Starting a business is difficult in itself. As an entrepreneur, you want to minimize your chances of failure by addressing the common pitfalls that small businesses usually succumb to.
On top of your list should be your company’s branding. There are still plenty of myths surrounding this concept, and if you’re not careful, you might suffer from the consequences they bring. To know whether you’re headed in the right direction with your brand, here are five mistakes you’ll want to avoid at all costs.
Launch First, Brand Second
Contrary to popular belief, your brand is not just your company name and logo. Just because you’ve finalized those doesn’t mean that you’re prepared to launch your business either.
Before going live with your business on any platform, you’ll want to cover the major aspects of your brand first. Doing so puts your business in better shape to reach out to your target audience and compete with rival businesses.
The main foundation of any good brand is a detailed roadmap and strategy. These will provide value for your brand, address your pain points, and identify why you matter in your industry today. Every material that you’ll be generating, from your logo, slogan, website design, and marketing campaign, will be created based on these.
Not Using Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines enable you to be consistent, and consistency is what makes your company memorable to your target audience. Unfortunately, you won’t achieve this if you don’t create style guides in all aspects of your branding.
A common scenario is that a business will hire a professional in the field of graphic design. Phoenix, Arizona, has plenty of companies and freelancers skilled enough to give you remarkable output. No matter how great they are, however, their work won’t benefit your brand if they can’t create designs that are cohesive with your identity.
Whenever you outsource these jobs, you have to be prepared with guidelines regarding your logo, color palette, fonts, typography, design layouts, icons, and so on. This ensures that everything you put on your packaging, social media, and website reflects your brand all the time.
Hiring The Wrong Talent
Your guidelines won’t be of any good use when they’re being used by the wrong talent. It’s tempting to hire the company or the freelancer with the lowest rates, especially now that you have endless options to outsource design and marketing work online.
The problem with this is that you’ll probably get what you pay for. If you didn’t invest in a graphic designer with a remarkable portfolio and a good work ethic, you’re unlikely to get the results that you want. As such, it’s important that you set aside a considerable budget for these kinds of work.
Take the time to interview applicants, assess their rates, and look over their portfolios. Hiring the right person is an investment that you won’t want to hold back on.
Getting Personal With Your Brand
Understandably, you want to create a brand that suits your taste. Since it’s your company, you have the right to say what you like and don’t like about your branding options. What’s not alright is losing sight of your brand’s purpose. Remember that it exists to cater to your target audience, and if it doesn’t speak to them, then your likes and dislikes hardly matter.
It’s best to accept as early as now that there will be aspects of your brand that you won’t be able to control in the long run. This is part of its evolution, and as long as it’s driving your sales upward and not downward, then you should go with the flow.
Sticking Only to Social Media
There’s no denying the power of social media when it comes to boosting your brand. It’s a great way to connect with people and make your interactions more relevant and personal. That said, establishing your following on just one platform is not a wise move. In fact, existing only on social media is a bad idea altogether.
Whatever your business is, you will always need a website to refer your clients to. The platforms you see today can be gone tomorrow, and new ones will pop up. With a website, your followers will know exactly how to get in touch with you just in case.
Pay Attention to Your Brand
Your brand is a huge determinant of your success. As such, you’ll want to pay as much attention as you can to it even before you launch your business. Continue to watch over it as your business grows so that it can grow with you. The benefits you’ll reap by doing so will astound you.
