Branding Your Small Business

By Mark Cardwell

For any business but especially the small business, branding is vital. As a business owner you want to stand out from the crowd and let people know what is so unique, different, and better about your products and services. But how do you do that? Well branding of course, but its more than a notion to do it right. Over the next several articles I will do my best to share some best practices for branding your small business. I will present examples of branding done right, branding gone wrong and branding that’s just ‘meh’. I’ll share with you the process and mindset needed to create truly impactful branding.

With this first article lets try and get an idea of just what branding is. The American Marketing Association defines branding in this way: “A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers”.

This definition makes sense, especially when you consider the origin of the word brand. The word we use today is derived from the ancient Icelandic word Brandr which basically means ‘To Burn’. As in burning your symbol or image of ownership onto your cattle, pottery or other property to say, ‘Hey this is mine.’ We’ve all seen images of cattle being brand- ed in the old westerns. Around the turn of the century, the term brand evolved to mean more than ownership, it began to denote an expectation of quality. The term was fully adopted into the language of the growing marketing and advertising industry. As firms looked for ways to help their clients’ products stand out, ‘branding’ as a marketing practice was born and hasn’t stopped growing since.

According to STATISTICA.com; “Advertising in the United States is a multi-billion-dollar industry. In 2020, U.S. media advertising revenue reached 228 billion dollars, and they are projected to further grow to 286 billion by 2024.” There are nearly 14,000 advertising and marketing agencies in the US generating all of this energy and a great deal of it involves branding. So, branding is a BIG DEAL and serious money is changing hands every day as companies try to win over their consumers.

Just as the historical journey of branding suggests, today branding your small business means more than creating its logo or symbol. That’s only part of what is called your brand identity. Your brand includes important intangible concepts like in the Levi’s vs Gucci example, the perception of value, status, social, culture, beliefs, and values. Are you clear on how your brand positions itself? Both Levi’s and Gucci are clear on the value they want their customers to perceive. See you next article.

Mark Cardwell, Principal Consultant, Cardwell Communications