Why visual branding is so important to your small business

art-1869490_640By Henry Brown

When you talk about a brand, most people will assume you’re talking about the popularity of a business or a specific product. To a small business owner, when talking about a brand, you should be talking about the core of the business and how the public perceives it. In perception, the visual approach is easily the most engaging. That’s why a visual brand isn’t something you should get over and done with. With the right thought, it can be used to the following ends.

Unify your messaging

There’s nothing more dangerous to marketing any business than going off-message and changing the direction of what you tell customers. As well as applying the values you attribute to the business and the ‘voice’ of your content, this goes for the visual side. The logo, the color scheme, the geometry and imagery of the brand is what lingers in the audience’s mind. It’s what makes you recognizable and is what can make you stand out from the crowd. Just visit here to see how important a brand’s image is to standing out, whether that’s at live events or in your online content. The more consistent you keep it, the easier it is for your audience to recognize it. That’s not to say that a brand’s image can’t evolve over time. Just look at the evolution of the McDonald’s logo. Despite its variation, the core is always the same. That needs to be true of your visual branding, too.

Tell a story

Visual branding can also tell the story of your business, too. We’re not just talking about clever logos like Amazon’s mix of a smile with an arrow to signal delivery. We’re talking about things like the pictures you post of products on social media. If your business sells luxury clothes, then you want the settings and scenarios of product photos to fit a luxury lifestyle. If it sells comfort food, then you want to show the relaxation, indulgence, and warmth associated with that food or highlight the social dynamic that eating can be. It can be a lot simple to show the personal value of your offer through pictures rather than words.

It can mix professional and personal

A good visual brand style, with a unified color scheme and logo, looks professional. But nowadays, companies are winning a lot of customers by appealing to a more personal side. Fast fading are the days of businesses using awkward mug-shots to show the personalities of the team. Instead, some brands are showing photos with a more human side, such as employees during a day at work or attending things like trade shows and events. When customers see the people working to deliver the products they enjoy, it can create the kind of communal enjoyment crucial to growing a fan base out of a customer base.

Your visual brand does more than make your small business look nice. It can give it a consistency that makes it much more recognizable, it can tell a story, and it can highlight the aspects of the business you want it to, whether that’s the professional approach or the humanity behind it. Don’t underestimate the power of using more visual branding.

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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.

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