Small Business Primer - Part 5: Branding and Promoting

In the last article, we discussed getting help from other professionals. But now let's consider what you can do for yourself in the realm of marketing...

Branding and promoting your online business need not be difficult or expensive. Of course, having a small budget will make a big difference, but in this article I'll provide you with a checklist of the most essential considerations you need to address (as well as links to further reading on the topics covered).

First, let’s just make sure we all know what we're dealing with.

Branding

Branding a product, service, concept or in our case, a Website, is defined as instilling into the user (customer or prospect) a particular association, through images, slogans, packaging or otherwise. This association then facilitates the easy recognition of a particular product or service each time the stimuli (images, slogans, etc.) are encountered.

In other words, branding is about placing your mark on your Website, and getting your visitors to recognize that mark whenever they see it (whether they’re on or off your site).

Promotion

I'm guessing this doesn't need too much in way of definition: in short, it means getting visitors to your site.
In a technical sense, promotion is about letting people know about your business, product or service – an activity which in turn will see some percentage of this audience approach you when they need your offering.

In this case, promotion is about letting people know about our site, in the hope that when they have a need for whatever we offer online, they’ll stop by. Whether we promote offline or online makes no difference -- its visitors we want, and we'll get 'em any way we can!

Branding Your Business

Branding is widely regarded as an art – but that doesn’t mean it’s beyond the reach of the typical business owner. A brand links a need to a solution, and after all, solutions are what you’re selling, right?

Whether you sell a product or service, your offering comprises, on some level, a solution to a particular need. The aim of branding is, eventually, for your brand to become synonymous with the solution to that need. So if you sell Aspirin, you’d be aiming for people to think ‘I have a terrible headache! I need to buy Aspirin!’ (as opposed to simply ‘I need to buy some headache tablets’).

But in the early days of your business, your goals mightn’t be quite so lofty. Before people begin to use your brand name as a substitute for the generic product description, they have to know the name, and understand what it means to them.
So how do you achieve this? Firstly, through use of tools like:

• Logos
• Slogans
• Jingles
• Mascots

So let’s just have a quick re-cap. To develop a brand you must do a little leg work:

1. identify your target market
   
2. identify the need they have
   
3. identify how your product meets that need
   
4. create a brand identity (represented through graphical and other means) that makes it easy for you to communicate to your audience that your product is the solution to their needs.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘The Google logo sure doesn’t communicate that the Google service will solve my information research problems!’ True. The point here is that the brand name or logo on its own doesn’t need to communicate what it provides. All the elements in your branding campaign must work together to do this – which is why it’s important that your brand name and logo are as memorable as possible (a la Google).

For details of the kinds of tasks that might be included in a complete branding campaign, see this site, which provides a timeline of the tasks undertaken to brand and promote the opening of a Shediac Communications regional office. And this article recounts the tale of the first ever integrated branding campaign run by the Guardian Unlimited in the UK. Take a look!

Branding your Site

In terms of your actual Web pages, branding is reasonably simple. The key to a strong brand is consistency, so make sure your logo appears on every page, preferably in the top left corner. If you use your brand name or slogan often throughout the site, make sure you do it the same way every time, as this signals to users that it’s a title (this is why we recognize that SitePoint is a brand, while site point or Site-point are simply words).

Any literature you send in relation to your business should also follow form:

• if you send emails, ensure you sign them with the company slogan,
• if you send invoices, have the logo in the left corner.

There’s a wealth of information on branding. Check out:

• Branding on The Net
• How to Brand your Website Branding Through Ads
• Branding and Usability
• Branding on the Web is Like Mining for Fools’ Gold
• New Technologies Deliver the Branding Message
• 10 Steps to Building a Brand for your eBusiness
• Case Study: Online Branding? Yes Sir!
• Better Marketing through Modern Mind Control