Taken from my free ebook, “Before You Start Your Business”.
Investing in your brand is a crucial step towards unlocking your business’s full potential. In today’s highly competitive market, establishing a strong and recognizable brand presence is more important than ever before.
By investing in your brand, you are taking proactive measures to build trust, credibility, and differentiation. A well-defined brand identity serves as a guiding beacon, allowing your customers to easily connect with your products or services. It creates a compelling narrative that resonates with your target audience, establishing long-lasting relationships and ultimately driving sales.
To embark on a successful brand investment journey, it is crucial to gather market insights and conduct thorough research. Understanding your target market, competitors, and current industry trends will equip you with the knowledge needed to craft a brand strategy that aligns with your business goals.
Once armed with this knowledge, you can invest in designing a visually appealing and cohesive brand identity. This includes creating a captivating logo, selecting a color palette that evokes the desired emotions, and developing unique brand messaging that effectively communicates your value proposition.
Investing in your brand is not a one-time endeavor. It requires continuous effort and adaptability to remain relevant and stay ahead of the competition. Regularly monitoring and measuring brand performance will help identify areas of improvement and allow for timely adjustments to your brand strategy.
Anyways, after you have picked a good name for your brand (which ideally should be short as possible), it’s time to start investing in the business. People are more likely to invest in your brand if they can see that you yourself are investing in your brand. Especially if it’s a new & young brand.
The first step is to register your business with CIPC. You can pay someone to do this for you or you can do it yourself.
Next, you should get a logo that will help people to connect to, and identify, your brand easily. Again, simplicity is key here. The simpler your logo is, the easier it is for people to identify and connect with your brand. Think Nike; simple and easy to remember.
Remember it’s a logo, not a dictionary. We don’t need your cell number and birth certificate to be attached to your logo.
Simplicity works best because our brains tend to filter out information-overload. Therefore, a simple logo is always a better option when it comes to brand recognition. This goes for the rest of your branding (Flyers, Business Card, Business Profile, etc) as well. Keep everything as simple as possible.
Consistency should also be maintained.
This type of branding usually comes at a steep price, because the Graphic Designer needs to put in a LOT of thought, but it’s worth the investment. Remember, if you invest in your brand, people are more likely to invest in it too.
Brand design is a process. It takes time, effort and great thought. If a designer is very cheap, it usually means they are skipping crucial parts of the process. Sometimes they skip all the processes and just steal an existing logo and simply paste in your business name on it.
That takes very little effort and very little money but could end up costing you everything if the original owner catches you.
This could negatively affect your brand. Cheap also means that you will probably not be getting the source files.
These files are very important if you want to make changes to your brand material later and the original designer can’t be reached. You can easily hand these files over to another designer who will be able to edit your brand material at minimal cost to you compared to starting all over again. That’s because, without these files, you would probably have to start your branding from scratch. Which would mean paying another designer.
Then there’s file formats. Here’s a scenario. You decide to print a 2m x 0.85m banner. The printshop asks you for a high resolution, PDF version of the logo.
You don’t have it because the designer never gave it to you. You tell the printshop to go ahead and print using the low-resolution JPG that the designer gave you. The banner gets printed, but you realize that the logo looks blurry. Quality issues like this can make your brand seem very unprofessional to potential clients. Which may lead to them not trusting your brand.
You then realize that, to look professional, you will have to redo your entire company branding. That probably means starting afresh with a new logo and reprinting another banner, which will cost more money than if you had gone the good quality design route from the start. This is one reason why bad, cheap design can be quite costly. It is far better to get it right the first time by investing in quality branding.
A lot of times when you cut costs, just know that you are also cutting out quality and professionalism. If that doesn’t bother you then that’s fine but if it does, then I suggest that you make better investments towards your brand.
In conclusion, investing in your brand is an investment in your business’s success. By diligently nurturing your brand identity, connecting with your target audience, and delivering exceptional customer experiences, you will reap long-term rewards, establishing yourself as a trusted and influential presence in your industry.