As a small business, your main goal is to achieve sustainable growth for your company. That is why branding is very important. If you are successful, you can achieve a brand that inspires trust and loyalty from your target market.
But that’s when it’s done correctly. Branding just for the sake of trying will not only be pointless; it can actually harm your business. After all, making your company look good is tough, but it only takes a few missteps to make it look bad.
That is why you should not pursue your branding campaign with a half-hearted effort, or you will commit common branding mistakes like:
Leaving the job to the marketing department
Sure, it is usually the marketing department that initiates branding campaigns for most businesses. However, branding is more than just doing advertisements, press releases, and other marketing activities to drive sales.
Sure they get sales, but do they inspire trust and loyalty from the customers?
Branding is a culture. It is the personality that your brand conveys to your market. That is why it has to be a company-wide effort. How can you promote a brand when only one department is aware of it?
Inconsistent message
Some companies, especially start-up businesses, have problems settling into an idea for a brand. As a result, they keep tweaking on their brand in the middle of their branding campaigns. Because of this, the personality and impression that you give customers continues to change and this can leave your target market confused.
When creating your brand, you want to come up with a great idea that you will stick to before starting your campaigns to avoid spur of the moment changes.
Focusing on advertising
Successful brands like McDonalds, Nike, RingCentral, Colgate and Starbucks have spent tons of money in advertising to build up their brand, but advertising is still not all there is to branding.
Aside from advertising, these brands have explored and relied heavily on other avenues to get their brand out there like sponsorships, press releases, public relations, and word-of-mouth.
In fact, the Krispy Kreme brand was established more by word-of-mouth than heavy advertising. The lesson here is that, there is no one way to spread your brand; be creative and think out of the box.
Not listening to customers
You can invest heavily on sponsorships, advertising and other branding campaigns but if you neglect to research about your market then all your efforts might be for naught.
The goal of branding is more than just getting sales; it is about getting long-term customers by earning their trust by building your brand that is not only memorable but also credible. In short, get customers but make sure that they stay as customers. And to achieve that, you have to get the ideas for your brand in line with your market’s preferences.
The good news is that all these mistakes are pretty fixable. However, if not addressed, it can have a negative impact on your brand.