Visual branding at the growth stage is exciting! You’ve got some customers and some budget to play with. There are a multitude of branding opportunities available, everything from business cards to product labels to websites to t-shirts. It’s difficult to balance excitement with practicality. You’ve got a growing audience and want to keep the momentum going! You may be accustomed to seasonal cycles and be preparing for the next holiday, tradeshow, or restock. You may also have people working for you who need more information about your visual branding so they can stay on brand. You have a vision and want to make sure you are doing things right now so that you keep growing.
One of my clients, Bubbles & Balms, had been making a small number of soaps and skin care products for a few years, growing their customer base and were positioning themselves for growth. They wanted to make more variations on their existing products and also create completely new products. They wanted to keep their growing list of stores carrying their products happy and their list of loyal customers engaged. They had the budget to hire me at this critical time and we transformed their brand from a cutesy bubble bug to align more to their desired target audience- adults with sensitive skin. After the rebrand, they returned to a familar trade show and tripled their sales year over year! They spend less time now talking about what they company is and more time helping customers identify the right products for their needs. They have a new brand guide that helps them design anything they need quickly while maximizing brand awareness.
Here are some tips to help you get your branding done at the growth stage
What you need to get started: If you’ve been in business a while, you’ll be more confident about your target audience and you’ll know the types of projects you’re working on (websites, socials, SWAG, product/service development). You’ll have specific needs in mind like product labels, signage, and website updates.
What you’re going to do next: You’re going to review your color psychology and color harmony. You’re going to review your font psychology and usability across channels. You’re going to evaluate how easy it is or is not to stay on brand.
What does “done” look like?: Done looks like compiling a longer brand guide that includes not only your colour and font information but talks about the shapes to be used/avoided and the style you want to see. You may want to complete a brand audit (fresh set of eyes) to see where things can be tightened up. You may already know that you need a rebrand at this point or you maybe able to get away with tweaks. You may need a designer to help you with a vector logo for certain applications such as SWAG. You’ll probably have a list of things that need to be updated as well. Once you have an updated brand guide with visual constraints, it should be more straight forward to be consistent and maximize brand awareness.
A good thing to know now to help you later: The tighter this is, the easier it will be to get things done, delegate marketing tasks, and expand. The more product development you do, the more complicated your visual branding will be and brand architecture (how your products look visually in relation to your parent company) may be an issue if you launch a lot of products ad-hoc. Make sure your visual brand elements allow for product expansion.
The good news is that you can get the advice of a professional before investing more money. I offer a 1:1 brand audit where we look through the decisions you’ve made so far, if they are working and if you are positioned well for growth.
