Tackle Your Brand Strategy

Branding belongs in the early stages of business plan creation because it will answer essential questions in your market analysis and competitive analysis.

BY DAN ANTONELLI

Taking several months to consider how marketing can support your overall business and building a plan to accomplish that is a good idea in any year.

Entrepreneurs crafting a business plan to transform their dreams into reality have an unfortunate habit of glossing over the most essential piece of that process: the branding and marketing strategy.

Whether you’re building a new business from the ground up or working to pivot or grow an existing enterprise, do not make that mistake.

For any small business, a strong brand and its execution in a solid marketing plan can mean the difference between feast or famine. This is your guide to understanding the role branding and marketing will play in your company’s success and how to tackle them during the business plan phase — and beyond.

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Brand development is about more than marketing and advertising. It’ll affect everything you do: from what you name your company to the color of your employees’ uniforms, to your website address and what your fleet looks like. That’s why it’s wise to invest in this process in the very beginning.

Branding belongs in the early stages of business plan creation because it will answer essential questions in your market analysis and competitive analysis. This valuable exercise reveals your competitive advantage and helps you discover how to stand out in a busy, crowded marketplace filled with the noise of information overload.

This is the time to identify your unique selling proposition so you can answer the question, “How will I persuade people to choose my company?”

If your competitors are sloppy and unprofessional, perhaps your company can stand out as more sophisticated and polished. If the other companies in your space seem cold and impersonal, adopting a

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warm, friendly image might help you stand out.

Creating a strong brand requires time and money. Build realistic expectations of both into your schedule and budget so that you don’t shortchange this phase or limit your potential. Give it the attention and investment it deserves. Too many companies cut corners here, and it shows.

SHAPE YOUR UNIQUE IDENTITY

A strategically created brand defines your company’s image and personality and embodies its values. Defining these characteristics at the outset provides clear direction and consistency that will guide every business decision you make. That means that if you work hard on your brand first, all your other efforts will be easier and more efficient.

Developing a brand creates a structure for how you portray your company visually and how your brand voice sounds — the tone and words your company uses to communicate. Establishing these clear guidelines gives you a foundation on which to base every decision you make.

Your company’s brand identity has a few major building blocks: • Name: It should say something not only about what you do, but how you do it. It should be memorable and easy to say and spell. • Tagline and/or qualifiers: Elaborate on the company name with a supporting phrase that speaks about your differentiator. Qualifiers are the main services you provide, in just a couple of words. • Logo: A professionally designed mark will serve as a visual representation for your business that’s recognizable and adaptable to every medium where you’ll use it. Brand colors and typography are important strategic choices during the design process.

The brand will live everywhere, so it makes sense to develop it first. Hire a professional to do it right; if you start on the cheap, or worse — with no strategy at all — you’ll hamstring your opportunities for success and eventually need to redo it. That will be a lot more expensive, so don’t waste your valuable resources.

While developing your business plan, it’s a good time to recognize the importance of ongoing content creation that will support your online presence and digital marketing campaigns.

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Branding your business and slapping your logo everywhere are not synonymous. Properly integrating your brand across tools, assets and platforms requires planning, skill and creativity. Your identity needs to shine in the design and the content.

The key is consistency, so that your target audience can easily distinguish your company’s presence from the other clutter — whether it’s on the street, in the mailbox or on Facebook.

When you’re developing your business plan, your wish list will be lengthy. You’ll need vehicle wraps, yard signs, websites, brochures and more. It’s prudent to plan a phased approach because it’s likely to be cost-prohibitive to launch with everything immediately.

This brand implementation checklist can help you prioritize which branded tools to develop first, next and later. Start with these essentials:

• Vehicle wrap • Stationery (business cards, etc.) • Uniforms • Brochure (A trifold for your maintenance agreement program is the most important) • Website (even if it’s just a branded

“coming soon” page with the nuts and bolts, including contact information, to get you started) • Facebook and Google My Business profile optimization • Blogging

These tools will provide a powerful arsenal to establish your reputation. Next, you can kick it up a notch with branded equipment stickers, yard signs, door hangers and pocket folders — and maybe even direct mail postcards and advertisements in local print media.

Eventually, the final touches can include branded thank-you cards, social media campaigns, an email newsletter, content marketing pieces and apparel.

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DIGITAL DUE DILIGENCE

When you are brainstorming your sales and marketing tactics to attract new customers, think online first. You already know that you need a professional website that tells people what services you offer and why you’re the best option they have.

If it’s not well branded, your website easily could be mistaken for any of your competitor’s, so ensure it looks and feels like you — make it unique. It needs to use responsive design so that it adapts to the smaller screens of mobile devices and tablets. Building a great website takes time, so start this project as soon as your brand is developed.

But your digital presence doesn’t stop when your site launches. While developing your business plan, it’s a good time to recognize the importance of ongoing content creation that will support your online presence and digital marketing campaigns.

Commit to publishing a new blog post on your website at least monthly — whether you write it yourself or hire a professional — so that Google knows your site is updated and relevant, your potential customers see that you’re maintaining the site with fresh content, and you’re establishing your company as a helpful expert.

Blogging regularly also supports customer retention, because it provides easy opportunities to encourage your social media followers and your email newsletter subscribers to visit your website to read something new.

These efforts will help your search engine optimization performance and even improve the results of your pay-per-click campaign.

WHY IT’S WORTHWHILE

Clearly, making a commitment to your branding and marketing strategy at the onset lays out a clear path to success. You cannot communicate effectively with your target audience without defining the company’s identity first. The branding process requires an investment of time and money, but you’ll reap many benefits once you establish your consistent image and messaging.

With a strong brand, you also will: • Improve training. Your company’s values and style will be easier to understand, so your customer service will excel.

No business plan is complete without a brand strategy and a marketing plan that will present it to the world. Invest in yours and reap the rewards.

• Improve recruitment and hiring.

When your polished image is predominant in the marketplace, you’ll attract the best candidates looking for employment. • Accelerate your return on investment. The money you spend on your vehicle wraps, ad campaigns, etc. will

generate a lot more revenue when they’re well branded. • Benefit from better brand awareness. The people in your target audience will be more likely to recognize your logo and remember your name, so when they need you, they’ll know whom to call.

• Make your competitors drool with jealousy. When your first wrapped truck rolls into town sporting an eye-catching branded design, the guys driving white vans with little lettering will turn green with envy.

No business plan is complete without a brand strategy and a marketing plan that will present it to the world. Invest in yours and reap the rewards. u

Dan Antonelli is the founder and president of KickCharge Creative, an award-winning, full-service agency offering advertising, branding, content and more to businesses across a variety of industries with a specialty in home services. For additional information, visit kickcharge.com.

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