Brand Identity - Lessons for Small Businesses

During the recession we witnessed a boom in many kind of small businesses all across the United States. Many of these small businesses are making smart decisions to build their brand identities. However, some of them fail hopelessly, not due to lack of passion but due to lack of knowledge.

To understand brand identity you need to understand what brand identity means. Corporate Brand Identity, is the persona or characteristics of an organization as it intentionally adapts and tries to promote using their marketing campaigns. It is implied by using coporate logo designs, web design, and other marketing created in synchronization with other design elements of the brand or the product.

A company, business or organization's brand identity promotes the business, describes its objectives, displays the values and culture behind the organization. With effective marketing it becomes symbolic to how your brand is generally perceived. From the visual appearance of your products, to the corporate logo, and from letter heads to all communications every things help businesses establish a brand identity.

Since most small businesses cannot afford a elaborate marketing campaign, still they can strengthen their brand identity by following some basic practices. First of all, hire a professional logo designer to create your business logo design. Getting a professional custom made logo design is not that expensive. Also if you need (well every one needs) a website you better give it to the same designer. That way your logo and your website will compliment each other better.

Once you got your logo design, use it well to promote your business's brand identity. You can use your logo on business cards, office stationary, banners, brochures, and every thing else you can think of.

Small Businesses - Internet Marketing - Web Design

Gone are the days when only large corporations considered maintaining a web presence important. Today it is important for each business to not only have a web presence but to also make great use of internet for better marketing. Marketing over the internet is more effective, more target oriented and much cheaper. 

The first step to the Internet marketing is to launch a professional website. Launching a professional website could be cheaper but it could also be expansive, depending on your plans to expand it. Most small businesses start with a shared web hosting, they hire a web design company to design their website, and then they start using it as their marketing headquarter over the internet. 

The big question that all small businesses face is how to hire a professional web design company to do their website. The answer to this question is that you hire a web design company that fits your budget, has the expertise to do the job and offers other value added services such as graphic design, logo design, stationary design, etc. 

Hiring such a company would help you with your future marketing needs. Also a company capable of doing all that would fill your new website with beautiful logo design and graphics. You can use this logo as your brand identity. 

When searching for the right web design company for small and medium businesses, you should always check out their portfolios and read their client testimonials. While you are it, don’t forget to drop down email to other small businesses who have previously hired this company to do their web design. 

You not only need a web design, you would probably want to have a content management system so that you can update your website on your own without paying the web design company for that. 

The next step in your web and internet marketing strategy is to use the tools such as social media. We will talk about the importance of social media in the internet marketing in our upcoming posts.