Creating the most effective branding for your small business is just the beginning. The next step is managing your brand so that it:

1.) Reaches target customers, and

2.) Raises public awareness about your business.

Branding is not something you do once and then forget about it. Small business owners need to develop and distribute their brands weekly, daily, even hourly. So it’s a good idea to have a point person who can take responsibility for the day-to-day management of your branding strategy (more on this in a moment).

A Brand Culture

Branding begins with the people who work most closely with your business: Your employees. The approach and attitude your workforce has on your brand have a powerful effect on how people outside of your business think about it. When your workers understand and buy into what your brand represents, their actions will demonstrate your brand culture to customers, clients, vendors, even visitors.

As your brand leader, it’s crucial that you continually reinforce your branding message to your employees so they understand why your brand is important. For example, let people within your organization understand that breaking a promise to a customer even once can be enough to damage your brand, your business, and the trust you all have built so hard to develop with customers and the public.

Spreading the Message

When your employees are on board, it’s time to spread the word about your branding to the outside world. This will take place on every level, from daily in-person and online interactions to advertising to social media marketing and beyond.

The key to success is to develop a clear, concise, and consistent brand message then continually reinforcing that brand strategy both internally and eternally. That’s a lot of work and you likely will be busy running your business.

That’s why Lytron Design can handle brand management for your business. Our expert branding strategists can not only help you develop your best brand message, but also manage it so that it works toward the success of your business.

It’s possible to be too close to your brand. No, in fact, it’s commonplace for companies to take their branding for granted and be blind to how people on the outside actually view their business.

Business owners “touch” their products, services, marketing, and social media all day every day. But ironically, all that focus can create a kind of near-sightedness that allows them to lose touch with the reality of actual perspective.

In other words: Your clients and customers probably won’t see your brand the way you think they do. 

Brand Consulting

Brand consulting is a fast-growing segment of business today that offers an experienced outside perspective into the actual look and feel of your business. Brand consultants are experienced at identifying brand vulnerabilities and offering an honest assessment of how people see your business without the myopia of being too close to it.

At Lytron Design, we offer brand consulting services that give business owners analysis, solutions, and effective marketing strategies that help businesses avoid the pitfalls of overfamiliarity.

We can give your business a clear-sighted analysis from the perspective of an impartial outsider and help you get a clearer picture of how your customers, your competitors, and your target audiences actually view your business. Then we give you the tools to improve your business brand, enhance your reputation within your industry, and expand your market share.

Essential to Success

Nobody knows your business better than you. But working so closely to it on an everyday basis, you may not have the same perspective as people on the outside.

The brand consultants at Lytron Design apply successful, proven strategies to give business owners a genuine, clear understanding of how people actually perceive their business. Then we collaborate with you to develop effective strategies that align your vision of the way you want people to see your business, your services, and your products with the reality of the marketplace.

Branding is one of the most important elements of any enterprise. People aren’t going to trust your business, your products, your services, or you unless they feel comfortable and familiar with your brand.

Yet branding typically falls low on the priority list of many business owners. Most unsuccessful business owners believe people will simply find their business organically or be attracted to their brand just because they are good people.

But while you may be a nice person, have great products and services, and even offer an appealing and innovative business model, that’s not enough in today’s busi9ness environment unless you also have an effective, well-planned brand strategy.

Big or Small Businesses

The size of your business doesn’t matter. Every enterprise — from a one-person startup to a massive multinational conglomerate — needs to have a brand strategy to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace. Branding is the foundation for every marketing platform, from word of mouth to social media to paid print, broadcast, or display advertising.

Consistent, effective branding lets people feel familiar with your business. It helps establish and solidify your reputation before customers know anything else about your business. And it’s what causes them to seek out the products and services you offer and keep coming back again and again.

Brand Management

Yet crafting an effective brand is only the first piece of the puzzle. Once your brand is visible, it’s equally important to continually manage and expand your brand image so that you can build market share, increase return customers, and keep your business growing.

Lytron Design specializes in both brand strategy and brand management. We can help you define your business’s personality in the minds of your targeted customers, then craft a successful brand management strategy that keeps pushing the outer limits of your brand expansion further and further.

When it comes to branding, Lytron Design has the answers you need to successfully influence and promote positive customer interactions.

In most business schools, one of the first things you learn is that successful brands stand out from the competition. Maybe they offer unique innovation, such as Apple. Or perhaps they have valuable safety features, such as Volvo. Or perhaps they are reliable and familiar, such as McDonald’s.

All of these three elements are known as “brand differentiators” and when you focus on them, you can set your brand and your business head and shoulders above the competition.

Uniqueness

What sets your brand apart from your competitors? Are the products or services you offer different than everybody else’s? If so, you already have the first brand differentiator: Uniqueness.

When people look for the types of products or services you offer, yours need to stand out. If you offer the exact same products or similar services as everybody else, there’s no motivation for people to choose you over your competitors. Find the one thing that makes your brand unique and focus on it so you can explain to potential clients or customers what it is that makes you different and better than everybody else in the marketplace.

Value

The second brand differentiator is value. The uniqueness you promote should be quantifiable to people in some specific way.

That could mean price, but it also could mean time value, convenience, safety, or any significant value difference that distinguishes your brand from all the others.

Dependability

People need to know that your products or services are reliable, dependable, and consistent. Successful businesses focus on creating dependability as their third key brand differentiator. Once customers know they will get the same great products or consistent service from your business, they will return again and again. Plus, they will share their experience with family, friends, and social media contacts.

Brand differentiators — uniqueness, value, and dependability — are what separate average companies from the great ones. Which one does your business want to be?

No matter what business you are in, there is always going to be competition. Distinguishing your brand from all the others is key to building sales, capturing market share, and building loyalty among clients and customers.

Your brand’s ‘Unique Selling Point’, or USP, is how you stand out from the competition. Defining your USP and exploiting its potential offers a long-term path to continued successful branding. Here’s how you do it.

USP as Branding

First, it’s important to understand that your brand’s USP is more than just marketing. It is what defines your business as a whole, including everything from operations to product design to choice of marketing platforms and targeted customers.

Second, as the name implies your Unique Selling Point should be the one thing that distinguishes your business from all the others in the same marketplace. It’s not a product feature, it’s a branding concept. For example, the USP of Apple’s iPhones isn’t that they are compact, intuitive to use, or even that they are smart. It’s that they are innovative and cool.

By defining this particular USP, Apple is able to convince millions of consumers worldwide to pay more for their product even though there are others that do essentially the same thing for less money. And this central USP is integrated into everything from packaging to their research and development to the design of their retail stores.

What’s Your USP?

So defining the USP for your brand, products, and business as a whole probably the single most important decision you will make as a business owner. You want a USP that is true, concise, and easy for customers to instantly grasp. Yet it also should be bold, edgy, and focused squarely on customer benefit.

Lytron Design can help you define your brand’s USP then collaborate with you to implement it across all platforms as part of an overall strategic branding campaign. Let’s work together to create a memorable, effective USP that will give you the results you want.

The key to any long-term business relationship is value. When what you offer is valuable to your clients or customers — whether it is a product, a service, or simply an idea — then that value creates a strong loyalty that you can benefit from for years or even decades.

But in today’s lightning-fast, scroll-through business environment in which attention spans are shorter than ever, value is not enough. Your business also needs to engage your clients in ways that are simultaneously unique and appealing.

Standing Out from the Crowd

The benefit of offering a product/service/idea that is unique in your marketplace is nothing new. The big business schools have been instilling this idea in their graduates for generations.

What is different in today’s business environment is the need to engage people in ways that are appealing. It’s not enough to have a website that offers high-value content or simple and efficient navigation. Web pages also need to appeal to the eye, inspire the intellect, and instill confidence and comfort in both casual and repeat visitors.

The same premise holds true for every other potential contact portal for customers or clients, including print media, broadcast marketing, and even physical showrooms and offices. There’s simply too much competition today to allow your focus to slip even slightly. By the time you realize you have lost the customer’s attention, 15 other competitors will be vying for their business.

Building Brand Loyalty

Engaging people in ways that are continually creative and effective is hard. If everybody could do it, we would all be billionaires. But the good news is once you land upon brand identity for your business that is both unique and appealing, you can create strong loyalties that will keep people coming back to you time and time again.

Apple has done it. So has Tesla, Netflix, Costco, and countless others. Now it’s your turn. If you’re ready to get started, Lytron Design is ready to help.