A brand is what people think and expect when they hear your business’s name: the promise they believe you make, built from everything they have seen, heard and experienced of you. Branding is the work of shaping that on purpose, by deciding what the business stands for and making every place it shows up say the same thing.
Brand, branding and brand identity are three different things
- Your brand lives in your customers’ heads. You cannot own it outright; you can only influence it.
- Branding is the deliberate work of influencing it: what you promise, how you say it, and whether the experience keeps that promise.
- Brand identity is the visible and written kit that carries the brand: the logo, colors, type and voice. It has its own page here.
Every business has a brand, planned or not
Customers form an opinion of your business whether or not you ever think about branding. If nobody chooses what it stands for, the brand gets decided by accident: by the oldest sign on the building, the slowest reply to a message, the photo a stranger posted, or whichever competitor looks more sure of itself.
A small business has an advantage here. The owner is close enough to every customer to decide what they should remember, and to make the sign, the website and the way the phone is answered agree with each other.
Signs your brand is being decided for you
- Customers describe your business differently from how you would describe it.
- People mix you up with a competitor or get your name wrong.
- You win work mostly on price, because nothing else about you stands out.
- Your website, profiles and printed pieces were each made at a different time by a different person.
- New customers are surprised by what you actually do.
How 76 Design Solutions solves it
At 76 Design Solutions, branding starts with a brand identity system, the thing everything else is built from: the logo and its variants, a color palette with values, typography, usage rules, tone of voice and a written guideline document. Brand management then keeps it consistent, with checks across your site, profiles, print and social. See 76designsolutions.com/branding-marketing.
If your website is where you want the brand to start working, begin with the Website Plan and Homepage Mockup from 76 Design Solutions: a page plan and a homepage mockup for desktop and phone, built on your logo and colors, delivered within 5 business days for $49.99. The full $49.99 is credited toward a Small Business Website build, and the credit does not expire.