Now when I say the word brand, what comes to your mind? 

Amazon? Samsung? BMW? Apple?

Basically something big..not something you associate with your local grocery store right?

But what if I tell you that you have the power to make your small business into a brand? 

This is Sohail from Beacon Media and today let’s dive into the world of branding!

So branding..There isn’t an outright simple explanation, right?

I mean Sales, Advertising.. Marketing is easy right?

Have a product or service that you need to sell? Advertising will help you reach out to customers. Marketing will help you understand what your consumer wants better

So then why does the concept of branding come into place?

To the slightly initiated, the word branding may seem like a practice reserved for the fortune 500 companies where service size is immense. You are talking about making decisions impacting a large majority of people in the general population. 

But if your footprint is small then it really isn’t that important what the font of your logo is what the colour of your signage or the interiors of your shop are what is the dress code of your employees

How important is branding in this case when the stakes are low?

Is branding at all important for small businesses?

Let’s try and understand one by one

So first let us understand what branding is.

Well experts may have humongous & complex definitions of word Branding but I will try and put it in the simplest manner possible.

Branding is the position that a particular thing occupies in your mind.

Everything that your brain knows. It can be an orange, it can be the latest laptop, it can be a fancy brand of chairs for that matter. With each mention of whatever I just said, a certain image is evoked in your mind.

Each colour is associated with something in your mind. Each sound is associated with something in your mind. The biggest & the smallest of things that impact your lives occupy a position or a space in your mind by default, no matter how trivial or how unimportant you think it is.

The position that a brand occupies in the mind of a person is complex, yet simple. To explain further. When I say iPhone something neat, posh and sleek comes to your mind when I say Vivo I don’t think the same thing comes to your mind similarly no matter how big or small the footprint of your business is no matter how small the impact area of your service is there is always scope to execute a proper branding exercise even if you have a small shop selling helmet or you have a  multi crore B2B business.

For instance, you cannot make do without wearing shoes right? No matter what brand of footwear you wear, when I say the word Nike a particular image comes to your mind. Coming up to clothes; when I say Raymonds something does come in your mind I don’t know what comes in your mind nobody can tell what comes in the mind of somebody else but something does come up and controlling what comes up in the mind of the person who is hearing the name of your brand is to me what branding is. 

There is always scope and some benefit or the other in carrying out a branding exercise.

The smallest of touch points that a potential customer has with your brand or business is a scope for branding. For instance if you have an establishment where people carry goods out of your shop no matter how trivial you think it is. It does matter the carry bag that you provide. The material of the carry bag, the thickness of the bag, the logo of your business on the bag matters. Because that bag is going to represent your business at the homes it goes to.

If you have if you own a gymnasium, the colour and presentation of the interior, the music that you play, the logo of your brand, does help create a specific mood of the people when they think about working out

And if you have a small business where you are directly in touch with your clients or customers the easiest way to carry out a proper branding exercise is to leave a lasting impression on them when you interact with them. Indeed it is as simple as that.

A warm smile, a welcoming gesture. The way your establishment is lit up. The motivation of your employees to serve a customer. The manner in which a customer service operator greets a caller. Everything invariably is a part of branding

Your brand is as big as you want it to be and as small/unimportant as you want it to be!