Building Your BRAND

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BUILDING YOUR BRAND IDENTITY THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO A STRONG BRAND

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INTRODUCTION: THE BIG DEAL ABOUT BRANDS ...... 3–5

What Is a Brand? ........................................................................ 3

Benefits of a Strong Brand .......................................................4–5

PART I: BUILDING YOUR BRAND ....................... 6–13

Define Your Positioning ............................................................... 6

Develop Your Visual Identity ................................................... 7-12

Give Your Brand Character ........................................................ 13

PART II: LIVING YOUR BRAND ......................... 14–15

Tips to Help You Live Your Brand .......................................... 14-15

Deluxe Can Help ..................................................... 16

If you’re like many small business owners, branding may not rank very high on your list of priorities. You’re working at a mile-a-minute pace to build your business, working countless hours trying to keep your customers happy, all the while trying to be smart with your money by spending it where you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck.

We get it. Running a business keeps you busy, but we’d like to encourage you to pause for a moment, take a breath and look at the bigger picture with us to see what branding can do for you.

WHAT IS A BRAND?

To many people, a brand is simply a name and logo. In part that’s true, but really, it’s so much more. Your brand is your company’s face to the world. It’s your reputation, your personality, your promise. It’s communication of the characteristics, values and attributes that define what your business is and is not.

Think about some of the really great brands in the world. Apple® is one that always seems to rise to the top. When you think of Apple, what comes to mind? Cool? Innovative? Clean, modern design? That awesome logo? How about fiercely loyal customers and testimonies of great customer service? We’re willing to bet most of that enters your mind when you hear the name Apple.

But branding isn’t just for the big guys anymore. Small businesses can benefit, too — maybe even more so than bigger businesses. The fact is, when people are looking for a small business, whether it’s an auto body shop or a new restaurant, they want to be able to find your website and see a professional-looking brand before they give you their business.

INTRODUCTION: THE BIG DEAL ABOUT

BRANDS

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BENEFITS OF A STRONG BRAND

• Awareness: A strong brand is your lead generator. It gets people to notice you and become aware of what you do. If you build proper awareness, you’ll be top of mind when a customer is ready to make a purchase.

• Trust: A professional appearance builds credibility and trust. People are more likely to purchase from a business that appears polished and legitimate. Emotional reactions are hardwired into our brains, and those reactions are very real influencers.

• Loyalty: By creating consistently high-quality experiences, you will retain current customers and acquire new ones due to word-of-mouth advertising.

• Premium pricing and more sales: If you’re not a brand, you’re a commodity. By properly distinguishing your brand from the competition and communicating the intangible benefits of your product or service, you no longer have to compete on price alone. And, with a customer’s ability to search hundreds of stores online in pursuit of the lowest prices, small businesses, more than ever, need to de-emphasize the product or service and put greater emphasis on their brand.

• Potential for growth: When, and if, you’re ready to expand your business into new markets, you’ll find that a strong brand offers a greater opportunity to do so rather than starting over.

• Increased business value: When Apple bought Beats Electronics for $3 billion in 2014, one could speculate that it wasn’t because Beats made the best quality headphones (compared to other high-end products by Sennheiser, Bose and JBL) or had the most subscribers to its music service (525,000 compared to Spotify’s 10 million). A strong appeal was likely the brand itself, a beautifully designed, well-promoted brand that gave them instant street cred with the Millennial market. It proves that a brand can be more valuable than the product or service itself.

You may think that a strong brand is only important if you deal in physical products, but that’s definitely not the case. With a service-oriented business, you have the challenge of building trust and confidence before the sale, because you may not have a product consumers can see, taste or touch. This is where brand plays a major role in establishing your credibility.

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PART I: BUILDING YOUR BRAND

DEFINE YOUR POSITIONING

A brand position (or purpose) is built by communicating a consistent message to consumers about your product or service, and where it fits into the market via advertising, brand name and packaging. It’s the foundation of your brand and represents who you are and how you’re different from the competition. Positioning statements often do double duty as taglines. Consider the following when developing your positioning:

• Can your product or service be used in ways that your competitors’ cannot?• Are your manufacturing processes different?• Is your product or service more durable, more eco-friendly or built from higher quality

materials than the competition’s?• Do you offer more choices?• Are you faster or more efficient?• Are you supporting a charity as a result of product sales?• If you provide a service, does your staff possess qualifications

or certifications that the competition’s does not?

IDENTIFYING YOUR CUSTOMERS

The key to a good positioning strategy is finding a way to stand out from the competition in ways that matter to your customers. The challenge is, you can’t know what matters to them until you’ve chosen your market and spent time learning about them. You need to determine:

• Who is your ideal customer or target market?• How old are they?• Are they primarily male or female?• What are their interests?• Where do they live?• What is their economic status?

And remember: the strongest brand positions are the ones with a single, focused message. In other words, keep it clear and simple.

DEVELOP YOUR VISUAL IDENTITY

COMPANY NAME

Possibly the most important element of the brand is the name itself. Do plenty of research on a name before making your choice, being sure to avoid legal challenges or poor associations if another company is using a similar name.

Be sure to run your final name choices by a lot of people, particularly customers, to see if it conjures up the image for which you’re striving. Reflect on what your specific customer base expects. A humorous name might work for the young, hip crowd, but might turn away other demographics. Do you want to sound high tech or is cozy and comforting the sentiment you’re looking to portray?

Don’t rule out simply using your name for the business. A lot of successful businesses are named after the founder. Just make sure it’s appropriate and fits the mindset of the customers you’ll be pursuing and most importantly, check to make sure your domain name is still available.

LOGO DESIGN

Small business owners don’t think of their businesses as small. And they shouldn’t. For that very reason, we highly recommend that you have your logo professionally designed. A bad logo is the most common way for a business to look small and unprofessional, something that ultimately results in a loss of sales and profit. Professional logo design services can be found for as little as $200.

In a recent Deluxe study, 58% of small businesses surveyed said their logos were designed in-house or by an acquaintance. Of those interviewed, 66% said that if they were to do it again, they’d be more likely to outsource the work to a professional designer or firm, either locally or online.

Benefits of a professional logo

• Makes you recognizable to your customers• Establishes credibility• Creates a professional appearance• Helps you stand out from your competition• Provides a memorable, visual experience• Reflects what’s unique about your business

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Best practices when considering your logo design

Think about all the places your logo could potentially be used, not just how you want to use it today. A logo designed by an amateur is highly unlikely to work in all of today’s media or for all future uses you may require. Professionally designed logos will work in all applications, including Internet, email, print advertising, telephone directories, full-color marketing pieces, signage, T-shirts, hats, and more. These tips will help ensure your logo will look good on any medium, and make it memorable.

Design it first in black and white You can add color afterward, but designing with one color first will ensure that it can be used across all mediums.

When you add colors, don’t add too many Too many colors can be distracting, not to mention potentially expensive to reproduce on various mediums. It can also add challenges when scaling to a smaller size.

Disconnect images from text This will make your logo more flexible for different uses and help ensure text is always legible.

Avoid hard-to-read fonts Consider a professional, sans-serif font that isn’t too thin.

Avoid drop shadows These don’t transfer well across all mediums, can make text hard to read, and can have an unprofessional appearance if not done just right.

Avoid clip art Today, everyone can recognize a generic piece of clip art and it’s a clear sign of an unprofessional or generic-looking business. Steer away from using it in your logo.

Avoid unnecessary words Examples include: Ltd, Inc. LLC (customers don’t care); long strings of words (too much information is hard to read or remember); or mission statements (this is internal language better kept among employees).

Remember, the key to a professional, long-lasting logo is to make it timeless, not trendy. Explore a few concepts and ask friends and family for their thoughts. Is it appealing? Do they “get” it without an explanation? This will ensure your logo communicates the right message.

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company in a positive light and reinforce its core values to your customers. On the other hand, the wrong colors can give your customers a first impression you never intended.Once you’ve picked your logo color(s), be sure to pick out 3-5 secondary colors to use in communication pieces.

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Color considerations

Although no one will be shocked to read that colors have a big influence on both the brain and the body, it may be surprising to learn that the colors you choose to use in your logo, on your website and throughout your entire organization may have much more of an impact on your business than you realize. Used correctly, colors can be a great tool to position your

POWER, ELEGANCE & MYSTERY

LIGHT, GOODNESS, INNOCENCE & CLEAN

ROMANCE, ROYALTY & WISE

TRUSTWORTHY, DEPENDABLE, KNOWLEDGE, POWER & PEACE

HEALTH, TRANQUILITY, SOFTNESS & UNDERSTANDING

NATURE, HEALTH, CALM & SAFETY

WARM, HAPPY, RELAXED & FRESHNESS

STABILITY, LONGEVITY, RELIABILITY & MASCULINE

VIBRANT, HEAT, HARVEST, STRENGTH & DESIRE

ROMANCE, LOVE, FRIENDSHIP & FEMININE

PASSION, COURAGE, ENERGY & EXCITEMENT

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Is it time for a refresh?

Once you’ve chosen a brand to promote, it’s important to stick with it. You don’t want to change it every year, but an occasional refresh to communicate growth and progress can be done without losing your brand identity.

When doing a refresh, do not change your identity too drastically. It should be an evolution rather than a departure.

Here are some questions to ask yourself before refreshing your current logo:• Does it look professional and eye-catching?• Is the look (fonts, colors, graphics) contemporary and up to date?• Does it reflect the unique personality and nature of your business?• Does it appeal to my target audience?

GIVE YOUR BRAND CHARACTER

YOUR BRAND VOICE

A good way to think about voice is to think of your brand as a personality. If your brand was at a party, who would it be? The life of the party, telling stories to a captivated audience? The caretaker, making sure everyone’s drink is full and food is refreshed? Or maybe that quiet person having a deep conversation in the corner?

Your brand’s voice is an expression of the people behind the brand. It should tie directly back to your position/tagline. Your logo should reflect this personality as well.

A good way to start this exercise is to create a list of words that describe your company; words like reliable, inexpensive, luxurious, fun, etc. Narrow it to the top 4 or 5 that truly embody your brand. These are your brand attributes.

Then, think about how someone with those characteristics would talk. Excited and casual? Straightforward and professional? Soft and nurturing? This will give you a brand voice that reflects what your business is all about.

courageenergy joysensitivityfemininemasculine strengthhigh quality

freshnessexcitementcalmfunhealthtrustworthydependablegoodness

Refresh examples:

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➞

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PART II: LIVING YOUR BRAND

Once you’ve created your brand, the hard part is the execution. You need to live your brand before you can expect others to embrace it. If your brand is based on trust, you have to deliver on that trust — no excuses. Everything you do, along with the integrity and knowledge of your staff, reflects on your brand and your commitment to the belief and vision in that brand.

TIPS TO HELP YOU LIVE YOUR BRAND

1. Develop brand guidelines that easily communicate and remind you and your employees what your brand is all about. This can be as simple as a one-page document, but should include things such as:• Mission, vision and values• Position/tagline• Logo• Color palette• Brand attributes and examples of your voice used in communications

2. If you have employees, make sure you promote your brand internally (uniforms, goals aligned with positioning, staff policies and procedures, how and where meetings are conducted).

3. Execute your brand consistently across every touch-point to provide a consistent customer experience (see examples to the right).• Advertising — your brand should guide both the look and feel of your ads as well as

your choice of media (newspapers, TV, radio, brochures, business cards, etc.)• External signage• Vehicles• Stores or offices — color scheme, furnishings• Website• Email marketing• Social media• Promotional items• Forms (invoices, checks)• Phone messages• Product design• Customer service and care

Whether you’re looking to find new customers, focusing on retaining the ones you have, or looking to grow or maintain the status quo, developing a strong brand is vital to the success of your business. Protect it at all costs. After all, it’s your reputation and in business, reputation is, well, everything.

© 2014 Deluxe Enterprise Operations, LLC | DTC4BEBK

Deluxe: A Trusted Resource for Small Business

• 4 million small business customers • 680,000+ websites hosted • Business marketing experts

Call 866.255.9077 today for a free consultation or simply go to ww.deluxe.com/logo-design to get started.

FROM WEBSITES TO PRINTING TO MARKETING,

We can help you create a professional logo and a catchy tagline that quickly tells your story — all at a very friendly price. What’s more, we can help you execute your brand consistently across your website, printed materials, social channels, promotional items and more.

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