When you’re a small to medium size business, you can’t assume that your company will be noticed by sheer knowledge and service alone. There are tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of companies offering exactly whatever it is you are providing. The main difference between you and them is your brand.
Here I will discuss various cost-effective traditional and modern methods of brand deployment that can be scaled from the smalltime entrepreneur up to your fully established company. First and foremost we should cover a couple checkpoints for branding before we begin.
Get back to basics.
Oftentimes branding becomes so overwhelming for a company it becomes less and less apparent what the focus of their brand should be. Should you focus on your message, your service, or your product?
Product over service, service over message.
It may, (or may not) come as a shock that many think just the opposite to be true. Without the prior two elements the message is left at, “We want your moneyâ€. This really is not charming. Once you have established a solid product the costumer can trust you can deliver a service that can then be branded.
Your company can get it’s brand out to the target audience in a endless number of ways in this modern age. One overlooked by companies time and time again is any physical material the end consumer is able to hold in their hands. This can be anything from the actual product to any packaging or informational material on the product. In these cases the best method of brand deployment cost effectively on packaging or informational material can be done with a rubber stamp.
Stamps are so versatile and inexpensive in comparison to printing it’s a wonder why more companies are not utilizing them as a branding tool. For internet orders address stamps are especially useful. While most every company does in fact use stamps for their address they fail to make use of the branding in it. Personalizing your stamps with your logo within the stamp will give consumers an added sense of their product going through a human hand and not just “out of the internetâ€, thus linking that trust along with your brand. Stamp use is one of many essential tools in the cost effective branding process.
In completing this seemingly small action you are setting your brand in prime position to be more easily recognized and remembered. After rethinking and analyzing your branding possibilities it becomes more apparent at just how many different ways you are able to cost effectively deploy and develop your brand.
Most important of all is that you keep focused that your brand is there for people to remember you but even more so to trust you, your products, your service, and your message.
Nick Toffolon is a stamp branding and ROI enthusiast covering statistics and design for self-inking stamps. He currently enjoys toying with various methods and mediums for rubber stamp brand deployment.
