What Branding Strategies Are Best for Small Businesses in Rhode Island ?

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Rhode Island is the 45th state in the US with a population of 1.06 million. There are 99,821 Small Businesses, which makes 98.9% of Rhode Island Businesses.

If your business is among them, you have a lot of competitors, which is why you need to try harder to be seen. If you want your business to be recognizable, you have to brand it.

Branding is an essential part and the starting point of every business. It’s what makes your business stand out from the rest. It focuses on the business itself and incorporates a number of strategies. In this post, we will look at the top 5 branding strategies for small businesses for 2019.

• Define your brand identity

Defining your brand identity involves clarifying what your business is about. Think about the purpose and the goal of your business. Why did you start it in the first place? What do you want to achieve?

To define your brand identity, you have to determine:

• What your business is about

Ask yourself questions like “What does your business offer to the marketplace? What makes your business unique? What’s your mission and your goal?”

• Your target audience

Determining your target audience is another important step. You need to know who is or would be interested in the products or services you offer in order to be able to find customers. Knowing the target audience is especially important for social media ads as it is one of the main factors of your ads’ success.

• Your POD

POD (Point of Difference) is the “secret ingredient” of every business. It’s the thing that makes you unique. When defining your POD, ask yourself “Why should customers choose you over the other business like yours?”

Is it the impeccable customer service, the price of your services/products or it’s their quality?

Once you determine your POD, incorporate it into your brand identity.

• Create compelling visuals

People remember what they see over what they hear. That’s why the visuals you use are an important factor in your brand’s success.

When planning your visual branding, the first thing you should do is define your design strategy. This basically includes the details of your visual content, such as fonts, brand color palette, and style. Once you define this, you can go on designing a logo, a website, and business cards, basically your brand identity.

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A logo – It’s the face of your brand. It’s the thing people most easily remember and recognize you for. When designing your logo, you have to make sure it’s appealing and it represents your business. You can’t use just any logo you like. If, for example, you own a consulting firm, you would need to create a professional consulting logo  that contains that name of your company along/or not with an icon or vector.

A website – It’s a must-have for every company today. It’s the first thing people check to see who you are, what you offer, and other related information. When creating a website, you have to make sure that all important information is included there, along with your logo. Also, keep in mind that your website should be easy to navigate, well-organized, and mobile-friendly.

Business cards – These are not obligatory, but are handy. Business cards are great for networking that business owners use by handing them to people they know or people they meet at an event or a meeting. Your business cards design should contain your logo and match your branding color style (which is also included in your website).

• Choose a brand name that’s easy to remember

Your business name is another important asset to your business. That’s why it is suggested to choose a name that’s not complex or too long, it’s easy to read, say, and, most of all, remember. It has to be recognizable, so when someone says it, the others know that he/she refers to your business.

• Utilize content marketing

Content marketing is perfect for small businesses because it’s affordable and gives them a chance to show off their industry expertise and strengthen their brand.

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Writing high-quality, catchy content combined with the right SEO tactics and keywords can bring a lot of new customers. Content can take many form including blog articles, slideshare, infographic, and videos. How you use it in your branding strategy depends on you but the idea is to integrate your branding and brand voice in these mediums, and amplify it via the media.

• Provide exceptional customer service

A business’s success greatly depends on its reputation since it tells the others whether or not a business is good.

If you want to gain a good reputation, you always have to be there for your customers. Provide them with constant support and communication. If they are satisfied, they will return again. Even more, they will bring their friends with them.

Apart from phone, email and chats, you can also use social media platforms as well as Whatsapp to cater to your customer and delight them with your promptness.

Author Bio

Brianna Jensen is a content specialist who curates, writes and promotes content for online businesses. Connect with her to discover a world of content types, fit for your organizational needs.