As you may have seen, Vistaprint recently unveiled a new brand image (click here to see the press release). Aside from the new logo and site design, the company is increasing its focus on our loyal customer base.

With brand on the brain, I wanted to emphasize the importance of branding for your small business (click here to see all of our posts on the subject).  Your brand is what customers associate themselves with and should be visible on all of your marketing materials from business cards and postcards to signage on your office and vehicles.

While looking into resources and tips available for the SMB owner, I came along a site with an easy name to remember Smallbusinessbranding.com. While scrolling through the site, I cam across an article from Nick Rice that gives some great tips that can help ease the stress of creating a brand strategy for your business.

Stand for something. People latch on to something they can understand and appreciate. If you’re trying to be everything to everybody, chances are you’ll attract no one. If you think it’s too controversial to choose a niche, remember the power of being seen as an expert. Experts are not good at everything, they’re awesome at one thing. This allows you to better position yourself and charge more for your services. People seek out experts, not generalists.

1. Realize that you’re not in control of your brand. That’s right, you only set the direction for your brand. Your actual brand image is determined by your audience. You can use these tips to ensure alignment between your desired brand image and your actual brand image in the minds of your customers. Branding isn’t a one shot deal, it’s an on-going juggling act of marketing, research and conversation. If you’re not tapping into those conversations with your audience, how do you know what their real impression of you is? How will you know how to address it? Brand growth comes from alignment. You have to ensure that your actions, stationary, website and marketing efforts put out the right image. But you cannot stop there; Those are pre-sales activities that get you noticed and hopefully bought. You also have to ensure that all actions and engagements during the sale and post-sale are positive and in line with your desired brand image. If your audience has a different view of you than you’d like, then you need help. And it’s probably best to bring in an outside perspective.
2. Branding is as much about your people as anything else.
   Never forget that the best interactions come from one-on-one conversations between executives, employees, suppliers, and customers. Employees that want to help and do the best job possible go a long way.

Click here for the full article.

No matter what road you take in creating a brand for your business, know that it represents your business. While it’s not set in stone, it is a strong foundation to build your business on.

With our rebranding efforts, we gave you into an insight on what our brand means to us. We’d like to hear what your brand says about you.