One In A Million: How To Make Your Business Stand Out

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No matter which industry you try and dominate, there is always going to be competition. The key to success in business lies in outshining rivals and persuading customers that you are the best choice, but how can you make sure that you stand out from the crowd? If you’re looking to propel your company forward and reach the top, here’s a handy guide to help you excel.

Showcase your personality and build your brand

Think about all the big businesses you’re familiar with for a second. The multinational corporations and high-profile brands we all know are much more than a business name or a single product. Branding is crucial to give your business personality and show customers what you’re all about. Use branding techniques to provide people with information about your venture and enable them to get to know your back story and understand your objectives.

If your brand is weak, and you’re considering a rebrand, or you’re launching a new company, it’s wise to spend time thinking about how you’re going to celebrate and showcase your personality and use branding to engage with potential customers. Look online for logo inspo and conjure up a design that embodies your brand and enables customers to gain an insight into what you do or sell. Your logo and tagline, your packaging designs, and any content you share online or via the mail should be relevant to your target audience. For many people, your logo is the first glimpse of your business, and often, you don’t get a second chance to impress.

Engage with your audience

Once you’ve got the basics of branding pinned down, it’s time to enhance and strengthen the relationship between your business and your customers. Engage with your audience via social media, mail or email, and get to know your audience. Use content to promote your services and products, but also to create a strong profile for your brand and to facilitate communication.

Customer service is vital, and there are many ways you can ensure you receive 5-star ratings. As well as simple steps like responding to questions or queries quickly and delivering on promises, it’s wise to elevate the experience and treat your customers like VIPs. Add a personal touch to emails and social media messages, offer treats for loyal clients and make sure you’re easily contactable.

Do your bit for good causes

Corporate social responsibility is a hot topic. More and more companies are participating in schemes or supporting individual causes as a means of giving back to the community or promoting national or international charities. If you don’t already do your bit for good causes, look into projects in your local area, or research charities or initiatives that are linked to causes that are important to you.

You could sponsor a local team, an event or a program, you could donate a portion of your profits to a charity, or you could set up a scheme that raises funds for an initiative through sales. Choose a cause that is close to your heart and that complements your brand. If you produce sustainable products, for example, it makes sense to support eco-friendly projects. If you run a dog grooming salon or a veterinary practice, raising funds for animal shelters or conservation schemes is a great idea. Corporate social responsibility has multiple benefits for businesses. Employees take satisfaction from giving, and customers like to buy into companies that have a reputation for supporting charitable causes.

Be original

Imagine yourself as a buyer for a moment. You’re standing in a store aisle, surrounded by products that are essentially very similar. What makes you choose one item over another? Take another example. You’re browsing online looking for a local service provider in your area. What compels you to select one company instead of the others?

Originality can fuel entrepreneurialism, but even in a scenario where you’re not reinventing the wheel and coming up with a ground-breaking new product, it’s possible to make your brand stand out. The way you brand and market products and services can make all the difference. Use innovative, creative approaches to spread your message and entice customers and offer something slightly different. This could be as simple as adding a personalized message to parcels you send or featuring your customers in social media posts, rather than models.

If you do not have an in-house marketing department, you can outsource your branding and marketing activities. You can invest in digital marketing because it is easier to precisely identify and pinpoint your target audience, as well as analyze the right tools and approaches that work best. Additionally, it can be more cost-effective. There are many digital marketing companies like AdInfusion that help businesses upscale their marketing tactics and easily reach more consumers by using strategic SEO, Facebook, and Google Ads. If you haven’t considered this marketing approach, perhaps it’s time to do so. 

Aim for rave reviews

Did you know that over 90% of consumers now check product reviews before buying a product? 

With reviews and ratings becoming increasingly influential, it has never been more important to aim for optimum customer service standards. An excellent review can distinguish you from your competitors and encourage buyers to choose you. Urge customers to leave feedback and share their experiences of your business, and utilize comments and ratings to make continual improvements.

You can learn from both positive and negative opinions. Share brilliant reviews and testimonials and offer incentives for those who spread the good news to friends and family. If you find yourself in a situation where a customer complains, and there’s a risk of attracting negative attention, try and resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Explain why things have gone wrong, provide a solution, and offer compensation. Every business makes mistakes, but not all of them respond in the right way.

Think Hard About Your Name

Your business name is going to be exactly what reflects your brand, your values, who you are, etc. Plus, this is something that should really be timeless, too. So, with all of that said, do you have a business name that could reflect your business for years to come? 
Better yet, is your business name something that could be easily remembered but, at the same time, not generic or similar sounding to anything else? Whether you’re choosing a name like Golden Ventures, Oak & Ash, a catchphrase, or even your full name, will these be memorable? Will these reflect your brand? Is this something that you’d be able to settle with for good? Seriously, this matters so much!

Final thoughts:

Competition is an enduring feature of business, and to get ahead, you need to beat rivals and ensure your company stands out. When trying to attract and keep hold of customers, it’s crucial to have a strong brand and to celebrate your unique identity. Enable customers to get to know you and what your brand stands for, and use social media and email to get to know your clients and followers. Encourage engagement and communication, focus on providing first-class customer service, and try and offer something different. This relates to innovative products and services, but also the way you present your business and interact with customers. Utilize feedback and take ideas on board to impress new and existing clients and maintain the highest standards of service.

Why Your Brand Guidelines Are So Important

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Branding Guidelines

No matter how small your business is, you need people to know it's you. Your branding is key to the identity of your business and will also have a lot to do with its success. The idea of building a brand identity and creating brand guidelines can be daunting, though, but it doesn't need to be. There is plenty of information out there to help you and free tools too. 

Remember that consistency is the backbone of an authentic, trustworthy, and recognizable brand and customer experience, so this means having consistency in the way you look, speak to, and service your customers and target audience. Staying consistent takes effort, and it also means you have to have rules, and this is where you need to write yourself some brand guidelines.

Brand guidelines are a set of rules about how to represent your brand across channels and assets, helping your business build credibility and recognition as you grow. They can include visual guidelines such as logo usage, color palette, typography and they can also cover your company's mission, brand voice, and imagery.

You then need to use your brand guidelines when you are designing brand assets such as your website, invoice templates, brochure, social media accounts, and packaging. Make sure any new employees are aware of them, and of course, any designers you are working with are too. 

You can either create your brand guidelines yourself or outsource them to another company to do it for you. If you're not sure about it, you can search for other company's brand guidelines online as an example. You'll find some great ones and very detailed, but you can use these as a guide and adapt it to your company. This way, you'll make sure you don't miss anything, though, and you'll also learn from someone who has done it and shown that it works. Check these out as good examples:

Walmart Corporate Brand Guidelines cover just about everything you can imagine. It includes direction on the brand's editorial voice and how to use its logo in print, online, on promotional merchandise to name a few. It also covers appropriate fonts and how to use logos, icons, and taglines correctly.

Then there’s the Mozilla Style Guide which is another really useful one to look at. It has an online style guide to help its open source community understand how to use its logos and trademarks for Mozilla, the Firefox browser, and its other products.

It isn’t just about looking pretty, according to a study from The Verde Group and the Wharton School, two-thirds of all shoppers use more than one channel to make purchases so with all the online and offline opportunities to make an impression, it’s about consistency across all channels and touchpoints to make your business branding and identity familiar, pleasing to the eye and recognizable to your customers. 

Keep it simple by focusing on a small number of fundamental brand values; be consistent because every aspect of your business should make customers feel the same way about you. Additionally, communicate your brand. Make sure every advertisement, brochure, and letter helps reinforce the same message. If you have a logo, use it everywhere, but make sure the quality is consistent. 

Remember to be honest. If you don't believe in your brand, no one else will.