from their stories.

A brand story is a narrative about a brand that evokes an emotional response and forges deep connections between a company and its audience. Brand stories typically encompass not only the history of a company, but also that company’s mission, values, source of inspiration, and vision for the future.

Every company, big or small, has a brand story. Creating your brand story is just a matter of finding that story and learning how to express it in a way that’s simple, relatable, compelling, and marketable.

By generating an emotional connection with your audience, a brand story improves customer trust and builds customer loyalty. It’s also a great way to give your brand a strong identity, brand personality, and voice.

Imagine that you and a friend are planning a trip to Europe. You’re trying to map out your route from Portugal to Germany, when you realize that neither of you are sure which countries are next to which.

Immediately, your friend says, “Let’s Google it.” Sounds right?  They wouldn’t say, “let’s use a search engine,” even though that’s technically what they need. Google is a brand, not a product, and what your friend just did is demonstrate a perfect example of brand awareness.

Brand awareness takes a regular business and injects it into the minds of consumers. It influences the way people shop, creating loyal customers that won’t hesitate to come back.

And, as a small business owner, a big part of your branding efforts should be focused on generating brand awareness. It will help you boost your customer loyalty, increase new sales, and gain more market share.

But let’s start at the very beginning.

In this guide, we’ll break down brand awareness to its very core concepts, and then look at the ways you can build it, measure it, and optimize it for your business.

What is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness has 2 definitions, depending on who you ask. Some experts define it as how easy it is for people to recall your brand name and products or services. Others will say it’s how people perceive your company as a “person,” where they might view it as friendly or professional.

The truth is, brand awareness is both. It’s how recognizable your business is, and it’s the character traits people associate with your brand.

Apple has some of the most potent brand awareness of any company in the world right now. You instantly know their lineup of products, thanks to their clever branding names like the iPhone, iPad, and iMac, even though other companies offer similar merchandise.

And, their brand personality is all about innovation, passion, and creativity. It’s not by chance that people who work in the design industry almost only use Apple products exclusively.

Let’s look at another example: Amazon.

It’s safe to say Amazon is one of the most trusted brands you can shop online with. Even though they’re a gigantic business, you can read and write reviews for every product they offer, which helps Amazon portray themselves as an honest company you can trust.

Along with their commitment to fantastic customer service and fast deliveries, their brand has a caring and sincere personality. Amazon also has its own line of branded products like Amazon Basics and Amazon Essentials, which their customers are more likely to buy because they think positively about Amazon.

Sounds great, right?

Brand awareness doesn’t just help famous companies. Small businesses with strong brand awareness can also enjoy some fantastic benefits:

• Increase the level of trust between your brand and your audience
• Create an association between your product/service and your brand name (think: Kleenex and tissues)
• Increase your brand’s value and equity

 

Feeling pumped to work on your own brand awareness? Let’s take a look at how to do that.

How to Create Brand Awareness

Before charging ahead and shooting off marketing campaigns left, right, and center, remember that you can’t achieve brand awareness overnight. It takes time, energy, and plenty of thought.

One of the most common misconceptions about brand awareness is thinking you can best use it to gain new customers and convert them. When you do this, inevitably, your audience will become focused on the product and not your brand!

You want to create a positive, lasting impression on your audience that extends beyond your product line. Here’s how:

It all starts with a plan.

A plan will increase the chances of success by providing you with a clear roadmap and focusing your energy on critical branding milestones. Start by asking yourself these 3 questions, which you can then incorporate into your brand awareness plan:

• Who is your target audience?
• What results do you want to see from your brand awareness campaign?
• Which channels/mediums do you have available to use?

Identifying your target audience is crucial if you want to personalize your messaging and campaigns. You wouldn’t speak to millennials the same way you would to retirees, would you?

Likewise, knowing the results you want to see beforehand will help you craft your message without losing sight of your end goal.

And finally, choosing which channels you want to use will help you allocate resources and pick the type of ads and messages that will best resonate with your audience, such as written content, or creating videos.

Creating brand awareness is a marathon, not a sprint, so create a plan and stick to it to stay on track.

Turn your brand into a person.

An amazing thing happens when brands act as if they’re people; we start to listen and care about them. They have their own brand voice, share things that make them laugh or things they care about—and when they get excited about something, we want to hear more.

Make a bigger impact on your audience by giving your brand attractive traits. If your brand’s only way of defining itself is by promoting products, no one will want to hear what you have to say.

You’re also more likely to create a memorable impression on people, as most marketing ads people see are impersonal—not personalized in any way.

A brand without a personality is boring; a brand with a personality like Tesla CEO Elon Musk behind it is electrifying! He imbues Tesla’s brand with his energy and passion for innovation. It’s exciting, it’s different, and it’s not afraid to take on the world.

Don’t sell, socialize.

Imagine you have a friend whom you speak with every day. But, instead of talking about his day or asking you questions, he’s continually trying to sell you stuff. Chances are, you’re going to ignore him as much as possible and ultimately want to stop hanging out with him altogether.

If your brand only posts about your products or services, no one will want to connect with you. You need to interact with your audience. Comment on posts on social media, ask questions, share content created by others that excites or affects you—engaging with your audience however you can.

Move away from the mindset of treating your social and marketing accounts as sales tools, and instead treat them as a person who wants to make new friends and keep in touch with old ones.

Tell stories.

People love stories, and they’re a powerful tool in your branding arsenal. Stories give us something to latch onto, especially when the feature a tragic underdog who eventually succeeds.

Creating a brand story helps to humanize your brand and make it personal. You can also integrate parts of your narrative within your marketing efforts to help promote your products or services.

For example, part of Apple’s story is that they started in a garage and eventually took on giants like IBM and Microsoft—huge, established companies in a market that looked impenetrable. They were the underdogs who took on the giants and won.

Your brand story can be about anything, as long as it’s authentic and sticks to the truth.

A good story has strong character development. You can talk about how you first got your business idea, the struggle your business went through before it succeeded, or how something in your personal life motivated you to change it.

Show how your brand has changed during the story. And finally, keep it short and simple.

How to Increase Brand Awareness

Once you’ve started establishing brand awareness, you’ll need to try to expand it as much as possible. Here are some methods you can use to supercharge your branding efforts.

Make everything sharable.

No matter the product or service you’re selling or your target audience, ensure that your content can be shared easily. Paid ads, social media posts, video content, your website pages, everything!

One of the most effective marketing methods is word-of-mouth. People are more likely to pay attention and trust a brand recommended by someone they know, such as family members or friends.

By making your content shareable, you increase your audience’s chances of sharing it with people they know, helping to raise your overall brand awareness.

This is why it’s essential to move beyond always trying to sell.

Instead, aim to communicate and engage with your audience, to both connect with and entertain them. You’ll have a more significant impact and increase your reach this way.

Video is one of the most shared forms of content. Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” video has been seen by over 57 million people on YouTube alone. Their clever use of humor, silliness, and innovation in the ad was an instant hit, and because it’s available on YouTube, it’s easy to share with friends and family.

 

Give away free things.

Many brands offer their basic service or product for free, and they charge users if they want to unlock more advanced options or use them on an enterprise level. It’s a technique used by many popular companies like Spotify and Trello.

Customers can “try before you buy” without having ever to pay a cent unless they want to upgrade. Unlike free trials which have to end at some point, the freemium experience can last forever.

Some freemium services include a watermark if your customers use it publicly, which is free advertising for your brand; plus, you’re receiving the user’s seal of approval in a public environment.

Not every small business can use the freemium model, but if you’re able to, it’s an excellent way to help raise the level of your brand awareness.

Create free, useful and exciting content.

Your audience is using the internet more and more every day, and also turning to it for help. Google is often the first port of call whenever anyone has a question, problem, or issue that needs fixing.

Just Google “stop leaking tap,” and you’ll see plenty of videos and articles showing you how to fix it yourself, often by trained professionals.

Creating content is a brilliant way to show off your expertise and help raise brand awareness. It also lets you cement your brand’s personality in the type of content you create, whether it be informative blog posts or YouTube videos.

Don’t forget to make it shareable!

Sponsor events—but start small.

A great way to get your brand in front of large groups of people in a positive way is to sponsor events. This doesn’t mean you should start sponsoring all different activities to reach as many people as possible, but sponsor events that interest your target audience.

The energy drink Red Bull is an aggressive, energetic brand that sponsors many dangerous, stunt-orientated sports, as well as plenty of athletes. This fits perfectly with their brand personality and target audience.

At the same time, you wouldn’t expect to see a chess tournament sponsored by Red Bull; it’s the wrong crowd.

You can sponsor events, festivals, tournaments, and also donate to important causes and scholarship funds.

Involve your users.

As we mentioned earlier, people trust their friends, family, and their peers considerably more than brands. You can increase your brand awareness by harnessing the power of social proof.

To do so, you’ll want to create situations where your audience can comment and write their own posts and reviews—also known as user-generated content.

All of Amazon’s reviews are generated by their users and provide invaluable evidence if a product is worth purchasing or not.

How to Measure Brand Awareness

The final piece of your brand awareness campaign puzzle is measuring and analyzing your results. By understanding your results, you’ll be able to identify if your current strategy is working, or if you need to make some changes.

But how do you measure brand awareness when it’s so…unmeasurable? How can you possibly quantify what people think about your business?

Here are a few quantitative and qualitative ways to measure your brand awareness’s success:

Quantitative methods

These types of measurements are numbers-based. They rely on hard evidence to help you see the success or failure of your branding. The most reliable way you can measure your brand awareness is by:

 

1. Engagement on social media – If part of your strategy is to use social media to boost your brand awareness, pay close attention to your engagement rates. These can be likes, shares, retweets, number of comments, views, etc. It’s a great way to check how your brand awareness campaigns are performing. If your engagement rates increase, it means you’re generating more and more brand awareness.

 

2. Measuring direct traffic – When someone manually types your brand’s URL into a search bar, it’s known as direct traffic. This is a useful metric to look at, as it lets you know how many people visit your site through a non-marketing method.

By that, we mean not by paid advertisements or through social media. If someone is looking for a fresh pair of Nike trainers, they can just type Nike.com into the address bar, and this lets Nike know they arrived at their site via direct traffic. That’s the power of branding.

 

3. Overall traffic numbers – When looking at your overall site traffic numbers, there are many variables that can affect it, such as the number of social media campaigns or video marketing ads you’re running. If you know that nothing has changed much, or you’re not even advertising at the moment, you can use overall traffic to estimate the effect of your brand awareness.

Qualitative methods

These methods rely less on substantial numbers, and more about trying to gauge your audience’s overall feeling and recognition of your brand:

 

1. Listen to social media – “Social listening” involves using tools to monitor when anyone naturally talking about your brand, without your prompting them in any way. For example, you can track if someone tags you in a post or mentions you individually in a comment. Depending on what they write, you can also gauge if they favor you in a positive light.

 

2. Use Google Alerts – Setting up Google Alerts with your brand name will instantly inform you when your brand is mentioned online in any news items or blog posts. Pay special attention to review posts and how you’re being talked about by important sites in your industry.

 

3. Create a survey – Sometimes, you just can’t beat a good questionnaire. You can create a short survey to get feedback from your customers or members of your target audience. Be sure to keep the questions open so you’ll receive back as much information as possible.

Over to You

Brand awareness is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. Because your customers and target market are continuously changing, you have to stay on your toes, remain agile, and think innovatively to keep your audience in the crosshairs of your branding efforts.

Use our complete guide to help establish, increase, and measure your brand awareness to create a large audience that’s loyal and listens to your every word.

Post Credit : https://www.tailorbrands.com/blog/brand-awareness

Brands are like people.

We like them when they’re approachable; we stay away from them when they don’t seem genuine. They can crack us up, and just as easily make us cry. Some brands seem like they were created especially for us, and in rare cases, they even make us feel validated and loved.

In other words, brands can make an emotional impact, and the successful ones usually convey a positive experience to their customers.

But how do they deliver this positive experience? How do they even define what it is?

The answer: Through their brand personality.

Brand personality is one of the central parts of a brand identity, and it’s one of many tools at your disposal to shape the public’s perception of your business.

We are bombarded with images from the moment we wake up until the second we close our eyes. Our phones, our apps, our social media pages, and even our commutes to work are full of visual cues that we may not even notice – but our subconscious definitely pays attention.

In fact, we take what we see and form beliefs about the brands that use these images, whether we realize it or not.

This is because images have a powerful hold on our minds; they constantly help us form associations about a product, service, or brand, through the consistent messages we receive from them.

That’s why, when branding, companies have a number of tools in their communication basket – and you do too. There’s brand voice, which you use to speak to your audience. There’s your logo, color palette and tagline, which are used to foster emotional connections with the people interacting with you. And, there’s brand imagery, which are the images you use along with your logo to give visual expression to your brand.

Awesome Brand Website design and development in Mumbai India

Hey there,

We all know that creating a website is a fundamental part of any business marketing strategy. A website establishes your company’s online presence and is an important resource for attracting leads and guiding customers through the sales funnel.

While a website is meant to transmit practical value about your business and your brand, it’s also the place to build emotional connections, telling your brand story with your target audience. Your website’s look, feel, and personality are just as powerful as the information on your site when it comes to drawing in prospective customers.

The secret to crafting an online presence that intuitively resonates with your audience is to create a branded website. You can think of a branded website as your business’s personal profile, with a combination of visuals, colors, and strong written copy that together create a cohesive picture of your brand’s personality.

Why You Need a Branded Website?

A website consistent with your brand image and personality is vastly more effective than a website that simply looks good. A website that either ignores or is inconsistent with your brand image is a missed opportunity to shape public perception of your brand.

Take a step back from your company for a second, and think about yourself. You probably have a personal Facebook or Instagram account, right? Both social media platforms have space for you to add a short bio, and Facebook even encourages you to select featured images.

As you contemplate what to put in your bio, you’re probably thinking, What captures the essence of me? Are you funny and lighthearted or serious and professional? Do you have a hobby or interest that best embodies your personality—like “basketball fan” or “proud father”—or do you prefer to focus on something more abstract, like “daydreamer” or “creative thinker.”

And, which images should you put on your profile? Pictures of yourself with your family? Pictures of you at work conferences? Photos of partying with friends?

The point is that the photos, information, and tone of voice you choose to include (or exclude) on your profile shape people’s perception of your personality. Company branding works the same way. The content and design of your small business’s website and social media pages determine how your audience perceives your brand.

The benefit of a branded website development is that it strengthens customer connections and builds trust. If your brand has a personality that resonates with your target audience and speaks to their values and needs, your brand can become your customer’s best friend.

 

Define Your Brand Personality

The first step in creating a branded website is defining your brand. After doing market research, think about your target audience and the kind of brand personality that would resonate with them most.

Your brand personality is the human element of your brand. It’s made up of a consistent set of traits and behaviors that you apply across your brand’s image and voice.

There are five main types of brand personalities. While there’s definitely room for variation and overlap, these traits can help get you started:

• Competence – Reliable, professional, intelligent
• Ruggedness – Tough, outdoorsy, irreverent
• Sophistication – Refined, charming, prestigious
• Excitement – Imaginative, daring, playful
• Sincerity – Honest, warm, wholesome

As you build your website, your choice of visuals and text should be consistently rooted in your brand’s personality.

Let’s dive into the specifics of how to create branded visuals and written content for your site.

Implement Emotion In Your Visual Design

The foundation of a strong, emotional connection stems from being able to relate to a certain subject. This same principle can be used for making an emotional connection with users on a website. To create a more personal user experience , as a  web designers we use specific design components to elicit certain emotional responses. These components should be refined specifically to the type of brand and the target audience.

A website usually includes several elements that can make a design more personal and that can be regarded as “emotion carriers.” Some of these are obvious, such as colors, images and shapes. Others are not so obvious, such as humor, recognition, dissonance, tone of voice and engagement.

Website visuals are a way to build recognition of your brand image and personality. Every visual element on your site should touch back to the way you want your audience to perceive your brand.

Post Credit : https://www.tailorbrands.com/blog/creating-a-perfectly-branded-website-for-your-small-business-2

A brand is the sum total of the experiences your customers and potential customers have with your company. A strong brand communicates what your company does, how it does it, and at the same time, establishes trust and credibility. Your brand lives in everyday interactions with your customers, the images you share, the messages you post on your website, the content of your marketing materials, and in your posts on social networks.

How can a small business develop a strong brand on a tiny budget? Here are 10 tips to help you get started:

1. Be unique. One of the most iconic brands of our time – Apple – was reborn after it launched, in 1997, an innovative campaign inviting people to “Think Different”. Today, Apple products are perceived to be better designed, more fun, and more reliable than products from Apple’s competitors. What makes your business unique? What’s your story? What do you do that others in your industry do not do?

2. Grow your community. Many of the world’s best brands, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, Virgin, and Skype, spend modest sums on advertising and instead, focus on building and improving their communities. Those companies understand that if people trust a brand’s community, they will extend trust to the brand.

Small businesses have many opportunities to build online and offline communities. For example, you can build online communities on Twitter, Facebook, your small business blog, on Instagram, or on other social networks. And remember that you can’t be in all places at once. Pick one or two places where you can focus building your community, and invest your time and resources there.

3. Build great products and services. Earlier this year, market research firm Millward Brown published its annual BrandZ study, ranking the world’s leading brands. When you consider that the number one reason people write about brands is to share experiences (see graphic below from the BrandZ study), Apple’s top ranking is not surprising – people love Apple’s products.

Some companies stop focusing on building great products and services when they become successful. This is a mistake. In 2008, Nokia was the world’s ninth most valuable brand. In 2011, Nokia was ranked 81st and this year, it fell even further. Even a strong brand will suffer when it creates average or below average products or services.

4. Have a good name and logo. A strong brand is easily recognizable. Recognition starts with the name of your business. The name will appear on your business cards, letterhead, website, social networks, promotional materials, products, and pretty much everywhere in print and online to identify your company or your company’s products and/or services.

It’s not enough to have a recognizable name. People commonly associate brands with the brand’s logo. As you think about your logo, keep your audience and products/services in mind because you want your logo to reflect your company. A good logo builds trust and a strong logo will help to pull your brand together. Think about the logos of some of the world’s most admired brands (Apple, Google, Amazon). How do you feel (emotionally) when you see their logos?

If you want to learn more about naming your business, we invite you to read 10 tips for startups and small business on naming your company. If you want to learn more about getting a great logo, we invite you to read 10 logo design tips for buyers.

5. Find your voice. What you say is important, but don’t overlook how you say it. Your company’s “voice” is the language and personality you and your employees will use to deliver your branding message and reach your customers. Successful brands speak with a unique voice. Think about the brands you admire – what makes them unique? How do they communicate with you and other customers? What do you like about their voice?

6. Be consistent. Many small businesses mistakenly change their messaging depending on their audience. For example, a company might take a more serious tone on their website but a very lighthearted tone on their Facebook fan page. This can confuse your customers and potential customers. To build and maintain a strong brand, every aspect of your brand should be as good as your product or service and you must be consistent in presenting your brand. This includes not only your company’s name, logo, overall aesthetic design, products and services, but also includes your marketing materials, website, appearances at trade shows and conferences, content posted to social networks, etc.

Why should you care about brand consistency? You should care because brand consistency leads to familiarity, and familiarity leads to trust.

Many of you recall that Duct Tape Marketing recently redesigned its website to better and more effectively communicate with customers and potential customers. The old site was cluttered and at times, confusing. A cleaner design and greater consistency resulted in significant benefits.

7. Keep your promises. Although this is common sense, you’d be surprised how many small businesses tarnish relationships with their customers by failing to keep their promises. Happy customers who feel good about your business are your best source of referrals. For example, Zappos has built great trust and credibility with customers by promising quick delivery (2-5 business days) but Zappos goes even further and upgrades most customers to free overnight shipping. As a result, Zappos has very loyal and zealous customers.

8. Stand for something. Think about brands you love. Those brands commonly stand for something (or against something) and connect with their customers emotionally. One of my favorite companies, 37signals, develops software to help people collaborate. 37signals believes that most software is bloated and difficult to use. They don’t compete on features – they compete on usability. They have developed a reputation as a company that stands for easy to use software.

What does your business stand for (or against)?

9. Empower your customers. You are not in control of your brand. You can set your brand’s direction, but how your brand is perceived is determined by your customers and potential customers. People can become your brand’s ambassadors – spreading your ideas and brand to their own networks. Spend time nurturing relationships with such people. Who are they? What can they give and get in order to help your brand? Ultimately, successful brands recognize that if they help their customers succeed, the customers will in turn help the brand succeed.

10. Deliver value. Value doesn’t always mean lowest price. You can focus on product leadership (having the best products in the marketplace, like Apple), operational excellence (having the lower prices in the marketplace, like Ikea), or great customer service (Virgin, Zappos). You can also focus on a combination of those things.

As you think about the value your company delivers – you can ask the following questions: What sets your product, service and company apart from your competitors? What value do you provide and how does that value differ from that provided by your competitors? Think about which of the benefits are emotional – the most powerful brands tap into emotions.

We’d love to hear from you in the comments. What makes your small business unique? What’s your story?

Post Credit : https://ducttapemarketing.com/successful-small-business-brand/

This week in one of my Facebook groups, a fellow branding professional told a story of how a guru business consultant she knows advises people that branding a small business is unnecessary: “It’s just a waste of your time and money.”

I hear that a lot so I told her: “Don’t sweat it. Anyone who says a business ‘doesn’t need branding’ doesn’t fully comprehend what it actually is.”

That said, I kinda-sorta think I understand what that consultant was getting at and I’m going to flesh that out. But make no mistake about it:…

Branding a small business is a necessity, for solo professionals

And I’m not talking about your logo, fancy photography, or award-winning website design.  If you’ve managed to win clients and make sales already, you’re already doing branding. The question is whether you’re doing it with intention.

There’s a distinction in terminology that a lot of people get confused about so let’s clear that up. Your visual design–what a lot of people are referring to when they talk about branding–is your brand identity. 

But it’s not in and of itself “branding.”

I always like to put it this way…

Branding is just a way to sell things. So if you need to sell things, and I assume that you do, of course you need branding.

Branding is the way you:

• Let people know who it’s for
• And what they can expect when they hire you
• Make your case for why you’re the best choice out of all the others they’re considering
• Establish credibility
• Build awareness
• Become recognized and remembered
• Become known, liked, and trusted

Another way to think about it is…

Branding is the way you’ll create the positive feelings about your company that will lead people to purchase things from you

Why some people advise against branding a small business

Because they don’t understand what branding is

Conversations about branding can get pretty esoteric at times, so people often confuse brand identity with branding itself. Also, they sometimes assume it’s only for big major companies. But branding works the same for any business, even a side hustle.

I blame cliché phrases like, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room” for part of the confusion and endless debate around this subject. That sounds nice, but they’re just a bunch of words that don’t convey the importance of why you need it and they certainly don’t offer any clues for how you’re supposed to go about it.

It can keep you “stuck” when you’re just starting out

A lot of aspiring entrepreneurs spend too much money and time in the beginning stages of their business fussing and stressing over their logo design and color palette and not enough time on just getting out there, getting visible, and getting started.

n fact, I know people who have spent a small fortune on a logo, a website, and business cards and they never actually got their business off the ground. Don’t do that.

It may make you feel good to have all of those things–like your hopes and dreams are now a legitimate, tangible thing–but a business card is not a business.

The most important thing you need to get started is to have a viable service offering that enough people need that you can charge enough money for to meet your financial goals.

My advice is to get started and make it fancy later. You’ll come to understand your brand as you get more experience, get to know your value and differentiators and even your definition of your ideal customer when you’re actually doing business.

If you think you can’t launch your business without an award-winning logo, stop what you’re doing and go find some clients and get to work.

I recommend going through The Brand Story Blueprint to understand the fundamental aspects of your brand message and then just get out there with it.

Branding a small business is an unnecessary expense when you’re just starting out

I agree with this to some extent. Here, people are usually talking about investing in a brand identity system (hiring a designer), or hiring a brand strategist to help with the messaging and positioning.

But when you’re just starting out, you may not be clear about many of the things that go into creating a brand that’ll get clients flocking to you, and branding professional can’t promise you that clarity.

When you should not invest money into branding a small business

A lot of people start out in business by thinking, “I have these skills, and people are looking for people with these skills to hire, so now I just need to find them.”

That’s enough to start! You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on a logo and a website to do that. Just go out there and get some clients. Branding is a long game, so you’ll need a short game too. (If you want some ideas for how to get clients fast, you can find them in my free resource library.)

It’s not a great idea to throw a bunch of money at professional branding services until you’re sure about where you’re headed and certain your business idea is viable.

You’ll see a lot of brand designers freaking out about this particular advice but I’m not one of them: You can bootstrap your brand on a shoestring budget.

You do need some tools to start. I want to make sure my clients start with the right tools–the ones that will allow them to scale, iterate and grow as they go. For business owners who are “ready,” I offer something much more in-depth. (When you’re ready? You’ll know.)

Here’s what you’re gonna need:

8 Essential Elements of a Branding a Small Business

I’m going to start each aspect with a verb to help you take action on each, and I’m going to try to boil it down as much as possible for the same reason.

#1: Know Your Why

Simon Sinek famously said, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” It’s helpful to start with a philosophical foundation so you and your customers know what you stand for. Creating a purpose statement will help you make decisions about everything relating to your brand going forward: who you’ll work with, what you’ll offer, what you’ll say and do and what you won’t.

This is your brand purpose and serves as a compass for everything you do, and gives your customers a deeper reason to choose you.

Further reading: One Simple But Powerful Exercise To Strengthen Your Brand

#2: Know Your Ideal Customer

Which segment of the market are you targeting? It would be impossible (and it isn’t very wise) to target everybody or just anybody, so who is your ideal customer? Who most needs the thing you sell? When you categorize potential target groups, which group’s problems do you understand the best?

The idea is that when your target customer sees your message, they’ll think, “Hey, that’s for me!”

This is your brand positioning and it allows you to stake your claim in a crowded marketplace.

#3: Be Unique

Take a look around at what others in your industry are doing and then ask yourself, “What are the reasons why a customer would choose me instead?” What are the characteristics or benefits of your service, or you as a person, that would be very hard for others to replicate?

The idea is that you want to become known for something and it needs to be crystal clear to your potential customers what that thing is. Competition falls away because there’s no substitute for you.

“You’re the only one that _________.” (By the way, you don’t have to be “The only one that _______” in the whole entire world, just your tiny corner of it.)

This is your brand differentiation. It helps customers understand why they should choose you.

Further Reading: You Don’t Need To Be A Unicorn: Defining Your Unique Value Proposition

#4 Create an Amazing Client Experience

How do you want your customers to describe you after your work together is through? What qualities do you want them to tell their friends about you?

• That you delivered fast, hassle-free service?
• That you were thorough and detail-oriented?
• That you made the process fun?
• That you were compassionate and empowering?

What was it like to follow your process–how did they feel?

What steps do you take, and what policies do you follow, to ensure they feel that way?

Everything you do (a.k.a. “branding”) should be grounded by those core values you want people to remember you by–from the very first interaction (or “touchpoint”) to the last.

When your customers start describing their experience–in testimonials and reviews and referrals–in very similar ways, it means you’re purposefully creating the kind of client experience that you can become known for.

This is your brand experience. It helps you attract the right people to you and create raving fans and repeat customers.

#5 Give your brand personality

People buy from brands and they hire humans. So as you market your business (marketing, by the way, is brand building), you want to express consistent personality characteristics and make your company values known through copy and visuals (the pillars of brand communication).

Think about the words you’ll use to communicate what it’s like to work with you. Will you be a sturdy, reliable consultant? Or a quirky and fun coach? You’ll want to think about how you’ll speak and write–the words you use and the way you use them–that’ll help people get to know you.

This is your brand tone. It helps people decide whether you would be a good fit for them on an emotional level.

#6 Set Expectations

In a clear and concise way, you want to be able to describe the benefits of working with you and the transformation they can expect when they do. You can also call this a marketing claim. A simple formula is: “I help people ______.’

This is your brand promise. It helps people to understand what they can expect when they do business with you.

#7 Communicate Visually

Once you have clarity around these things, a designer can help you communicate them visually. Your logo, website and other marketing collateral assets should be consistent, in alignment with your brand’s personality, and appropriate for your industry.

This is your visual brand identity. It serves the purpose of communicating what your brand is all about.

#8 Create Branding Guidelines

Once you’ve established our brand tone and brand identity you can create guidelines that help you show up in a consistent way. Brand consistency is crucial because it shortens the time it takes for people to become aware of and remember you. Again, it doesn’t need to be fancy, your goal is consistency. Keep it simple to start!

Download my Branding Guidelines Template below, it’s set up in Google Slides and will show you the basics of what you need without needing any fancy software. You can download it as a .pdf if you like so you can refer to it when you’re creating your marketing materials and messages.

It’s also helpful to provide any copywriters, designers, marketing consultants and assistants you work with too.

This is your brand guide. It helps you create consistency.

Does your small business need branding? Of course. Do you need to spend a lot of money when you’re just starting out? Of course not.

When you have a strategic approach to branding a small business, you begin to show up with confidence in a way that gets your dream clients doing a double-take: “Hey, you’re exactly what I’ve been looking for!”

And who doesn’t “need” that?

Recommended next step: Get The Brand Story Blueprint to help you get clear about the foundation of your brand story so you can create messages your dream customers actually want to pay attention to.

 

Post Credit : https://endeavorcreative.com/branding-a-small-business/

 

Are you looking for a cheap website design company?

In this article, we’ll explain why the cost of a website varies a lot from agency to agency. We’ll also discuss why having a cheap website design will do more harm than good to your business.

But first, let’s have a look at some common reasons why you might be thinking about hiring a cheap web design agency.

1. You’re on a tight budget

This is, of course, the most common reason why people go for cheap website designs. You believe you need a website for your business, but you don’t want it to cost you that much. So you are looking for the most affordable web design company, without considering the quality you might be getting.

2. Your run a small local business and don’t consider a website important

Many small business owners don’t consider websites to be an effective conversion tool. So, they are reluctant to spend much money on it. In reality, a small business website with the right features can bring you more customers than you would think. Selecting a cheap website design for small business is one of the very common mistakes that SMB owners make.

3. You rely on social media to sell your products

Some newer businesses consider social media to be their primary sales channel. If you are in this group, then you might assume spending on web design is a waste of money. While it’s true that social media can be a powerful channel for selling your products, you shouldn’t rely on these platforms to form the core of your online presence.

4. You think you’ve found the perfect agency at low cost

Many web design services promise to deliver a quality website at a lower than market price. You may have found one of these low-cost web design agencies and been convinced by their offer. After all, if someone is providing you affordable website designs, why bother looking elsewhere?

We understand that getting a new website at a low price seems like a bargain. But before making the final decision, read this article to learn more about how to choose an affordable web design company without risking your business.

How some companies can offer cheap website design services

Think about this.

Web design is a competitive industry. Even established agencies have to compete every day to secure new projects. Web design companies must, therefore, try their best to be affordable for their customers without sacrificing quality.

Then how can some agencies work for a much lower fee than usual?

1. They outsource your projects to low cost overseas workers

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; there are skilled designers and developers all around the world. But cheap website design companies often hand over your projects to low-quality offshore workers.

2. They don’t care about your site’s internal quality

There’s a lot inside a working website that isn’t apparent from the outside. Low-cost website design companies ignore these small but crucial requirements and best practices.

3. Your site is “built” using pre-set templates

Cheap websites are often built by editing a pre-set template. The design company just changes a few visual elements and pieces of content and then sells it to you as a brand new website.

Building websites using templates is quite a common practice, but these agencies won’t customise your site enough, resulting in a website that looks copied and unoriginal.

4. Your site structure isn’t scalable

A quality website isn’t a one-time investment. As your business and market changes, your site will need refinements. Cheap websites don’t have the customisation options necessary to support your business’ growth. This lack of extensibility will make these sites redundant very quickly.

5. The agency has little to no after-sales support

After a website is built and handed over to you, there will still be many issues to deal with. This is very normal. Going forward, you might need to communicate with the support team if any problem arises. Cheap website design agencies don’t invest in after-sales support; for most of them, long-term client support is non-existent. This helps these agencies to quote a lower price for your website.

Problems with cheap website design

So now you know how some web design companies can build your website for way less than others. Let’s consider some problems you might face when choosing these cheap web design services.

1. Low quality websites will make you lose customers

A website is a lot more than its looks. If your site has a poor UX, potential customers won’t convert. If its internal structure isn’t SEO friendly, you’ll have a hard time getting new visitors.

2. Cheap websites lack performance and scalability

Cheap websites aren’t optimised for performance. Being built by unskilled developers, these sites suffer from poor code structure. As time goes on, you’ll find it extremely difficult to add new features to your site. Bloated with patched-up codes, maintaining your site will cost you a lot more in the long run.

3. Your website won’t stand out from the crowd

Getting a website built on a pre-set template makes it look like a thousand others on the web. A generic website has a dull and ineffective online presence; your site should be unique, with a distinctive brand image. Cheap web designers lack the skills to express this uniqueness through their design. The reason is simple – if they had the skills they wouldn’t cost so less.

4. You risk a breach of security

Cheap website designers will disregard or fail to follow security best practices. As a result, you may experience security breaches and could even lose control of your site. Getting hacked will tarnish the brand image of any business, but for an ecommerce site, it could well be catastrophic.

Many small business owners assume that cybercriminals are not going to target their website. This couldn’t be further from reality. The 2020 ACSC report from Australian Government shows 62% small businesses in Australia have experienced cyber-attacks.

5. You’ll have a hard time with after-sales support

Having sold you a site for very little of money, the cheap web design companies don’t feel any responsibility to help you with the problems that you may face regarding your website. Poor after-sales support is very common in these companies. All you can do is leave a bad review about their service. But they don’t bother much about their brand image either.

Cheap websites cost more in the long run

It may sound counter-intuitive, but it’s true. Maintaining a low-quality website involves a lot more hassle than you might imagine.

You have almost certainly come across some of these sites. Ones that have misaligned elements when viewed on mobile phones. Even worse, they may have used substandard codes, which make the website appear broken on certain devices.

Cheap web design companies will often push you to their preferred hosting options. Cheap web hosting may put less pressure on your pocket, but it also provides you with less bandwidth. The result is a slower site and abysmal user experience.

Issues like these aren’t evident at the beginning. But as time goes on, you’ll see more and more such flaws.

Fixing flaws like these will eventually cost you a lot more and lack of quality customer support will put you in an even more uncomfortable position. Eventually, you’ll need to seek help from a well-established web design company. And then you’ll hear your site is so poorly designed that you need a complete overhaul.

The whole process will be a lot more affordable if you start with a trusted agency to begin with.

What should you do?

You may be thinking that quality, affordable website design services don’t exist.

They do.

But they don’t advertise themselves as cheap web design companies.

A web design company that understands your business can tell you exactly what type of website you will need, and how much of a budget you will require. Investing in the right kind of site is never a waste of money.

If you are a small business, you don’t need a website with enterprise-level functionality. If you are a big ecommerce company, then you better have a site that can compete in an international market. A fashion or beauty product site needs to focus more on visuals than the local municipality website.

A reputed agency won’t charge you more by adding unnecessary features. Neither will they promise you the lowest price regardless of your requirements. Affordable website design and cheap website design are not necessarily the same thing.

Here’s how to find the right web design company for your business, at an affordable price.

1. Avoid companies that have preset website design packages

Preset web design packages will often cost you more than a custom price. A package may include the cost of features that your site doesn’t need. Ask if the company offers custom pricing.

However, in some cases, preset packages can be helpful. For example: Suppose a company specialises in medical website design and has different packages for medical centres or hospitals. These packages usually cover only the specific features that a niche website needs.

2. Go through their portfolio to see if they have worked with businesses at your level

If you are a local business, then choose a web design agency that works with small and medium-sized businesses. Working with a design agency that services Fortune 500 companies will definitely cost a lot. A small or medium business doesn’t need to go through the same elaborate design process as these big companies.

3. Make sure the design agency understands your market

If you are a business in Australia, then try to find an affordable web design agency that works with Australian businesses. That doesn’t mean you should just search for cheap website design Australia in Google. Don’t forget the criteria we’ve mentioned in the above points.

A local agency will understand your business and customers better. They will know what kinds of website designs are performing well among your target demographics, and your money won’t be wasted on designs that don’t convert.

4. Look for companies that have excellent customer support

Helpful after-sales customer care will save you time and money, not to mention stress. Ask the design agency if they can introduce you to a dedicated manager for your project. Also, enquire about their after-sales support policy. This will help you cut a lot of unexpected costs in the future.

5. Keep away from agencies with shady business practices

Be careful when dealing with agencies that offer things like free logo design or cheap hosting packages with their cheap, so-called professional websites. A company claiming to provide the cheapest website design service and promoting free offers likely lacks experienced designers and developers. They are trying to cover up their lack of expertise by keeping their prices below average. These agencies are very affordable to begin with, but as we have mentioned before, a poor website will cost you a lot in the long run.

Summary

If you’ve decided to hire a cheap website design company, it’s time to think again. The wiser choice is an established agency that understands your business well, provides excellent customer support, and can help you in the future.

A website is not a one-off deal. Any successful site needs periodical refinements as your business grows. A cheap web design company may cost you less at the beginning, but poorly designed websites will cost you a lot more in the end. Add in low conversion rates and the devaluation of your brand, and you can see why it’s essential to avoid cheap web design services.

Working with well-established agencies doesn’t have to be expensive. They can give you an honest estimate of the total cost. Many reputed agencies provide quite affordable web design services for small to medium-sized businesses.

The money you spend on designing your website is an investment. And you can ensure a healthy return on that investment by selecting the right web design company.

 

Post Credit : https://www.webalive.com.au/cheap-website-design/

It is crucial for every business to have a website. However, a lot of the time, small local business owners have limited knowledge about essential website features and web design best practices.

Usually, hiring a web design company or a freelancer is a good move to have your website set up for you. But these providers obviously aren’t also in the know when it comes to your products and may not know what it takes to sell.

That’s why building a website is a collaborative process.

While having an effectively designed website can boost your sales, an average or poorly designed one will cause you to lose potential customers. As an owner of a local business, you should have some basic idea of what you need to have on your site and what to avoid.

To make things easy for you, we have created an infographic that shows 53 must-have features for any local small business website. Consider this website features list a checklist or a guideline for you and your developer – you’ll thank us later!

Header and Home

1. ccTLD domain

Your domain name should represent your business or be related to your service. Additionally, a local business should have a country specific domain (ccTLD). For an Australian website, for instance, a .com.au domain is the best choice.

A ccTLD (Country Code Top-Level Domain) is one of the strongest ways to show users and search engines where your business originates. It will help your website rank higher in search engine result pages.

2. Phone number

Mentioning a phone number is very important for local business websites. We would also recommend adding a live chat functionality. The more communication options a customer has, the better.

3. Logo

A logo is a crucial part of your online branding. An elegant, clearly designed logo helps to build trust. Consider having it placed in the upper left corner of your website where it is highly visible.

4. Main menu / Navigation bar

Your main navigation works as a map of your site. For a local business, the main navigation should contain all the important pages of your website including home, about, services/products, blog and the contact page.

Depending on your business, a slightly different menu design may be appropriate. But don’t try to get overly cute with it without a good reason; the aim of the main navigation is to let the visitor easily navigate through the site. A clear, simple and easy-to-use navigation bar is one of the key features of a good website.

5. Heading and tagline or USP

The heading of your site should contain some of the important keywords that sum up what your business is about. It is very important for getting a good ranking in search engines.

The tagline represents your business by using a few words in a creative way. Its aim is to catch the visitor’s attention. Crafting a perfect tagline is difficult as it needs to be clever and also easy to understand.

6. Short blurb of text

Your home page should feature a short blurb piece that describes your business and service. When people visit a website they tend to simply skim through the page, so the content should be succinct and to the point.

7. Banner image

A banner image is a visual way to communicate with visitors to the website. The image should give the viewers a sense of what your business is about.

8. Call to action button

For any business site, it is mandatory to have a few call to action buttons, which encourage visitors to act to get in touch or contact you. Some example call to action phrases might be “Request a Free Quote”, “Buy Now” or “Call Now”.

9. Services/products

Your homepage should feature the best or highest selling products and services that you offer. This will create a good first impression and encourage potential customers to browse for more information.

10. Quote form

A quote form gives your customers an easy way to make service related inquiries. Instead of having a form only on the contact page, include a quote form at the same location on every page of your site.

11. Quality content

For websites of any kind – “Content is the king.” Without relevant content, your business site will neither be able to attract the customers nor have a good ranking in search results. While content may not come to your mind when you think about the features of a website, it’s crucial for your site’s success.

12. Easily readable font

User friendliness is ultimately the most important asset of any site, even more so for a business site where you are trying to sell products or services. A clumsy choice of fonts degrades the overall appearance and usability. Always use clear, easy to read fonts and make sure it’s consistent on every page.

13. Testimonials and social proof

Before making any purchase, a customer wants to be sure that you can deliver what you promise. Testimonials from past customers are a great way to help convince a potential buyer; just make sure they’re genuine!

14. Newsletter signup form

Newsletters are a great way to build relationships with customers. Encourage your customers to subscribe to your newsletter. Send your latest blog articles and the best updates from your social media to your subscribers. You can also let your customers know about special discounts or new products via newsletters.

15. Contact information

People often visit a local business site looking for contact information. A good place to put your contact information in the footer of the homepage.

16. Link to social media pages

A strong presence in social media is highly recommended for any online business. It is a great way to interact with the customers. Links to social media accounts make it very easy for them to follow you.

17. Footer menu

The footer menu generally contains links to the main pages, like – Home, Services etc (similar to the Main menu) and is positioned at the bottom of the page, allowing the customer to navigate the website after strolling through the content on the page from top to bottom.

Service Page

18. Readable URL

Every page of your business website should have a readable and relevant URL. For example, The URL of the services page should be something like domain.com.au/services instead of something like domain.com.au?p=64723

19. Link to other pages

Links to other pages from the body text are called internal links and can help your visitors to navigate within the site. They also send various signals to search engines and can help you with SEO.

20. Child Service pages

Child service pages focus on specific products or services that your business offers. Focus on categorising your service into a number of smaller services that are contained within it, and create pages for this under the main service page.

21. Gallery of local work/portfolio

A gallery is something like a portfolio that presents your previous projects. Successful past projects will encourage customers to do business with you.

Location page

22. URL with service area name

A local business is generally tied to a specific broad location and covers a few service areas. When it comes to SEO, it works well to have a page for each of your service area locations. For example: If one of your service areas in Melbourne, the location page URL should be something like domain.com.au/service-area/melbourne

23. Maps / Direction

A map that shows the location of your office or store is very helpful for potential customers. It’s easier to get a sense of where something is when looking at a map rather than just an address. Google Maps can be easily added to your website.

Contact Page

24. Business address

Though a map is helpful, you must also mention your address anyway. In many cases, people visit your site just to know your business address.

25. Contact form

Customers can easily send you messages using the contact form. It is more convenient than emailing you. The contact form has become an essential website feature for all types of business.

26. Hour of business

Your site must mention your business hours. Be careful and update the time and let your customers know if you are open or closed on a certain public holiday.

27. Captcha or anti-spam feature

Captcha or spam filters are now standard practice for websites. These make sure that only genuine visitors can reach you and complete the contact form – without it, you’re bound to get a lot of unsolicited emails and spam.

Other Inner Pages

28. Personalised about us page

This is a place to tell your business story. You can be a bit creative here but be sure to include important information; your company history, awards and recognitions, future plans, etc.

29. Privacy policy page

No one really reads a privacy policy page, but it’s important to include it can help to build trust and sets you up as a genuine business in visitors’ eyes. As a business, your site receives a lot of information from your customers, and this page needs to clearly explain how this data is used.

30. FAQ page

As a business, you will find out there are some common questions that every customer asks. The FAQ page contains the answers to these questions and acts as a timesaver for both you and your customer.

Blog

31. Sidebar

The sidebar of a blog page shows the most popular or recent posts for easy navigation for the visitor.

32. Search function

The search box is one of the basic elements of a good blog page. Your blog readers may often use the search function to find a relevant blog post.

33. Social media share buttons

If someone wants to share one of your blog posts, you want to make it as easy as possible. Social media share buttons will enable this with a simple click.

34. Comment feature

Comments are a great way to engage in conversations with your readers. This helps to build a closer relationship with them.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

35. Ability to easily update title tag and meta description

Title tags and meta descriptions are used on the search engine result pages and how well they are written can determine which page your website shows up on and how many clicks it gets. The title tag is considered to be one of the strongest onsite ranking factors and the meta description helps a searcher understand what the page is about. You or your SEO agency should be able to easily update the page titles on your website.

36. Easy to update URL structure

We have mentioned that a readable and meaningful URL is good for SEO. You should have the ability to easily update the URL of your pages if the content of the page changes.

Some other things to consider

37. Mobile responsiveness

It goes without saying – if a website is not mobile responsive it won’t survive. More and more people are accessing the net through their mobile devices. A business site that doesn’t show up properly on screens of all sizes is fighting an uphill battle. Mobile responsiveness is now an essential part of website functionality.

38. Hamburger menu on mobile

In a mobile device, it is not possible to show the full main menu because the screen size is so small. A hamburger menu function hides the main menu content as a sidebar, allowing users to bring up the main menu by clicking on the three small horizontal bars at the top left corner of the page.

39. Browser compatible

A website should be compatible with all modern web browsers, especially the most popular ones including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, Edge and Opera.

40. Google Analytics integration

Google Analytics is the best tool for collecting and analysing web traffic and how people are interacting with your website. The reports generated by Analytics help you plan your market strategy. It is an invaluable tool for a business website, so make sure you have it set up.

41. Google Search Console integration

Google search console is a tool to supervise a site’s overall performance in search results. If your site has any malware or SEO based issue, Google search console will help you to identify and resolve that too.

42. Optimise website speed and performance

Users won’t visit a website if it takes more than 4-5 seconds to load. Properly optimised code and an efficient content management system is the key here.

43. Use browser cache to increase speed

Your site should be cache enabled. When a browser loads a page, it brings data from the web server. However, if a user visits a page multiple times, some site data can be stored in the browser cache of the user’s device. This will increase the page loading speed.

44. LocalBusiness Schema

Schema.org is a collaborative standard for structured data on the internet. It helps search engines understand your website content.

45. Fast hosting

The hosting service used for your business site should be fast and reliable. Poor hosting can be more harmful than you can imagine.

46. Security

Any flaw in security can destroy the reputation of your business. Your site must be well-protected from hacking attempts, data leak or viruses. Using a distributed domain, secure protocols and proper virus protection is mandatory. There are many other aspects of security that you should be aware of, depending on the size and type of website.

47. Site backup

If your site is hosted on a physical system, make sure the site data gets backed up regularly.

48. Easy to manage

A business site should use a content management system (CMS) to keep the site easily maintainable. A CMS makes it very easy to manage and update your website.

Things you should avoid

49. Don’t use flash elements

There was a time when flash was very popular, but websites these days tend to avoid it due to the fact that it’s difficult to work with and doesn’t convert well to mobile devices. While flash may seem like one of the cool website features, you shouldn’t use it anymore.

50. Automatic music in the background

No one wants to hear background music that plays automatically after opening a page. Unless you want to annoy your user, avoid this.

51. Do not upload video on the web server

If you want to add some videos to your site, use video uploading platforms like YouTube or Vimeo and then embed the videos into your site. This is a much better option than uploading the video directly to your web server.

52. Moving slider

Avoid moving sliders that display a series of images (or other contents). Though many websites use this, sliders are generally annoying or distracting.

53. Dead-end pages

There should be no page in your site from where you can’t navigate to other pages. Pages like this are called dead-end pages and they tend to annoy visitors.

So these were the most vital features for a small local business website. We hope that now you can look beyond the layout or colour scheme and understand the subtle elements that make your website more user-friendly as well as loved by search engines.

Have you found our recommendations helpful? Did you see any improvement in your conversion rate and local ranking by following our advice? You can track your site’s local ranking by using tools like GeoRanker.

 

Post Credit : https://www.webalive.com.au/local-business-website-features/