5 Essential Branding Strategies for Businesses

branding strategies

Starting any successful business involves brand building. Your business’s brand is a lot more than a simple logo and a set color palette. It’s how you want your brand perceived from the look and interactions you make across platforms.

To ensure that your brand communicates the exact message that you want, we’ve compiled a few essential branding strategies to help you.

1. Establish the Basics

Before you can start moving on to more intermediate branding strategies, the first thing you need to do is cover the basics. You want to make sure that you establish the overall feel of your brand.

Things like your brand’s logo, handle, color palette, etc., are essential factors that help your audience recognize your brand. Establishing it early on will help you stay consistent across multiple platforms.

2. Define Your Visuals and Voice

Once you’ve established the basics of your brand, you now have a defined look. You’ll want to expand from those same colors and fonts and have it reflected on the visuals of your pages. This is especially important with social media accounts like Instagram.

Aside from your brand’s visuals, you also need to define it’s the voice and tone. When it comes to making posts, you’ll want to stick to one definite approach.

While some brands have social media accounts that are funny and sarcastic, some are straightforward and informative. You want every element to work together to reinforce your brand’s identity.

3. Stay Consistent

After you’ve established what you want your brand perceived as, you have to stick with it and stay consistent. This means that everyone who speaks on behalf of the brand should keep up the brand’s identity. It also means that any changes made to a specific element get applied across every platform used.

4. Know Your Audience

When building a marketing persona, it’s best if you have a good understanding of your audience. Remember that most users on one site can be a lot younger than most users on another. Keep this in mind when making posts across your social media accounts, as some kinds of posts may not resonate well with different audiences.

Each social media account has to have a purpose that aligns with the kind of people you’re trying to reach. Know your audience so that you can adapt and make adjustments to the content that you post.

5. Don’t Forget About Customer Engagement

With all the social media accounts your brand has, there’s bound to be feedback with the posts that you make. Customer engagement is a great way to get an idea of how your branding is getting received. Taking in constructive criticism is the best way for your brand to continue to grow.

Essential Branding Strategies for Businesses 

Building a brand for your business is what helps make it stand out and have its own identity. There are many ways for you to do this. We hope this article could give you an idea of the branding strategies you can use to get started.

Do you want to learn more about branding? You can use this to your advantage to stay ahead of your competition! Contact us here, and we’ll get to you as soon as we can!

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Less Is More: The Power of White Space in Design

white space in design
white space in design

Whether you’re designing a website or an advertisement, using white space properly is key. It can turn a cluttered and unfocused design into a powerful and pleasing work of art. Proper white space use really shows the truth behind the statement “less is more.”

Here’s why proper use of white space in design is critical.

What Is White Space?

White space, also known as negative space, is any portion of a design left blank or unmarked. It’s an absence of design. It doesn’t necessarily need to be white, it just needs to be blank — free of graphics, images, text, or any other type of design.

What Designs Use White Space?

You’ll see white space utilized across the design spectrum. It’s used on webpages, in print and television advertising, and in art. It can also be seen on movie posters, book covers, and product packaging.

Basically, there’s no limit to where white space can be used.

Why Use White Space In Design?

There are a lot of reasons to use white space.

One of the key uses of white space is to highlight important information. Take a look at the Google main page, for example. It’s almost entirely white apart from the Google logo and the search bar, highlighted in blue.

All the white space forces the eye to focus on the Google logo and the search bar. You don’t need to look around, you instantly know how to use the site and what to focus on.

White space is also used to keep a design clutter-free. It’s easy to overfill a design, which makes it hard for some viewers to determine what to focus on. Their eyes shoot all around the design, causing confusion and setting focus on less important aspects.

Good use of white space will make your design — website or otherwise — look professional and clean. 

How to Use White Space

If you’re designing a website, you have ample opportunities to use white space.

Use it in the margins of your site to make it feel more open and clean. Consider the micro white space between text and in spacing. Using double-spacing offers more white space, and may be a better look if you’re going for a white-space-heavy look.

If you’re advertising something on the web or otherwise, use the Apple method. Surround the product in white space to increase focus and intrigue. Use it to highlight the product overall.

Keep thinking, “less is more”. If you ever think about adding more to an already loud design, instead consider taking something away. See how a piece looks at its most minimal rather than its most maximal.

White space will give your design balance and clarity. You’ll learn this quickly, and master it in no time.

A Fresh Coat of White Paint

Using white space in design is one of the best choices you can make. You’ll end up with a much more intriguing, clean, and focused piece. Whether you’re a web designer or an artist, you can benefit from white space.

If you’re looking for a professional web designer, see what Digibrand Studios can do for you.

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How to Choose Brand Colors: The Complete Guide

how to choose brand colors
how to choose brand colors

Your small business branding is what gives you a professional look, draws in your customers, and ties together everything from your website to your product labels.

But before you can start creating a cohesive brand, you have a big decision to make; which colors will you choose to represent your brand?

Keep reading to learn how to choose brand colors that are perfect for your business.

Consider Your Style

The first thing you should consider when you’re choosing brand colors for your business is your style. 

While many colors can be adapted to a variety of styles depending on how they are used, there are some combinations that just don’t fit. For instance, professional businesses in serious industries, like funeral services, aren’t going to be well received with bright, punchy brand colors.

In the same way, black and white or shades of gray are a boring choice for your online boutique selling fun clothing and jewelry. 

Opt for colors that fit well with the overall style and personality of your business. This will help you master the next tip, too.

Think About Your Customers

When you’re considering your business’ personality, don’t forget to think about your customer base.

Your target customers likely fit a certain profile. Is that profile fun-loving, youthful, and vibrant? Or more serious and focused? Keep their style in mind when choosing their colors so that you’ll wind up with a pick that resonates well with your customers.

Make It Match

Choosing colors that complement one another can be tough for anyone who doesn’t have a design background. Luckily, one simple tool makes this step very easy; the color wheel.

Using a color wheel, you can choose two or three colors that complement one another well. That way you don’t have to guess at whether your top picks work together.

The way that your colors work together is just as important as each individual color choice. Your palette should create a mood that fits your business’ style and your customers’ personalities.

Evaluate the Psychology of Your Color Picks

Choosing your brand colors seems simple enough. You’re picking tones that complement your business and that will look great on everything from your website to your product labels.

But the colors you choose may say more than you would think.

The psychology of colors is something that every brand needs to think about. A color choice might seem innocent enough, but if it’s evoking the wrong emotions, you could be subtly sending a message that you don’t mean to send.

Choose Something Timeless Enough to Last

Pantone’s latest color of the year might seem like a trendy pick for your business’ brand color. But while the name “Classic Blue” may be a timeless pick, past Pantone picks, like last year’s Living Coral or 2017’s Greenery are far less so.

While your brand colors should be modern, a trendy pick isn’t always the right one. Instead, you should choose colors that will look good for years to come.

That’s How to Choose Brand Colors You’ll Love

Figuring out how to choose brand colors that represent your business well and resonate with your customers is challenging. Creating a cohesive brand strategy is even more so.

That’s why it’s best to leave the branding to the professionals.

From choosing your colors to designing a logo to implementing brand guidelines across all of your platforms, we can help. Learn more about our full-service branding agency to see how we can help you improve your small business marketing today.

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Branding 101: How to Brand Your Small Business

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branding 101

Developing a strong brand is a must for small and big businesses alike.

It’s how you bring in new customers, show that you’re trustworthy, and keep them coming back for more. Without it, people wouldn’t be able to tell your business apart from the rest.

Keep reading for a quick course in Branding 101 to pave your path to success.

It’s Not Just a Logo

A common misconception around branding is that the main aspect of it revolves around a logo. In reality, a logo is only a part of the puzzle.

It’s more accurate to think of your brand as the story of your business. It’s not the story of how you started but rather your mission, values, and promises that set you apart from your competitors.

A strong brand allows customers to understand who you are as a business. As a result, they can develop a relationship with it and keep coming back for more.

So, while the logo is an important aspect to consider, there’s much more in developing a solid brand. Your brand should accurately portray itself to your target market so that they can see what makes you special.

Here’s how to go about the process. 

Branding 101: How to Go About It

To tell your business’s story through branding, you’ll first want to identify your objectives, vision, and passion. This gives you a clear direction on how to represent the business and where you’re going with operations.

After these elements are outlined, you’ll want to take a look at your target audience. Understanding them, their desires, and their needs will help you decide how to develop your brand.

Customers make purchases based on who they are and who they want to be. So, it makes sense that they would choose products that align with their values over ones that don’t. 

This is why it’s essential to represent your business with a brand rather than simply offering a product or service. 

Throughout the branding process, you should be as honest and straightforward as possible. Consumers prefer authentic brand personalities on social media and elsewhere. 

In other words: authentic branding is what can set you apart from the competition. 

Elements to Consider

In addition to the intangible aspects of your brand, it’s important to leverage visual materials to your advantage.

This includes:

  • A logo
  • Brand imagery (e.g. the types of photos used on your website, social media, and so on)
  • Branded materials (e.g. labels, business cards, and stationary)
  • Aesthetic choices on marketing materials and products (e.g. colors, fonts, and so on)

You’ll incorporate elements of your uniqueness into creating these. Before you begin, you’ll want to develop a branding style guide. This is essentially a pre-set description of the way you’ll visually represent your brand across all mediums.

A style guide creates brand consistency, which in turn generates trust from current and future customers. 

From there, you’ll develop a strategy that outlines how to go about brand representation. This will determine where, how, and when branded messages will be shared. 

Your Brand is the Backbone of Your Business

While this Branding 101 guide highlights key points, it’s only the beginning of this critical conversation.

Contact us so that we can set you on the right track — even if you’re an already established business — without any hassle or missteps. 

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