Maybe you’ve found a genius niche ripe for a new business, or you’re ready to start your dream company. On the other hand, perhaps you’ve been running a business for a while and are prepared to have a complete brand update. Whatever stage of pre-launch you’re in, there are some things you should make sure you have done before launching your brand.
Creating a brand style, setting brand guidelines, and optimizing your online presence can go a long way to retaining customers and giving your brand a professional appearance. This article discusses what you should do before launching your brand and how you can attract future customers and set your business up for success.
Creating a Brand Style Guide
A brand style guide may seem daunting at first, but you’ll be ahead of the game once you’ve established a good style guide. Setting a consistent style guide for your business can help build authority. By creating a unique style guide, you set your business apart from the other companies in your niche and create a recognizable aesthetic that your customers can rely on.
The first thing to include in your style guide is a logo; this includes your website’s primary logo and all other logo iterations you may need for your company. A consistent logo across all platforms makes it easier for customers to identify your products and gives your business an air of legitimacy. In addition, keeping several copies of your logo in different resolutions and file formats on hand can help speed up future projects and make it easier than ever for you to create a consistent marketing strategy down the road, as you already have a cohesive brand identity.
Another thing to include in your style guidelines is a tagline. While not every piece of marketing you produce needs to have your tagline, you should feature it prominently on your website and official letterhead, as well as anything else that you think could benefit your business’s slogan. A tagline should be short, sweet, and related to your product or business. The best sayings are unique and stick out to customers; think like McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” or Burger King’s “Have It Your Way.” Your tagline should advertise your business’s values while also marketing your product.
Another thing to add to your style guide is brand colors. Not only is having a set of brand colors helpful for designing your logo and your website, but it also gives you an accessible folder to hand to future designers to ensure any graphics match your overall aesthetic. Remember that you can also include colors that your company should never use in your brand identity in your style guide. If your business is plant themed, for example, you can make a point that you should avoid red as it clashes with the overall aesthetic of your products, with exceptions made for floral arrangements. After all, it’s your brand, so you can decide how it appears to the rest of the world.
Plan Your Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines play into style guidelines interestingly. Your brand guidelines should indicate how your content is written, how social media posts are created, and how your company interacts with customers. For example, if you want to make a point only to use professional, positive language on your blogs, make sure to include it in your guidelines.
These guidelines help create a consistent tone for your business and avoid missteps and messy social media posts down the line. You can also include things like house style guides for grammar in your brand guidelines and any words you’d like to avoid in your advertisements.
Brand guidelines also play into organizing your business as a whole. By creating brand guidelines up front, you save time in the long run as you will have a worksheet to help guide you through more complicated procedures. In addition, brand guidelines can be essential for any business with several employees, as it minimizes errors and helps create an overall consistency in your business.
Optimize Online Presence
Once you’ve created your brand style guide and guidelines, it’s time to work on optimizing your online presence. First, make sure to create your social media accounts in tandem, with similar, if not identical, names and identity tags. Then, if you already have social media accounts, sync their profile pictures, bios, and interlinking. Creating a cohesive design across your social media accounts gives you an air of legitimacy and helps engender trust in your client base.
Another essential part of your online presence is your website. If you are not optimizing your website for search engine results, you are missing out on a large portion of potential exposure and customers. Ensure your website is well designed, follows your style guides, and provides valuable, comprehensive content for your clients. By ensuring your website is as professional and easy to use as possible, you create an online space that welcomes future clients and displays a polished, professional business front to your target audience.
Craft a Marketing Strategy
Once you have everything else squared away, crafting a marketing strategy is essential to launching your business. While you could start posting randomly on your site, preparing a perfect marketing strategy helps save you time and money and ensure you see returns on your marketing investment. Planning a marketing strategy can be challenging, so we provide helpful articles on starting a marketing strategy for your business.
We also provide services for all businesses, including small business owners, to help craft a unique marketing strategy to help you get noticed in your niche of choice. If you are interested in finding out more, check out our services, or contact us. We’d be happy to discuss the future of your business and help you craft a marketing strategy that will take your business to new and exciting heights.
Planted Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency created for small to mid-size businesses, start-ups, and personal brands. We customize our plans to fit the business at each stage of growth. Want to learn more? Send us a message at info@plantedmarketing.com. Talk soon!
