"Fuzzy" brand promotion of small companies in the brand promotion process easy to make 7 mistakes

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When you think of a big brand, the CocaCola red and white fonts of Coca-Cola, the whirlwind of Nike and the Three stripes of Adidas (Adidas) may come to mind immediately. But as a small business, such as the logo of the company to invest, to carry out your own brand promotion plan, such an idea, think about it is impossible.

But don't be discouraged. In fact, launching your own branding program is much easier than most people think. Just as a small company, you must avoid the following common pitfalls and errors.

1. Do not understand the power of the brand. From a customer relationship point of view, having a strong brand is obviously advantageous. For example, when people want to buy their shoes online, the first thing they think about is Zappos (the American shoe-selling website). So you must also want to have that direct, definite relationship with your buyer.

From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, defining your brand is also valuable. It's an open secret that Google likes to order brand information in the search results, because visitors prefer to click on a list of brands. More clicks, and happier customers, which means that focusing on brand building can generate unexpected benefits in terms of site traffic and visibility.

2. No clear branding guidelines have been established. Now you know that your company should build a brand, but what does that mean? When you create a brand, you should establish clear guidelines that cover at least the following (other aspects of your company's domain can also be added):

Logo (including the first logo, and the special logo your company uses for specific product lines)

Brand Color

Slogan

Font design

Language expression in your brand

Pattern

Mascot and spokesperson

Obviously, this list is not comprehensive. If you feel you need to have some other characteristics to define your business, then add these features to your branding guidelines. But none of this is objectionable. Without these elements, your brand building will lack consistency and direction and will not succeed.

3. The brand image is too complex. See how Coca-Cola's classic logo has changed since the first time it was used in 1887. Although the use of a slightly different font, but after 127 years of use, the original looks basically unchanged.

The original Coca-Cola logo (on) and the current logo

Small businesses can learn from the beverage giant. When starting brand creation, people tend to add more variables than you really need. But your logo does not need to involve 6 different colors, and there is no need to have 6 graphics to represent your company's different departments. Concise, clear elements are easier for consumers to identify and remember, so be sure to avoid making your company's brand elements too complicated.

4. "Fuzzy" brand promotion. But then again, simplicity is not going in the opposite direction, and there is no clear information about your company and its value proposition appearing in your branding guidelines. This is similar to a number of downright repetitive marketing ads, such as our common "best sellers", "Champions" Golf courses and "award-winning" advertising companies. Such branding is really not going to have any real meaning.

Daniel Bestin (Daniel Burstein), Meclabs's content director, called the Lazy brand "wallpaper copy". And said, so constantly repeated use of vague, general nonsense, will make brand promotion lost all meaning.

So what's the solution? The solution is to use clear language, logos, and images in the brand. For a good example, check out the landing page screenshot of the mobile payment processor Square (US mobile payment company). Not only did the company's logo simulate the product in an unambiguous way, but the value proposition that the company's slogan "Now begins to accept credit cards" is clear.

5. Let the new product "deviate" from the brand guidelines you have developed. You have produced detailed branding guidelines and have started to implement all marketing materials and online practices. But after two months, you need to create a new ad for a product line that you are launching, and you feel that if you use some color outside of the color range of your brand, it will be "awesome".

Can you do that? But keep in mind that, like this, deviating from your original branding criteria, you are undermining its influence once. In doing so, you are essentially introducing a brand new image to your customers, reducing the relevance of your existing brand to a unified branding campaign.

6. There is no supervision over the use of your brand. Developing and implementing your brand is only half the success. In addition to these, you must proactively monitor where other people are and how to use your branding elements on your behalf. If you don't, your competitor may create a logo that looks similar and will use your logo to create a comment site that does not return to your link, and there will be a partner showing ads with the wrong color of your logo.

Some of these problems may be mild, but in many cases your interest in branding elements is compromised and legal action is necessary.

7. Bad brand change. There is nothing wrong with reinventing the brand image. Unless you're doing a bad thing. Remember that any changes you make to your established brand will reduce the relationships you have established with your customers. So it's really only possible to change your brand image if the benefits outweigh the risks of losing business. If you decide to make a change, you need to make a clear statement about this change to your loyal users.

Although brand promotion itself is undoubtedly a kind of marketing, it does not need to be too complicated. A good wish, plus avoiding the mistakes described above, will help your company develop a close relationship with your target customers.

Author: Sujan Patel (Sujan Patel) is a passionate internet pusher and entrepreneur. He has over 10 years of experience in internet marketing and is the founder of the digital marketing agency single Grain.