Have you ever found yourself scrambling last minute to create a social media post or other promotional graphic and just had to put something together that looked decent? Confession…I’ve been there myself. Whether you like graphic design or not, trying to get a promotion ready for distribution can often get bumped to the back burner until it becomes a last minute task. At that point, when you’re under pressure, it can be difficult to get those creative juices into full gear so that you feel like you’ve put your best foot forward on your promotions.

Guess what, that’s where branding your business plays a key role in saving you time and maximizing your marketing efforts. Branding is more than picking out colors and getting a nice logo. Branding is your image. Branding is how your customers and potential customers recognize your business. It’s not just graphics, but also the message you convey to your target market that makes people feel a certain way about your business when they interact with you.

When the elements of your business brand are strategically in place, branding then becomes a time-saving tool. The important decisions of your style and vibe are made through the branding process. Then, as you flesh out the elements of your marketing efforts, decisions become easier and faster, design work is made simpler, and when correctly implemented, your brand starts working for you. How? Let me explain.

Decisions Become Easier and Faster

Going through the branding process requires some upfront time and thoughtfulness. However, when you make key decisions about your target market and your business’s look and feel, those decisions can be made once instead of repeatedly during every promotion. Early on you may need to remind yourself more frequently about who is your target market and the overall look and feel you decided for your business. If you stick with it, decisions for individual marketing campaigns will become quicker because you will not be re-discovering the elements of your brand over and over.

Rather than looking at each individual marketing campaign and wondering “Who is my audience?” or “What design will get the right people’s attention?”, you would have already answered these questions through the branding process. When your brand is clearly defined, you can quickly create marketing campaigns that align with the style decisions you already made. This will ensure that your promotions will consistently resonate with your target market.

Design Work is Made Simpler

How often do you try to design a promotion or marketing campaign and feel like you’re starting from scratch? With a clearly defined brand image, that doesn’t have to be the case. Your colors, your fonts, your style, and even your tone are all defined through the branding process. So, when you sit down to put together a promotional piece, many elements of your design are already defined. If you want to take things a step further in organizing your brand image, creating templates for your different types of promotions will save you tremendous time.

I recently learned about Dr. Becky Kennedy, a psychologist on Instagram under the name @drbeckyatgoodinside . I looked her up and noticed how similar all her posts were on the social media site. If you check her out, you will notice she uses the same or similar format for each category of posts she makes, such as videos, dialogue examples, and parenting tips. She recently updated her branding, so you might notice the most recent posts look different from her older posts. However, you can tell that even with the new colors and designs, she intends to show consistency. Check her page out here.

Your Brand Starts Working for You

If you’re concerned that branding might be too strict of guidelines for you, because you like creative freedom, then know that during the brand discovery process, you can get as creative as you want. That’s where you can choose all the aspects of your image from the foundational pieces that define the core of your business to the fun accents that make things stand out. Branding doesn’t have to confine you, instead it gives you focus and consistency.

Why is focus and consistency so important? Well, consider this… Think of a person you casually know. When you run into that person somewhere, do you dive right into deep conversation with them or do you initiate small talk, casually catch up with the person and then go about your day? Now, think of a close friend. When you get together with a close friend, do you start off with small talk or are you able to dive right into fun and meaningful conversation? More than likely you dive into meaningful conversation much quicker with someone you know well.

Similarly, when someone is looking online at social media, a website or printed marketing materials, if they don’t recognize a business right off hand, they may casually look over the information before moving on to something else. However, if someone instantly recognizes a business online, in print, or at an in-person event, as long as they have had a positive experience with that business, they are more likely to engage with the business.

Essentially, through branding you can cut the small talk and quit trying so hard to grab your customer’s attention. Branding makes your business quickly identifiable through a consistent strategy that allows you to establish your business as familiar and as a business they know, like and trust.

Bonus tip: While branding is your business image, having your target market and business goals clearly defined through brand discovery, you can also save time by focusing your business decisions on what aligns with your brand. If you are asked to do something that doesn’t align with your business image and goals as defined through your branding, you have the freedom to say “no”. Doing this will give you more time to focus on the things that align with your business brand.

Need help with branding your business? Contact us to see how Webb Digital Services can help.

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Photo Credit: Wildwood Media