Small Business Branding - Things to consider

One of the most important steps in building a successful small business is to create a solid brand.

Who are your customers?

Every businees needs to know its audience and havea concept of who it is looking ot attract. You neeed to understand what they are looking for, their current pain points and their habits in order to deliver a brand message that really speaks to them.

A great way to get started with this is customer personas (fictional representations of your ideal customers - whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users).

While personas are fictional, we don't make these characters up from scratch, we build them based on research. You've got to do your research if you want a set of personas that truly represent your potential customers

You can find more information on personas here and free templates to help with this here

Get to know the industry

Know your competitors, look into data, research what works, speak to experts and ask lots of questions. Don't be afraid to try new things and record the data.

Build a strong brand design guide

This can be done in house with your own graphic designer or with external professionals like the Graphic Desgin team at Till Tech.

The best place to start would be with your brand guidelines, a set of rules which dictate the colours, styles and fonts used for building your brand materials.

This really helps with brand consistency which makes you a recognisible name and a solid presence.

Your brand design guideline will also help you put together your website/print/emails that really convey your brand and build up that connection with your customers.

Network

Small businesses are always working hard to compete against the big names and are often very open to potential collaborations where there is something in it for both parties.

As a restaurant you may want to consider a collaboration with local florists/gyms/sport clubs with incentives