How to Improve Your Business’ Branding (4 Techniques)
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Many businesses fail to brand effectively, and because of this, they could be impacting their potential income. Unfortunately, this can lead to issues – both now and in the future – with brand awareness and credibility.
Fortunately, whether your business is new or not, there are a variety of branding techniques you can use to reinforce your business' identity. These techniques are easy to implement and could be just what your business needs to become a recognized brand in your niche.
In this post, we’ll introduce you to branding and what it can do for your business, including a deeper look at its benefits. You’ll then learn four techniques you can implement immediately to bolster your brand’s awareness. Let’s get started!
What is a Business' Brand? (and How It Can Benefit Your Business)
Branding isn't just about having a prominent, memorable logo. It's a business strategy that is used to develop solid relationships with your target market and establish strong connections within your chosen industry. A good branding strategy will increase the value of your company and make the acquisition of new customers easier.
Branding has many upsides, but with a solid strategy in place, there are two key benefits:
- Growth in industry reach: Branding provides you with a way to stand out among your competitors.
- Increase in brand credibility: Branding can improve consumer perception and, as a result, credibility.
Often confused with marketing, branding is a related yet separate strategy. In a nutshell, branding is what remains after your marketing efforts have swept through. It is associated with the reputation of a company and how effective you are to deliver on the promises you've made to the customer.
4 Techniques to Improve Your Business’ Branding
Many businesses fail to brand properly because they assume it's an overwhelming endeavor, or they simply overcomplicate the process. However, branding is simpler than you think, and with these techniques, you'll be wondering why you never did this sooner.
1. Keep an Active Social Media Page
An active social media page is one that your business uses regularly, both to talk to and reach customers. This is beneficial for branding because it provides you with a key engagement platform to generate leads and sales. While keeping an active social media page isn't difficult, it can be overwhelming. Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Share your latest content. While the “old-fashioned” way of manually posting is perfectly fine, an automated tool (such as Buffer and Hootsuite) will be much more efficient.
- Get involved in the conversation. Keep an eye on popular topics of conversation, and use social listening for better engagement.
The power of social media is amazing, but its use can be time-consuming. However, branding in the age of social media is extremely beneficial – making it a smart investment.
2. Use a Branded Email Address
A branded email address is one that incorporates your business' name and URL. They are effective because they provide a sense of reassurance that your business is legitimate, they improve credibility, and they also provide a good first impression. Here are just a few tips to keep in mind when creating your first branded email address:
- Keep it short and memorable. Use a simple username (the part before the @). Ideally, your username should be your name.
- Make it visible. Include your branded email on your website’s contact page, in the sidebar of your blog, and in the bio of your social media accounts.
This branding technique may seem inconsequential. However, even this seemingly small change can add an additional layer to your branding strategy.
3. Partner with Like-Minded Businesses
The main benefit of partnering with like-minded businesses is exposure to new audiences. This improves your business' discoverability, and can significantly contribute to your brand's credibility. If you’re just getting started, here are a few ways to improve your odds of establishing such a relationship:
- Know what you want from a partnership. This means knowing exactly what you'd like to achieve by partnering.
- Know what you bring to the table. To begin, perform a SWOT analysis to get an understanding of your business (and perform one on your potential partner too).
- Contact the right people. Find the right people, and you'll have a much easier time being heard.
Even if you’re a startup, you’re bound to have something to offer to bigger brands. Therefore, it’s important to hone in on this from the very beginning and utilize it effectively.
4. Shorten and Cloak Your Links with Pretty Links
Link shortening and cloaking are techniques that can be used to personalize business links. You can effortlessly improve brand awareness by incorporating your business’ name into each link address. If you’d like to get started with shortening and cloaking your links, it’s easy to do with a link management plugin, such as Pretty Links.
Pretty Links – which offers more than simply link shortening – enables you to easily shorten and cloak all of your links. They can then be used on your website, shared across your social media accounts, and utilized anywhere else on the web.
Conclusion
In short, proper branding can skyrocket your business' recognition. This can build credibility and, as a result, lead to more customers and increased sales. It's such an important aspect that to ignore it could be the difference between success and failure. In the above post, we’ve introduced the importance of business branding, as well as four techniques you can implement to grow your business from being unknown to becoming a distinguished entity. To quickly recap, they are:
- Keep an active social media page.
- Use a branded email address.
- Partner with like-minded businesses.
- Shorten and cloak your links with Pretty Links.
Do you have any questions about how to improve your business’ branding, or how Pretty Links can help? Let us know in the comments section below!
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About John Hughes
John is a blogging addict, WordPress fanatic, and staff writer.