Stage 4 – What is your brand?

Branding your business

Once your business has established a web presence with active social media accounts, the next stage is to define your brand and its boundaries. Creating a brand for your business is vital, and if you work with any third parties such as printers, marketeers or web designers it is crucial that they all follow your brand guidelines and formula.

Brand

Bringing together your brand and defining your profile will help to improve your online profile and increase bookings. With digital trends and machine usage constantly changing, it is easy to quickly become out of date. It is important for your business to stay at the cutting edge, as this will improve page rankings and raise the profile of your business online.

• Logo – high quality in all placements, determine usage
• Text – Tone of voice is consistent and represents the brand
• Colours – a set palette used on all online and print copy

Print copy

All marketing materials, such as business cards for networking events, brochures, and promotional flyers to give to guests can be expensive to produce. Designers like to have a brief and branding guidelines to work to, both of which will cut down on design time and result in a finished product that aligns with the rest of your brand.

• Business cards for owner and business
• Flyers for events and promotions
• Brochures for business overview and services
• Menus for special evening and themed menus

Website

Your website is the foundation of your business’s online presence, and a place where you have the freedom to show off everything you do to potential customers. It is important that your website is clear, concise and offers easy navigation so your customers can find their way around various offers and the services you provide.

When developing a new site or updating an existing site put some thought into the following elements:

• Mobile first development
• Optimised web-ready images
• Video content
• Text and body content
• Colour scheme
• Social media and blog
• Print copy
• Booking systems and integrations
• Contact and location details
• PDF and downloadable materials