Your To-Dos and To-Don'ts of Branding

If Spiderman was about graphic design, here's how the famous quote associated with the superhero would go: "With good branding comes great responsibility."

Effective branding isn't limited to branding elements like logos, templates, an easy-to-use website. It's the distinct idea your customers develop about your brand by interacting with it. The way your brand makes people feel determines if they engage with your business. Branding is a continuous exercise in building that image.

You are in total control of this brand identity. How you carry out this creative process can determine how far your brand goes. And yet, it's one of the few parts of your brand where you can be boundlessly creative. How do you keep yourself in check and not establish a brand identity that lets you down later?

Here's an overview of what you should and shouldn't do in this process of branding.

Do get a brand kit for the long haul

A brand kit is a collection of your brand's visual representation and brand tone. The color scheme, font, and other design elements evoke a specific feeling in your potential customers. No matter what the touchpoint is, be it your logo design or business brochure, your customer should feel the same way about your brand.

The kit should set you up for success no matter what platform your brand occupies as your business grows. Good branding is scalable: this means you can develop other elements with the brand's visual identity that you currently work with.

Today, your only marketing collateral with your logo may be business cards, but do you have a version of that logo design for a new website tomorrow?

At minimum, ensure your kit has logo variations, a specific color palette, typography, illustrated elements, and visual elements.

Don't get personal

Your business is your baby, but don't brand it the way you want.

Branding your business as per your personal preferences is tempting since you want it to reflect your personality. But your brand doesn't exist for you, it exists for your customers. So brand it for your clients, with their preferences in mind.

A strong brand appeals to its target audience, right from logo to brand personality. Do extensive market research on what your target audience expects from a brand like yours, and how it can stand out from competitors. Throughout the design process of each of the brand element, ask yourself how your target clients will react to that specific idea or design choice.

Do maintain consistency

Give your clients a consistent customer experience when they engage with your brand. This may sound simple in theory, but you'd be surprised at how easy it is to get swept up with every trend in marketing, especially with social media.

Ensure your branding elements and communication align with your brand values, and are consistent on all communication platforms. If you're always switching up the brand colors and tone of voice, your customers get confused about hwo you look and sound.

The results of brand consistency take time. If there are a lot of competitors in your industry, brand recognition may seem challenging. You want to stand out, but you also need to align with your brand image. Brand consistency is the kind of silent, complex process where you won't know how much of it you're doing right until you do something wrong. People will spot an off-brand post or campaign faster than you think, and that one misstep stays with the public longer than all the times your brand was consistent.

A style guide and branding guidelines will help you distill consistency into your brand. As your business and goals grow, a style guide outlines how your brand design elements are to be used, even when marketing collateral is being handled by different designers.

Don't speak to everyone

One of the biggest no-nos in marketing is trying to get everyone's attention. It's nice to have brand recognition across the room, but at the end of the day, you exist for a select few. Everyone may find use in your product or services, but you must speak to the people who actually want it.

If your brand identity is vastly generic, it won't appeal to the people who would really be interested in your brand. Whereas when you build your brand to attract your target audience, they'll come to you faster through the noise of all the other branding out there.

Find your niche, and speak to the audience that comes with it. The first benefit of this is your audience feels prioritized: when you craft your copy or ads, imagine you're speaking to an audience of one. And this one person is your ideal client. On the other end, the reader feels like you're speaking exclusively to them and will be more inclined to listen to you.

The second benefit of speaking to your audience is you become their specialist in a field. When you address this target audience, you are addressing their unique needs. Even if they don't buy from you then and there, they come to your (or your website) for tips and information on certain topics. This helps build the trust that they will base their purchase on one day.

Do keep it simple

Branding grows into whatever you let it become. It can get over-complicated or simple real fast, depending on how you execute it.

Before launching into the creative process of branding, decide on a framework for how you plan to keep things simple. I'm not talking about a simple logo and website, I'm referring to the entire flow of branding. How will you keep communication consistent yet simple? How will you keep your branding kit simple and easy to use?

Remember when you run a small business, branding doesn't have a start and stop button. Executing your brand strategy is like turning on the beer kegs at a St. Patrick's Day party. It doesn't stop. It can either be a lot of fun, or a lot of crazy. And this is just one part of your business, in addition to procuring material, making the product, packing orders, tracking payments. So you want to keep the flow of branding simple and straightforward while holding on to the detail that defines your brand.

Good branding allows your brand to grow naturally. You're not forcing it to be bigger, it organically gets bigger because the foundation was simple to give the brand identity room to grow.

If you're looking for branding services or a unique brand, I'm the brand designer and website strategist you'd want to get in touch with. I've worked with many small businesses and I know how to create a brand identity that makes sense for your clients. I ensure your brand's visual identity is backed by strategy, and most of all, authenticity.