5 Small Business Branding Mistakes
- Tamara Bouzo
- Jul 18, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 10
After living and breathing marketing and design for most of my 30 year life, I've learnt what not to do when it comes to your brand. Small businesses are missing out on so much business and opportunities to improve customer experience.
Here are 5 key mistakes small businesses often make when it comes to their brand and marketing program.
1. Misaligned branding and business goals
Your business and your brand should not be siloed. Your brand is the vehicle that drives your business goals. Think of your business goals as the 'what' and your brand as the 'how'. Use your business goals and objectives as the foundation to determine your brand goals and where your brand strategy should take you.
2. Reinventing the wheel
More often than not, we try to reinvent the wheel when we don't need to. Since I began working in marketing I found that the most successful brand strategies are not as exciting as you might think. When you get the right combination of messaging, images and channels, you maintain it like a well oiled machine.
3. Too many voices
Maintaining a consistent voice across your brand is key to a recognisable and memorable brand. Having too many voices could mean too many different styles of writing across website and social media content, too many visual styles, a complex logo, lack of key messages throughout promotional collateral and more.
By simplifying your brand elements to a logo that reflects your brand, having one visual style and voice that resonates with your audiences, your brand will be set up for success.
4. Unprofessional visuals
A picture really does speak a thousand words. Consumer attention spans are getting shorter and markets are increasingly flooded with advertising and businesses trying to persuade and influence. Surviving in this landscape is not to stand out, but to send the a message that resonates with your audience the most.
Your images are the key to grabbing your audience's attention. Your images are the face of your brand and represent the quality of your business. Unprofessional imagery equals negative brand reputation. Invest in your visuals!
5. Targeting the general public
In the lens of your business your audience might be the general public. However, in the eyes of your marketing strategy, it is not 'everyone'.
Fact: you will be more successful targeting a specific audience with a message that relates specifically to them than a general message to the whole world.
You can't please everyone when marketing your brand to the general public, so logically you're already cutting out a portion of your audience. Targeted marketing and personalisation is always more effective because you know exactly what a specific group of people are interesting in or struggle with. This gives you a window to show that your brand, product or service is the solution.
The first step is recognising if your are making any of these mistakes that could be detrimental to your business. Now you can address these issues strategically and setup your business for success and growth.
Contact me to help identify these areas in your business and build a plan to address them.
