Well my friends, branding is like the whole personality of your business... it is what makes your business easily recognisable to your clients and they can identify you by your visuals, your messaging and everything you do. 

If you get all all your branding done correctly, put in practice exceptional customer service and systems and of course have a great product or service ( obvs! ) you can can create loyal fans. These are customers that love you, that are loyal ambassadors, buy your products and services regularly and are always speaking highly of your business and telling everyone about you.

If you look at your branding like a big pie and break it into segments it would look something like this...

Brand Purpose - Why did you start the business? Why you are in business? Basically your mission and vision for your business. This is important, as this is the reason for being in business. This is what excites you and gets you out of bed and into the office (even when you have a dull day or bad business cycle!)

Brand Position - What is your product or service? What are the benefits, experience, function? Where do you sit in the market, i.e. are you selling Ladas or a Tesla? 

Your Values - What values best suit your business? For example are you playful, helpful and creative or maybe you are masculine, grounded, and sustainable.

Target Market - Who is your clientele likely to be, normally the answer is ‘everyone’ but it can not be everyone (no I'm really serious!). Study their age, gender, location, hobbies, marital status, how many children, do they all shop at the same place, drink coffee at the same cafe. Study the details of your target clientele and this will make your messaging easier, as you will know who you are talking too.

Brand Message - Tone of voice, and the language you use. How do you wish to sound? Relaxed and quirky, or quite formal with structured bullet points? Plus 1 - 2 sentences that sums up your key message. 

Brand Awareness - How will you attract new clients and retain them? Social media, brochures, email marketing are amazing for getting your brand out there. Great communication, customer service, good systems and processes will help retain your new customers.

Visual Brand - This is my favourite part... this is the visual stuff such as your colour palette, choice of fonts, icons, imagery, patterns that all make up the "look" of your business. These elements are used to create your logo, alternative logos and visual branding and are placed across all your marketing, digital and physical spaces for a lovely consistent look and relate back to all of your other branding pie segments.

Isn't it cool how it all works! I love it... and if you nail it right at the beginning, you are set to hit the road running.

P.S. If you have any design projects you are looking to start and you need a hand with. Yell out, I'm happy to help.