Editor’s Note: From time to time, our Woodinville Chamber will bring you guest posts from Woodinville Chamber Members that will aid in educating and informing our members about a topic of interest. The article below is a guest post by Scott Bothel of FourTen Creative.
by Scott Bothel
You are likely someone who takes great pride in what you do. You work hard, have built a business, a client base, and a product or service line you believe in. If you are looking for a way to breathe new life into that business you’ve built with your blood, sweat, and tears, a brand boost may be in order.
I’m intentionally avoiding the label of “re-branding” here, because many people see that process as throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why start over when, clearly, something is working so well for you? You may just need to boost your existing brand in order to mine the value that is inherent in your business.
Below are 4 ways to boost your brand without breaking the bank.
Tell a compelling story.
From company history, to customer success stories, to a peek into your daily operations—a well-told story will engage and inspire your prospective customers to learn more about you. Stories involve characters, plot lines, and outcomes. All of these help contextualize your product or service in a way that helps your customers “see themselves” working with you. The story you tell can be their story.
You can tell a story through blog posts, videos, photos, and more. If you start with the goal to tell a great story instead of design a great brochure, the outcomes will be hugely different. Give it a try!
Start with why.
Your brand stories need to touch on the motivation for running your business or using your products. Take a moment to discover Simon Sinek’s TED talk on this subject. The goal is to inspire action based on the values and vision that drive your business. This can be as simple as crafting a headline for your website or brochure that gets to the reason your business exists or the core motivation of your clients.
Speak to your ideal customer.
A common fear when businesses craft a website or brochure is that of omitting something that might be relevant to their broad customer base. This usually results in an information overload for the typical potential customer. And when people have too many options, they get consumer paralyzation. When telling your brand story or defining what you do, it might help to narrow your statements by speaking to your ideal client. By casting a vision for how you desire to serve this ideal client, you will attract those client and others who might only be able to utilize a portion of what you are describing. That’s ok. There are other ways to target different segments of your customer base without risking overloading potential customers as a first impression.
Refresh your look.
I wanted to be careful not to lead with this, because even successful, well marketed companies can work with bad design. Sometimes changing a logo can be a very costly endeavor if a brand is invested in physical signage, print materials, etc. But simple updates can go a long way to improving your brand impression. Here are a few ideas.
- Simplify your logo if it’s too complex.
- Standardize your colors with a brand guide.
- Place a full-width photo or video at the top of your communications.
- Get new business cards.
- Change out your stock photos.
- Go mobile friendly.
- Use fewer words everywhere (more white space).
Conclusion
The goal of all of these changes is to bring new focus to your brand strengths. If you don’t know what those are, you will likely need to engage in a brand discovery process. You will likely want an outside voice to help you through that since we tend to go blind to the things we live with every day. Try one of these ideas to boost your brand and breath new life into your story.
Do you have examples of successful brand boosting? Share them with us and let us know if you need any help along the way.
