Building a successful brand is not just about having a great logo. It’s about every experience your clients or customers have; from how they find you, through to how you end that business transaction with them every time. It’s about creating the right tone and look, and running that through every aspect of your communication, whether branding your vehicles, your shop doorway or even your social media posts.
Be obsessive
We’re obsessed with detail. We love the challenge of helping our clients solve their problems and enjoy hearing how our work brings them success. That voice resonates through every aspect of our business from all written communication to the visual imagery online and off. Having a strong brand identity helps you stand out amongst your competition and will give your business a major competitive edge.
Present yourself in the best way you can
A professional photographer can make all the difference to your business and for a relatively small initial investment you’ll get a collection of striking images to market your business for the next couple of years. If you can’t afford a professional photographer, do try one of our brilliant local colleges to see if they have anyone keen to build up a profile in return for payment. Everyone wins and it’s great to support new up and coming talent.
Every photo or video you present under your business name tells a story about your business. Whatever your line of work, you need amazing well-composed images to market your product or service to attract the right type of customers.
Using your phone to capture content to share on social media makes perfect sense but for print, you just won’t get the quality needed. It still makes me feel a bit queasy when I see companies spending hundreds if not thousands on advertising or print only to see their money wasted with grainy images.
If a company chooses to present themselves with poor quality images or artwork I often wonder where else they may cut corners?
Get yourself the best website you can afford
Creating the right website for your business is essential. It’s really not a ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to how best to showcase your shop window online. A free website template may work if you’re trying to set up a business alongside your main job but if you want to look credible amongst your competitors you should invest in getting a professional to do this.
It’s not just about that immediate perception someone makes in the first few seconds of their visit but equally as important is being found in the first place. Optimising your site is all about creating relevant, fresh content packaged within a stylish looking site which is easy to navigate, engaging and generally keeps people hanging around it and ultimately making that call.
Look around at sites you like and find out who designed them or better still ask others in business if they could recommend someone. A good web designer will meet with you and listen to what you need the site to do, who you want to attract, talk about your brand image and find out what your budget is. Your site is and should be organic. You’ll need to feed it with content if you want it to grow and bring you new business, so be realistic and spend what you can afford. It will be well worth it in the long run.
