Create a fun, engaging, and meaningful logo for your business. One that captures the attention of clients and keeps your business recognizable through the years. Don’t feel like you have the creative skills to design your own? Use the iLafe app as a customer and hire a graphic designer to work with you! (Bonus tip: Keep note of what you liked about your service provider’s logo, profile, and communication and what you didn’t. This will help you understand what customers are looking for!)
What are the values of your business? When someone says “iLafe” we want people to think helpful, easy and fast. Write down what key messages you want to stick in your customer’s heads. Make sure all of your employees know what your brand message is.
Incorporate it everywhere! How you sign your emails, answer phone calls, interact with customers, what your employees wear etc.. Everything you do should point back towards the message of your brand. Think about it this way, if you walked into a sports store and all of the employees were wearing suits, would you trust their advice? What about if they wore athletic gear? How you present your business matters. So, once you narrow in on your brand’s message, stick to it!
Now that you have a logo and message, it’s time to find your voice. This references all written communication of your business; emails, website, pamphlets, your iLafe profile, anything that a customer can read. Is your business fun and laid back? Then feel free to use puns, slang, and casual wording. Is your business more professional and formal? Then stray away from the jokes and stick to more formal writing and professional emails. Remember, once your business’ messaging and voice are developed, stick to it!
A tagline is one, simple sentence that sums up your entire brand and business. You want this to be memorable and recognizable by customers. Think of Nike’s ‘Just do it’ or McDonald’s ‘I’m lovin’ it’. Now that you have a logo, a brand message, a voice, and a tagline, you’re ready to develop templates for your brand. These templates should contain your business’s colors, logos and overall feel. Remember how we talked about professional versus laid back brand messaging? Your templates should do the same thing. These templates set the standard for emails, pamphlets, website design, etc. Anything that your business needs to create should follow the rules laid out by your templates.
Stick with it! Now that you’ve developed everything your business needs for branding, stick with it! You want to create a business that is recognizable by customers and the only way to accomplish this is if you stay true to the brand you’ve created.