5 tips for managing your brand perception

By Samantha Higgins

As a small business owner, you need to be concerned about your brand. This is an issue that takes in a lot more than what may be apparent on the surface. Your brand is a great deal more than merely face value. It’s an issue that you need to explore to its very depths. Here are five great new tips to help you manage your public brand perception.

– Get started on branding right away

You need to start branding your business even before you open your doors to the public. This is something you should be doing via a social media campaign in the very earliest days. You can use your various pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the like to create an anticipatory buzz for your new business.

The content that you post during this early stage should lay out who you are as well as what your business intends to stand for. You want people to know about the goods and services that you will provide. But you also want to get them as familiar as possible with your name and logo so that the buzz is there when your site opens up.

– Brand with your target demographic in mind

Another important element to keep in mind is that you need to brand your business with a particular demographic in mind. Your target should be the people who are most likely to respond to your advertising in a positive manner. You will need to put in a bit of time and research in order to ascertain just who your target audience will consist of.

You can make use of locally-themed SEO to give you the keywords you need to catch the eyes of your target audience. Once you have their attention, your next task will be to maintain their interest. An adroit combination of branding techniques, including name, logo, visual presentation, and SEO content will help you seal the deal with them.

– Stay consistent with your branding

One thing you will definitely need to do is keep your branding consistent. If you advertise in a certain way to a certain demographic, it’s good to keep going in that style. There is no need to fix what isn’t broken.

The best thing you can do once you have established a groove will be to stay on message. Deliver your content in a style that goes perfectly with your brand. This will establish an easy familiarity your audience will be comfortable with.

– Make good use of monitoring services

One of the best ways to securely brand your business is to make use of social media monitoring services. These will be the experts that will help you keep a close eye on how your brand is being perceived by the public. It’s the service you need to use if you want to make sure that your use of social media is as astute as it needs to be.

– If you need to rebrand, don’t hesitate

Not every business owner is also a born genius when it comes to marketing. Sometimes you get it right the first time and sometimes you don’t. If you fail with your first branding attempt, don’t panic. The situation is still eminently salvageable. What you need to do is take a deep breath, analyze your failure, and move in a new direction.

Rebranding may be as simple as changing your SEO and a few visual elements. It may be more drastic. You may need to change your name and website URL. This will be all the more true if your rebranding comes in the wake of a major PR disaster. Even if such action is required, following general online marketing rules will normally do the job.

The time to brand your business is now

When it comes to branding your small business, you can never be too careful. Successful branding will come down to many different factors. The key is to do so in a way that fits perfectly with the needs of your business as well as your demographic. This is a process that will take some time and effort to perfect, so the time to start is now.

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Samantha Higgins is a professional writer with a passion for research, observation, and innovation. She is nurturing a growing family of twin boys in Portland, Oregon, with her husband. She loves kayaking and reading creative non-fiction.

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