A strong brand is the foundation for a successful business. Only then will customers recognize your work, build trust with you over time, and invest in your future.
But nowadays, it can be difficult for smaller companies to make a big impact, especially when larger companies have time on their side and a much bigger balance sheet.
So, how does a new brand make a name for itself and stand out as quickly as possible? In this article, you will learn essential branding lessons that large tech firms have used to great success. From improving user experience to protecting sensitive data from cyberattacks, you can fast-track your brand’s success by adopting proven methods and applying them to your business.
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Five Branding Lessons Small Businesses Can Learn
Below are some easy lessons that small businesses can apply to their strategies, helping to maximize their growth and mimic success.
1. Create a Strong Brand Identity
One of the key ways to create a successful brand is to have a strong brand identity. This can include having a catchy name, a recognizable logo, developing a niche role within an industry, and having clear, direct messaging.
Having a strong identity that is simple to recognize ensures that you make the maximum impact on customers and can differentiate yourself from the crowd. Take tech giant Apple, for example, which has used its iconic apple logo consistently throughout the years, with a simple tagline ‘Think Different’.
When forming your brand identity, try to:
- Use simple words and names that people can spell, pronounce, and understand.
- Develop clear taglines and mottos so new customers can recognize your purpose or values.
- Design logos that are easy to identify and remember. Avoid copying competitors—instead, be unique and bold.
- Be consistent with your appearance on all media, websites, and communication.
- Check that your brand names are available to use as a .com address and are free on social media accounts.
2. Prioritizing Cybersecurity
If a company suffers a data breach, customers will immediately distrust them and move to a safer, more secure competitor. Their brand might never recover.
Part of the reason why tech giants continue to succeed is that they prioritize their cybersecurity and actively address rising threats. But cybersecurity is a fast industry, and if you’re a small company, you may not necessarily have a budget to work around.
For this reason, you need to be clever with your funds and follow simple but effective security protocols. For example, installing and using antivirus software is essential to repelling many cyberattacks. Staff must know how to check files for viruses, schedule scans, quarantine, and remove threats to protect sensitive information from malware.
Additionally, firms should invest in robust security tools like a virtual private network (VPN), which encrypts internet connections to protect online activity. This means that staff can work on highly sensitive data without compromising cybersecurity.
Finally, small businesses should also invest in regular training to learn the latest cybersecurity risks. This way, staff can identify potential phishing and malware attacks ahead of time, mitigating reputational damage from potential breaches.
3. Simplify Things for Better Experiences
Many people falsely assume that companies need in-depth or even complex branding to prove they are sophisticated. But as big tech giants have proven, less is more, and simplicity is more consumer-friendly and recognizable.
After all, if a site or service is too “busy” to look at, too difficult to understand or navigate, people will click off and find something more practical. As such, you should use simple logos, colours, and designs to focus your brand’s messaging.
Take Google as an example. Although it is the world’s most used search engine, its homepage, search features, image branding, and fonts are kept to an absolute minimum. All it needed was a different colour for its namesake to become instantly recognizable.
Brands must remember that effective designs don’t include your brand’s landing pages. You should have consistent, simple interfaces covering everything a customer will engage with, including customer support chat boxes, contact forms, tables, testimonials, and social media posts.
4. Celebrate Your Employees to Convey Your Brand’s Message
Happy and fulfilled workers can not only help you produce outstanding services and products but also help with your branding identity. This is because more and more customers are becoming interested in the who behind companies.
In 2019, software company SAP decided to change its brand messaging by using the voice of its employees, celebrating their sense of purpose, beliefs, and attitudes toward their work.
Their pivot to employee campaigns proved successful, becoming their highest-performing campaign in the previous five years. It also offered the perfect opportunity to highlight SAP’s conservation and humanitarian work.
By engaging with employees from all departments of your company, you can help build a relatable voice that can inspire customers and encourage them to support you, too.
5. Follow the Direction of Your Data
Finally, successful branding should always be data-driven, using the latest information and public perception to inform your strategy. This helps you remain current and relevant and allows you to see if you’re lacking in any way.
Gather relevant intel from customers regularly, including their preferences, experiences with your business, and feelings toward competitors through customer surveys, quizzes, and questionnaires. This way, you can provide customers with a personalized experience, ensuring that they recognize your brand as meaningful to them.
Additionally, you should use external factors, like marketing trends, preferences, reviews of customer support and services, user behaviour, and external marketing trends.
Streaming giant Netflix, for example, has an excellent reputation for curating its services, offering users recommendation lists based on shows they’re interested in.
Customers will feel valued and seen. And brands will feel accomplished by knowing they’re doing their best to fulfil user needs.
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