Image by Thanks for your Like • donations welcome from Pixabay

By Henry Brown

While there are many complex and refined topics and principles that any seasoned small business owner must keep in mind, it’s true to say that often, the most important elements of management are based in common sense.

For instance – how do you keep staff happy and proud to work at your firm? Well, you make sure they’re paid fairly. You give them the right tools for the job. You invest in them and make sure they’re trained so that their career chances improve, which ironically ensures they want to stay at your firm and continue to develop.

By achieving this and making sure that the workplace environment is professional and there’s a path upwards, you have a higher chance of keeping people working for your business. Yet even the most structured and industry-dominating brands can forget these most essential principles from time to time, and that can lead to a ‘brain drain,’ and sometimes even a staff exodus.

In the same way, millions upon millions have been invested on researching branding, aimed at understanding what methods work and why, and how they appeal to our audience. Yet the most important principles are often the most obvious, yet somehow, are rarely thoroughly taught to us.

That is until now:

Printing

Your branding can be as intelligent and innovative as any improving styling that has come before, but if the delivery of your imaging is shoddy, then people are going to take that as a representation of your brand.

For this reason, using the best digital printing services is essential. No matter if you’re printing flyers, booklets, promotional material, banners, or any other tangible branding piece, you need to make sure its colors are refined, the resolution is clear, and the material is high quality. These ulterior elements showcase the qualities your brand strives for, and they can speak volumes about the decisions you are prepared to make.

Readability

It’s important to consider readability in your branding. For instance, it might be cool to have a lizard figure making up the ‘L’ shape in the name of your pet stores’ logo, but if it makes your actual brand name less readable, you’re just hurting your chances of being remembered.

Readability, in the worthwhile sizing of the fonts you choose for your website, to how text-heavy your marketing copy is, to how you present your social media posts, will all have an effect. Make sure to proofread it, and use tools to consider the reading age of a piece of text. This way, you can ascertain if you’re reaching the right audience or not.

Unique to you

Many business owners think that in order to be unique, you have to get complex, because all of the ‘simple logos’ are already taken. That’s not necessarily the case. From what accent you place on your font, to what symbol you use for a logo, to how you keep this consistent branding themed from place to place (such as the aspect ratio of the logo you use for merchandise), keeping your branding unique and confident is much more important than overbearing and insecure.

With this advice, we hope you can brand in the best way, without having to wed yourself to a plethora of unnecessary rules – outside of those that already exist of course.

______

Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.