Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Why Define Your Brand? Part 6

By Defining your brand, you'll be able to be more organized in your thinking about your marketing and designs.

Instead of designing things on a piece-by-piece basis, you'll have your brand communication goals recorded and available for you - and for your designers, writers and other marketing team members - to consult. Or, if you're a very small business, you'll be able to consult this definition over time.

This way, even if you have multiple people creating your brand, they'll all be working from the same goals, and trying to communicate the same things. This, combined with creating a record of the words and images you use to communicate your brand definition (i.e., do you know what phrases you use throughout your materials? How about having copies of your logo and stock photos?), can help you to create a consistent and well organized marketing effort moving forward.

How Your Business Should Act Like A Snowflake

If someone walked up to you and said "you should make your business more like a snowflake" you'd probably think they were a little crazy. Do they think your business should be made from ice crystals? Be cold or melty? Fall from the sky? None of these seem like desirable business attributes.

But, there's one thing that each and every snowflake has that a small business should strive for—uniqueness. When the ice crystals that make up a snowflake all get together, they always assemble themselves in a new and different formation. Snowflakes always have a unique structure and a unique appearance.

Just like snowflakes, your business will have several different types of uniqueness. On the surface, you'll want your brand and marketing materials to look unique, so that when all of your materials go out, they can stand out from your competitions'.

Your business will have underlying structural elements that make you different. This will include how your business is put together, how you run your business, the products and services you offer, and all those sorts of business considerations that show up in your business plan.

But your business has one other type of uniqueness that snowflakes don't

And that's personality. This kind of uniqueness is a bit tricky for small businesses. The challenge is separating the personality of the business from the personality of the entrepreneur running the business.

Why bother with this distinction? It can help your business appear more professional, by establishing you as a business instead of just a freelancer. Positioning yourself as a company instead of just an individual can also help you command more respect and higher rates.

If you're planning to grow your company by hiring more people to work for you, then using your business uniqueness instead of your personal uniqueness will make you look less like a consultancy and more like a company. Positioning your business in that way from the beginning can help you to wean your clients from expecting to work with you personally. This can be invaluable as you add on staff.

How To Be Unique

Here's a simple plan that can help you overcome the uniqueness challenge:

1. Create a business and brand plan

A lot of small businesses skip this step because it seems pretty elementary. But the process of writing down things like your business structure, product and service offerings, competition, mission, vision, experience and marketing plans can help you unearth elements of your own uniqueness.

A business plan that's created for these purposes doesn't have to be "official sounding", or particularly long. All it has to do is to record your basic plans.

2. Identify your uniqueness

What is unique about you? That's actually one of the most difficult questions for anyone to answer. The reason why it's so hard to tell what's unique about you is that you typically do whatever it is that makes you unique naturally - and constantly. You do your unique behavior or skill so often, and so effortlessly, that you probably don't even notice you're doing it.

So if you don't know that you're doing something that makes you special, how do you figure out what that is? You can look at your competition to see if there's anything that's central to the way you do business that they're leaving out. Or ask clients who have worked with you what made the experience unique. You could also try writing down everything that you do, or creating a case study of a client project, and have a friend or colleague look over your notes. Something may jump out at them that you don't even notice.

3. Separate your business's uniqueness from the business owner

This step has different challenges depending on your plans for your company's growth. If you want to keep your company the same size and just grow the business in terms of revenue and success, then the challenge is separating out just enough of your own personality, and still leaving some unique traits for the business. The trick is to avoid going overboard when separating your self from the business. This can make your business' personality too professional and sterile.

If you want to eventually build a company that's bigger than yourself, plan your brand to work for the growing company. The challenge here is creating a personality for your business that your employees will be able to embody—and then hiring employees based not only on their qualifications but also on their ability to match that personality.

How do you do this step? I recommend noting your personality in social situations, and comparing it with your personality in business situations. If you're shy in social situations, it might also help to note your personality when you're interacting with your spouse or children. Then see which of these traits you could comfortably and professionally bring to your business.

For example, say you really enjoy story time with your children. It could be business-appropriate to explain your services in a more story-like manner. That would infuse your sales process with personality and help to bring beneficial personality to your clients.

4. Brand your business to show that uniqueness

Many businesses have a lot of personality, but they design their brands to look "professional" instead of showing off makes them special. The other extreme is when companies design graphics that are either too complicated or too unique—so they don't have any meaning to the client or prospect looking at them.

Make the most of your graphics by defining your unique brand, then using common shapes and symbols to communicate your brand message. If you're a financial advisor who focuses on helping clients do all the fun things they want to do in their lives, then a bright color palette and energetic shapes like starbursts may be appropriate. But if you're focusing on helping people who don't understand investing to make sound decisions, then circular, trust-building shapes and a more traditional color palette of navy and gold may be more appropriate.

Taking these 4 steps to show your business' unique design, structure and personality will help your business avoid looking too coldly professional. They'll help you to show your prospects and clients what a unique snowflake you really are, and your business will shine.

Why Define Your Brand? Part 5

5. Defining your brand makes differentiating yourself easier.

Once you understand what your business's personality is, what your services and products are, who your competition is, and who you can help, it naturally becomes easier to figure out what makes you different.

In fact, just defining what you do and who you do it for, and niching those down to a small set, can really make you stand out.

The key to differentiating your services through these factors is to look for unique answers to these questions. Don't be afraid to come up with answers that stand out from your competition, and that are really interesting.

But, at the same time, you want to make sure to engage your target audience with your differentiation - that it's not so far out of the box that they don't connect with the differentiator, or don't understand it.

Why Define Your Brand? Part 4

4. By creating a Brand Definition, you'll become more aware of your competition.

Part of figuring out who you are in your business is to do your due diligence and research your competitors.

I have a lot of customers come to me and say "but, I have no competition - my product or service is entirely unique!" I'm sorry to say, that's not the case.

Every business, no matter what you're selling, has some sort of competition. There may be no one doing exactly what you're doing, precisely in the way that you do, but there's going to be some other business out there who could fill your customers' needs in some way. They're your competition.

You may also have direct competition - other pet sitters in your area, or another psychotherapist, or another financial advisor. If that's the case, then you just have to make a note of who they are.

Or, your customers could choose to buy nothing at all - in which case, inaction becomes your competition.

In any case, it's important to know who your competition is so that you can take a look at the brands they've developed. What do their materials look like? What sorts of things do they talk about on their websites?

You should look at these for two reasons. First, you want your materials to distinguish you from the competition - to look and sound different. If everyone in your field is using the color blue, then using green or red instead can help you to stand out.

Second, you want to enable your customers to comparison shop and compare apples to apples. What I mean here is to create your brand to the same level as your closest competitors. If they have a very professional, in-depth website, then you probably need to create the same thing. That way, when potential customers are shopping for your products or services, then you won't be knocked out of the running just because your graphics aren't up to snuff.

Why define your brand? Part 3

3. Creating your Brand Definition forces you to identify your best clients, so that you can start thinking like them.

Your business brand's job is to communicate what your business is all about to the clients who you want to work with, through words and pictures. So, in order to do that, you have to figure out who you want to work with and what you need to tell them about your business.

You know, things like:

• What problem you solve
  
• How you solve it
  
• How you take care of all the things around their problem that they worry about
  
• The kinds of experience you have with their problem
  
• Who else you've helped
  
• Why you can help them even if you haven't helped someone in the exact same situation
  
• What your process is
  
• And all those other questions that people are always asking you when they call or meet with you.
  

Luckily, many of these questions are a part of creating your brand definition. And, so is figuring out who your target audience. So, the only step that's left from there is figuring out how to tell them what they need to know in a way that they'll respond well to - and want to hire you.

This step is basically a matter of putting yourself in their shoes - thinking about their worries, wants and needs, and then telling them the things that they need to know about your service or product in order to make the right decision about hiring you. Now, the job of your brand isn't to convince people who really don't need your stuff to work with you - rather, to help them to decide whether or not you're the best fit for their needs. That's because you don't want to wind up working with a client who you're not helping to the best of your capabilities.

Why define your brand? Part 2

(Continued from last post)

2. For greater personal clarity around your business.

Taking the time to define your business brand - and to actually write that definition down - can help you to have more clarity about what your business is all about, your path in your business, who you want to work with, and how you can help them.

Just like the previous point, this not only helps when creating your brand, but it also helps you to be more clear when writing your marketing materials, deciding which marketing opportunities are right for you, running your business on a day-to-day basis, and even feeling like you have a purpose and vision in your business.

This is also especially helpful for solo entrepreneurs. Since they're working alone in their businesses, it can be easy to feel unclear about where their personality stops, and where the business begins. Defining the business's brand early on can help to make the difference more clear, and can help make your business seem more like its' own, separate entity instead of just an extension of yourself - and this separation can help gain you more credibility in the clients' eyes and to gain a bit more sanity for yourself by separating your work from personal life.

It can also be easy to want to change paths if the "going gets tough", especially if you haven't committed to your business's brand definition. But, that can be confusing and disorienting for your clients, and can make them feel unsure about working with you. If you've thought through the process of defining your business and written that down, then you'll be less likely to change paths on a whim and more likely to create a brand that your clients can trust and count on.

Why should you create a brand definition?

First of all, a quick answer to "what the heck is a Brand Definition"?

A Brand Definition is made up of four elements. These four elements map directly to the needs and concerns in your client's mind:

Who You Are: Is your company a good fit for their style and personality?
What You Do: Do they want and need what you do?
What Makes You Different: Should they work with you instead of someone else? Are you really good enough for them to give you their big pile of hard-earned money?
Who You Can Best Help: Does what you say make them feel comfortable to actually hand over a pile of money? Does what you're selling actually work for their specific business and situation?

Why should a small business go through the preliminary branding work of creating a brand definition?

Isn't all that branding and positioning stuff for big companies like Coke and Nike?

This is a big question. And one that would take a while to write up in one shot, so I'll answer it over several posts. I'll number the thoughts/ answers to try to help keep track of them.

1. Creating a Brand Definition up front in your business creates a solid foundation for not only your brand designs, but all of your business, marketing and client communication efforts.

In other words, once you know who you are in your business, then you can stick to it - and be consistent with one message, voice, look and communication style throughout all of your materials. And, you can create all of your materials from this single perspective - which leads to a stronger brand, less client confusion, and usually, more trust overall from your clients.

A lot of small business owners present an inconsistent brand/ message/ persona to their prospects and clients either because they're still trying to figure out who they are in their businesses, or because they think that they're tailoring their business description to the person who they've just met.

So they morph from persona to persona, depending on who they think the prospective client is, or what networking event they're at. Instead of appealing to more clients, this can confuse them - imagine that you're talking to a business owner at a Chamber event, and they describe their business one way, and then the next week you see them at another mixer and they say something different - wouldn't that be disarming?

I know when I see this in action, I wonder if I'm losing it a bit. Next, I wonder if the person I'm talking to really knows what they're talking about.

Instead, define your business clearly, at the beginning of your business, and stick to the definition as closely as possible. You'll create a better overall impression with the people you meet.

Initial Call Website

Here are some screenshots of another website I just launched:

Home page:

Inner pages:

This site included designing a brand identity, designing the website, coding a cross-platform drop-down menu using CSS, Flash design, process illustration, and a white paper design.

Paradise Valley Spas - Website Design and Coding

I actually completed this site a while ago - but realized that it never made it into the portfolio!

This is a website for a local chain of spa stores. I like the waves of their Visual Vocabulary at the bottom of the site, which also appear on the business cards, letterhead and trifold brochure. These waves are so unique that they make their materials stand out.

I also designed the logo for this project.

Learning Links - Website Design and Coding

I helped this nonprofit organize and refine their design ideas for this website, and then coded the site template in HTML in such a way that they can build the site out themselves, and maintain it going forward.