For many business owners, the third year of operation is a benchmark of success. Many small businesses fail or give up before this point. Being able to get there feels like an indication of future success. But, that is far from the truth.

Any business can survive while doing some things wrong. The idea of your business should not be to tread water and make it through the next year or two. You built a business to thrive. Making sure an appropriate foundation is in place for your business is the most important thing you can do. Those first three years should be about setting yourself up for future success. One essential piece of that foundation is your brand.

What is branding?

You build leverage through your activities. Doing the right things over and over again builds a compounding interest. The interest that is created through your regular business actions is your brand. It is how people recognize you and expect you to act. If your brand is inconsistent, sloppy, or out of alignment with the way you work, customers will take notice. Even if a customer appreciates your service, they may detect that something isn’t right. If you don’t have a coherent brand, they won’t have anything to remember you by. You don’t want your business being referred to as, “that place I went once.”

Why branding is important?

Each time someone has a need for you products or services, they should think of you. The mind functions to conserve energy. Changes and inconsistencies in image, voice, and tone create too much to remember. On the other hand, if a brand is consistent and coherent, your business will be quick to pop into your customer’s head. Whether they’ve used your service or not, if they have regularly seen your brand associated with that service, they will come to you.

Branding is the face of your business. In a world where the internet allows consumers to make decisions before they step outside, your brand needs to show up as intentional and clean.

Building the right brand

The key is consistency. Don’t have your company’s image, logo, and colors changing every few months. You want the same fonts, layouts, and designs everywhere. Attach one image to your business. You can be creative within the framework of your brand but it is most effective to be consistent. This applies to your social media, emails, print materials and everything else.

Have all your branding material ready at a moment’s notice. Store them all in one place - probably on a cloud drive - so you and any of your colleagues or partners can access them at any time. This may seem over-simplistic, but when you need to have business cards, letterhead, posters, or flyers prepared on short notice, you will be glad to have quick and easy access to your branding materials.

The voice that represents your brand is equally important to your branding. For any published material, use the right language. If you own a car wash, you don’t want to run an ad that says, “we clean stuff.” What stuff? Your language needs to be precise and – again – always consistent. A wise move is to have a basic brand script available to refer to when you are creating new communication material. A good brand script will provide you with information on your target audience, the problems they are facing, and what success looks like to them. Even if you are not using the script word-for-word, it provides valuable guidelines to point you in the right direction.

Getting the help, you need

As the owner of a young business, being equipped with a brand guide can take the hassle out of the minutiae of branding. A guide for brand placement, copy tone, and colour scheme, among other things can be an irreplaceable asset. You have many roles to fill and adding brand management to the mix might be too much. While your business is growing, it is a perfect time to do a creative audit on your business’s brand.

There are branding agencies and service providers that can do these audits for you. Just like you know your clients are better off coming to you instead of trying to handle things themselves, you would be best served by leaving the details of brand management to professionals that spend all their time thinking about brands.

Instead of devoting a portion of your own time to your brand, you can have professionals spending all their time making your brand fit. Schedule a review for all your communication materials to ensure they are up to your brand standards. With the right help, you can be sure one more piece of the puzzle is in place to carry your business towards a long life of success.