How can small businesses establish their brands like big brands in this digital era?

People invest their time and money with brands that are authentic and creates an emotional bond with them. But how can small businesses create this bond with their customers without having the same resources like big companies?
The good news is that the times have changed and you don’t always need multi-million dollars branding and marketing budgets to make a difference in the lives of your customers.
The very essence of branding is to make people recognise and associate positive emotions with your business, but too often small businesses/startups only limit their thought processes to brand’s tangible visual assets only (logos, typography, colours etc). Creating a consistent visual identity is very important but its not a good approach to just focus on this aspect only.
It is very important to think of your business as a living entity with whom people interact both visually and emotionally. Visuals triggers emotions, point taken. But how can you as a small business owner control those emotions that are evoked when people see your company’s logo alone/fliers/other visual assets?
Just like you choose your friends based on their personalities, people choose their brands based on brand’s personality.
“Your Purpose Defines Your Personality.”
So the first step should be to establish your brand’s purpose.
- What does your brand stands for?
- What is the purpose of your brand’s existence?
- What would your customers miss if your company didn’t exist from tomorrow?
“Your Good Appearance, Voice, Tone and Thoughts Expresses and Enhances Your Personality.”
Going by our analogy of “Thinking of your business as a living entity with whom people interact both visually and emotionally.”
1. Appearance equals your brand’s VISUAL IDENTITY.
Think about which colours, visual patterns, images would best represent your brand’s purpose and your vision.
Make notes of colour codes, font types you select in creating your visual identity and use it to portray a consistent image of your brand through all communication channels.
2. Voice, Tone and Thoughts creates your brand’s EMOTIONAL IDENTITY.
Now coming back to “How can you as a small business owner control those emotions that are evoked when people see your company’s logo alone/fliers/other visual assets?”
You can do that by the creating guidelines on how your brand interacts with people on different communication channels in a consistent manner to create an identity in the mind’s of consumers that they are interacting with a single living entity rather than a group of people. There are two steps to create an emotional identity for your brand.
a) Defining brand’s voice and tone in-line with its purpose and personality.:
What exactly is the brand’s voice and tone?
- Brand’s Voice: It is the your company’s overall attitude and verbal persona.
- Brand’s Tone: It is how your company’s voice adapts to different people and situations.
Lets take an example, If a five year old and a thirty year old asks you to explain how does financial markets work? How would you explain? Will you explain it with the same words to both of them?
Sure your aim will be to explain to both of them with politeness and intelligently (Voice) but your selection of words and way of explaining would be different in both cases (Tone).
Depending on your brand’s purpose and personality you should define guidelines on your brand’s voice and tone that should be followed consistently in all communications with people (Employees, customers, prospects etc) on all channels, sure tone can vary a bit across different channels depending on audiences but it should not go outside the scope of brand’s voice and personality.
Would you buy a brand that creates a hippy image on instagram and creates a luxury image on their website at same time? Answer is most probably, no. Reason? Because brand is creating conflicting personality perceptions on different channels which makes people think of it as non- authentic.
b) Defining brand’s thoughts in-line with its purpose and personality.:
Does your brand stands for innovation in technology? Does it stands for sustainable fashion? Does it stands for a social change? Does it stands for creating meaningful experiences?
Whatever you have decided your brand’s purpose to be, your brand should speak in a way that expresses it with its thoughts in its verbal and non verbal communications with people.
Just like you can judge a human being with his/her thought quality, people judges brand’s authenticity and quality through its verbal and non verbal interactions with them.
Make notes of all the guidelines you defined in previous steps and place them along with the visual identity guidelines you created in step 1. You have your professional “brand environment” ready, a sandbox which allows you to play the marketing game with creativity and at the same time enforcing the discipline on you to create consistent, authentic and everlasting emotional bonds with your customers and audiences as a brand.
Next steps would be to how to run marketing campaigns with this established brand environment of your company. That’s where you need the right people to work with.
All the best to all of you with your endeavours and reach out to me if you need any help in this.
Happy Branding!
Regards, Ankit Kashyap.
Social: @TheAnkitKashyap
