7 pitfalls for small business branding by CreativLi

7 Pitfalls of SME branding and how to avoid them

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#1 PITFALL

—Branding is for large corporations.

Branding is equally important to corporations and SMEs. The truth is that every business has a brand; and whether you like it or not, the real question you have to ask is: how effective is your brand? The amount of effort and consideration that goes into defining, designing and maintaining your brand has a direct impact on how effective your brand is to communicate your values and vision to your customers.

In the eyes of the customer, it is your BRAND that sets you apart from your competition. Brand recognition is vital in securing business; a buyer can’t purchase your product if he can’t remember who you are, or how to find you. The best companies are those whose brands are easy to remember and instantly recognizable.

Have you ever visited an Asian grocery store? Imagine yourself in one of those stores right this moment, standing in front of rows of over stocked shelves cramped with products of unfamiliar brand names and packaging. How would you choose which one to buy? Without a doubt you will automatically be drawn to products with packaging that standout, with clear labelling, rendering the product more appetising, and of seemingly higher quality. In today’s global marketplace and especially on the World Wide Web where 3 seconds is all you get to make a great first Impression, your chance is as good as a foreign product in an Asian grocery store. What will set you apart is your BRAND. © CreativLi 2013. All Work Remains The Property Of CreativLi

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#2 PITFALL

—Don’t invest in branding from the start.

Begin with the end in mind; invest as soon as you can. Effective branding creation is just like the habits of highly effective people. You need to start with the end in mind, knowing where you want to end up, in order to align with your business vision. A great brand will carry through the life of your business, unless of course if your business outgrows your initial brand vision or a radical change of direction happens. Then you will need to have to refresh your brand or completely rebrand to bring the business and brand into alignment. Take a look at some successful home grown brands that started just like any other small business: The Coffee Club, Boost Juice, Sumo Salad. Do you go to these places simply because they serve good coffee, smoothies and salads? Or do you go to them because of their BRAND and the connection you feel with the BRAND?

an old house, renovation will quite often end up costing you more than building a brand new house from scratch on an empty block. When planning your budget for brand creation, work out your return on investment. Effective branding can generate more leads, higher conversion and ultimately bring in more clients. So think about how many new clients you need to ensure your investment is worthwhile. Sometimes with professional service firms, winning one or two new clients as a result of your brand would be more than enough to justify your investment.

From the beginning, it is important to get your brand right, because the process not only helps you clarify your business vision, values and promise but also helps define the right messages to send out to your target audience. Invest as soon as you can. It is much harder to change once you have built the recognition and association with your target audience. Just like renovating 3 © CreativLi 2013. All Work Remains The Property Of CreativLi

If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default.

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STEVEN R COVEY

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#3 PITFALL

—I have a logo!

A brand is much more than a logo. According to Paul Rand (a thought leader of the branding industry), a logo is the ambassador of the brand, but it's not the brand itself. Having a well designed logo is essential but is not the full story. Your brand is not simply rubber stamping your logo onto all your marketing communications. Your brand needs to be reinforced by using a variety of sensorial codes on every consumer touch point, consistently and dynamically. So, what is a branding? A Google search will bring up pages of various definitions on Branding. The term branding originated from burning the cattle skin with a hot iron stamp to mark ownership. Over the years, the commercial world has adopted the word ‘branding’ to identify ownership of a certain product and service. At CreativLi we believe: • A brand reflects the essence of your business vision, promise, values, your point of difference and the emotional benefits to your customers.

•T he makeup of your brand is a set of sensorial codes such as the logo, colour palette, typography, tone of voice, texture and form, sound, smell… these sensorial codes collectively stimulate and engage your target audience to give not only a memorable first impression but also continuously build a strong association with your business over time. •A brand is the experiences your customers have when interacting with your business, and is therefore very important to consider every consumer touch point, and apply the brand sensorial codes consistently with on-going effort. •A brand is as much an internal expression as it is an external expression. A strong brand brings a sense of pride and belonging to your employees. A brand that is in alignment with your business vision will bring your employees together to work towards a common goal, will motivate your employees to deliver the brand promise and brand value to your customers.

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A logo is the ambassador of the brand, but it's not the brand itself.

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PAUL RAND

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#4 PITFALL

—Lack of clarity & focus.

Convey clear brand messages, less is more. Keep it single minded. Often when we present several concepts to a client, the initial feedback is usually ‘love them all’, then when it comes to decision making time, inevitably we have requests like this ‘oh can you combine this one and that…?’ needless to say the result of which is usually disastrous, because they have just created a hybrid that says neither one nor the other, and eventually the client will go back to one of the initial concepts. So be focused and know the target audience, define clear brand messages and use these messages as a check list to tick off all the boxes. In this way, you will end up with a much more focused brand. We are in the age of information overload; today’s market is saturated with information. We are constantly bombarded by information voluntarily and involuntarily: junk mails, subscriptions, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, banner-ads, on-line chats…the list goes on. If I ask the question ‘Are you overwhelmed by information overload?’; how many of you can honestly say NO? So the decision here is simple for you; do you want to be a brand that constantly sends out irrelevant messages and spam inbox and social media © CreativLi 2013. All Work Remains The Property Of CreativLi

space? Or do you want to be a brand that sends out messages that are of great value to your selected target audience? Seth Godin wrote in one of his latest blog posts, ‘a book is judged by its cover, just as you and your brand and your product are judged by your (conceptual) cover’. Your conceptual cover would be the first point of contact between your customer and your brand. Make your ‘cover’ message loud and is clear, simple, distinctive and memorable. I always tell my clients when it comes to logo design to do the ‘split second test’, place your logo amongst your competitors’ logos, and determine in a split second whether yours jumps out and if there are certain elements in your logo that makes it memorable in that split second, which will your potential customers are more likely to recall your brand. When it comes to less is more, no one does it better than Apple! Here is an industry joke created by Brant Walsh, if you haven’t seen this video before, go ahead and follow the link below, I guarantee you will enjoy it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

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...a book is judged by its cover, just as you and your brand and your product are judged by your (conceptual) cover. SETH GODIN

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#5 PITFALL

—Lack of consistency.

Pack your tool box with brand sensorial codes to create dynamic consistency. Before the World Wide Web spread like wildfire and invaded every inch of our lives, the first point of contact between your customer and your brand was very predictable- you KNEW where your customer would go to find your products and service; you placed the ads in publications of your choice. But these days, you cannot be so sure where that first point of interaction will happen, so the best you can do is to have your brand elements consistently applied across various consumer touch points to ensure your ‘cover’ always conveys the same clear messages. Now, here are some interesting things I have observed about being brandconsistent. The big corporation method on maintaining consistency is by tightly controlling the appearances of all your brand elements, especially the logo and colours etc and that’s part of the reason why corporations spent 10s of thousands or even 100s of thousands to create their brand identity and end up with a ‘Brand Identity Guideline’ – a bible for their brand with every imaginable usage scenario considered and all the rules on dos and don’ts. On top of which they would have to hire a Brand Manager to ensure that

the ‘bible’ is religiously followed. Needless to say it is beyond SME budgets, but also in today’s fast changing world, that inevitably a static Brand Identity Guideline simply cannot cater for every possible scenario. On the other end of the spectrum, for the smaller guys, a misconception is: ‘as long as I have my logo stamped on every piece of communication, I may even use the same colour on everything, there! I have a consistent brand!’ … Well, what about your image style, the way you layout the pages, the tone of voice? …Logo & colour alone do not give enough cues to send a consistent yet exciting expression. A happy medium is when you create your brand, take time & effort to create a set of sensorial codes such as the logo, colour palette, typographic, tone of voice, texture and form, sound, smell…and yes some basic guidelines are still very important, so pack them in your tool box! Use them creatively on your communications, and you will have a dynamic yet consistent brand. 9

Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles: when things always behave the same, users don’t have to worry about what will happen. Instead, they know what will happen based on earlier experience.

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JAKOB NIELSEN 10 © CreativLi 2013. All Work Remains The Property Of CreativLi

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#6 PITFALL

—Designing it for yourself.

Create a brand that your customer would feel connected to. Marty Neumeier said ‘Your brand is not what YOU say it is, it’s what THEY say it is.’ Simply picking the colours you like or the pictures you like, may not resonate with your target audience, or send out the right message. Therefore is it important that before you start creating your brand to complete this first step: gain clarity on your brand from inside out and outside in.

benefits to your customers. Use these messages as guiding principles for your brand creation. When in doubt, do a survey or a focus group study within your target audience and listen to their feedback. Then you are more likely to create a living brand that your customer would feel connected to.

Ask yourself who we are, what we do, why does it matter, where do we want to be? Research, research & research! Find out who the leaders are in your industry, who your competitors are and who your target audience is. What are the emotional benefits you can provide your target audience with your products and service? The outcome of this clarity is a set of brand messages that clearly define your business vision, value, promise, your point of difference and the emotional 11 © CreativLi 2013. All Work Remains The Property Of CreativLi

Your brand is not what YOU say it is, it’s what THEY say it is.

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MARTY NEUMEIER

Before

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#7 PITFALL

—DIY branding or crowd sourcing.

Hire a professional designer. Unless you have the knowledge and experience in branding yourself, I strongly recommend you stay away from DIY or crowd sourcing from fivrr, 99 design and the likes.

used and how it will translate into different media and consumer touch points, nor do they provide you with all the brand elements you need to communicate effectively.

Tim Blake, an advocate of branding puts it this way: Developing your own brand identity is like asking your teenage nephew to manage your retirement portfolio. It might work out. This might sound a bit harsh and biased to some of you. But think about all the brands that have left a positive impression on you, big or small and consider how many of those are DIYs or fivrr projects. You have probably heard about how the Nike ‘Tick’ came about (yes it was created by an intern!), but developing the tick into an icon of a retail industry leader, took considerable more effort and thoughts.

If you do decide to go down the 99 designs route then you need to factor in time every day to manage the feedback process as the design starts rolling in. Don't underestimate how much effort this takes. It's not uncommon to go through the entire process only to realize none of the designs really stand for what you do and you're back at ground zero. It's happened to a number of our clients.

It is not entirely impossible to get some good results from fivrr, 99 design and the likes. But let’s face it; you get what you pay for. What these designers don’t do, that is vital to the success of your brand, is that they don’t spend time to gain understanding of your business, brand vision and its context as well as your target audience. Nor do they consider where your logo will be © CreativLi 2013. All Work Remains The Property Of CreativLi

Invest in a professional designer and reap the benefit of an effective brand that will leave a positive lasting impression and brings in more clients. A good designer knows the right questions to ask about your business, and brings your ideas to life with well crafted visuals. CreativLi has helped several clients who went down the road of fivrr and the likes, for the reasons stated above; they get a so call logo with no substance which does not reflect their businesses in any way. CreativLi simply makes your great idea awesome.

Developing your own brand identity is like asking your teenage nephew to manage your retirement portfolio. It might work out.

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TIM BLAKE

Before

Renée Eden Weddings

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ENJOY THIS EBOOK?

Need some help with your brand?

Here are what a few of our clients said about Li has a gift at knowing the right questions to ask to fuel her creativity and deliver outstanding brand assets that are right on target. She is a Brand Architect with a bundle of positive energy & deep experience that you want to recommend to others. Adam Wallace Director of Content First What Li was able to bring to my business idea was a greater vision of what my core business is and what I eventually wanted it to be. Li’s skills go above and beyond design; she is a branding expert, concentrating on you as your business, and assisting to understand how to best represent your place as an industry leader in your field. Claire Hielscher Claire Hielscher Copywriting Li has an incredible design talent with the delightful ability of making the complex simple. If you wish to deliver something special, prove a concept, develop a product or even change the look of a global brand while amplifying its personality, Li is undoubtedly the person to ask, or recommend.

Will our service fit in your budget? • We have several branding packages to cater different requirements and budgets. • For the right client, we offer a subscription based branding package for start-ups with little capital and cash flow. Starting from as little as the cost of a cup of coffee a day. Recommended reading list The Brand Gap – Marty Neumeier Build a Brand in 30 Days – Simon Middleton Branding Your Business – James Hammond

Ben Sullivan Sales & Marketing Director of MegaStar Media Company 15 © CreativLi 2013. All Work Remains The Property Of CreativLi

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