Many businesses can offer amazing products or services, but because of the way they appear (or don't appear) online, they may still seem untrustworthy to their potential customers. Welcome back to our Freebie Fridays for Business Owners series, where this week we are going to break down 4 ways you can appear more polished, confident, and trustworthy as a brand! We give you new tips, freebie design work, discounts on services, and more every week so be sure to follow our social media and newsletter to get all the goodies. Now, let's dive in!
1) Check For Missing Pieces In Your Branding
Your brand identity is the way you present your business to the world, and it's important that you maintain a cohesive presentation of who you are. If you don't, potential customers will sense that your brand is unsure of itself, and in turn that may make them feel unsure of the quality in your products or services.
Brand identities can include many defined characteristics not only visually but verbally as well, such as establishing a brand voice, mission statement, and more. But one of the main things you can focus on to quickly start improving your overall brand identity is your visual presence.
Ask yourself, do you have an established brand color palette? Do you know the necessary color codes for that palette to relay to printers or designers, like the HEX or CMYK codes? Do you have a consistent set of fonts you use, and do you know which ones are for headings, which are for subtext, and which for paragraph text? Have you ensured both your fonts are easy to read and your brand color combinations are accessible to all users? What about a logo, do you have one that is unique to your brand and created in the file types you need for printing, blowing it up to large sizes on signs, and more without causing graininess or color issues?
All of these factors are super important when building your overall brand identity, and when put into practice they help customers define your business as a recognizable, trustworthy, and consistent presence. If you feel like any piece of your branding might not be up to par or missing entirely, the first thing you should do is work on fixing it. You can DIY this (we have some tips across our blog and social media to help), or you can get professional help if desired!
We often say the more effort and investment you make into your branding, the more investment customers will likely want to make in your business. If you want a few Free Brand Color Palettes or Font Design Ideas & Tips, check out our recent blog posts on each!
2) Build Or Refine Your Business Website
Some businesses can get away with not having a website if they have a well known physical location or social media account. But even in those cases, most of the time a website would still be a huge help to boosting their brand recognition and gaining even more customers than they already have.
When you don't have a website, you likely lose customers for a few reasons. First, a well-designed and updated website establishes that your brand is around, doing well, and being maintained. In the sense of a physical location, this greatly helps customers who look you up on maps to know that you are not a frustrating, closed-down business surprise waiting for them when they travel to you. Instead, they know you are around and doing well and will likely trust visiting your location over your competitor's down the street who doesn't have a website they can verify.
Second, your customers might be too confused or feel like they know too little about your business to invest if information is not readily available to them. Your website should provide customers everything they may need to know before they want to visit your location or purchase a service or product from you. Using a cleaning service website as an example, customers may want to know how the cleaning service will interact with their many pets, whether the staff is comfortable cleaning when they aren't home, and more before that cleaning service is even considered. This need for clear information applies to most any business since customers want to know you can accurately take care of them before investing their time or money into you.
And finally, you might be losing customers even if they are interested in your business simply because they don't know what the next steps are. A website can provide clear navigation to entice customers into doing exactly what you want them to do as a business. You can guide them to your main CTA (Call to Action) to book with you, you can guide them through the types of products you offer and exactly how to check them out, or you can even have them sign up for things like a newsletter to give you a direct way to market to them and retain them as customers. A website allows you to create an online space that you can set the rules for, greatly improving the amount of clever and high quality ways you are able to provide both customer service and market your business for further sales.
Don't miss out on sales because your customers are confused! Make sure you create a website that is well designed and organized for them to visit, whether you do it yourself or get professional help. If you want to go the professional route, we offer both completely custom websites and more affordable semi-custom websites that we can develop for you starting at only $800! Reach out to us any time via our contact form.
3) Create A Distinct Style And Voice For Your Social Media
If you want to be memorable on social media and attract new customers, you have to appear confident and like you know what you're doing. A few ways you can quickly improve your social media presence are to establish a cohesive design style to your posts, and to start creating consistent content types. When you have a specific "look" and/or style of speaking in your social media, your posts are more likely to start getting recognized in potential customer's feeds. And, if you start posting consistent content they feel like they can rely on, they will be more enticed to follow you to continue getting access to that content.
As far as your style goes, check out our blog post with a free set of social media templates for more details and tips! And, we plan to open a new "Build Your Brand" store soon with several distinct styles of social media templates you can get and tweak for your business to help you stay consistent. Follow us on social media and our newsletter for store updates!
As far as staying consistent in your content, the biggest tip we like to offer is to establish a consistent series (or multiple series if you have the bandwidth for it). Series can come in many forms, but the important thing is to create one that provides value to your potential customers and that you can keep making sustainably. For us, it's the series you're reading a part of now, Freebie Fridays for Business Owners! We love making this content because it helps us connect with business owners at all stages of building their brands, and we can give them things they can take home and actually use to help them grow. And, we have gained some lovely clients from this series who have wanted to work with us directly, which has been wonderful!
Work on finding your series and consistent types of content to post about that relate to your niche and customers. There are a lot of great videos out there on YouTube and other platforms where you can get tips on defining your content styles.
4) Remain Consistent In Everything Your Brand Does
And finally, you need to focus on bringing consistency into everything you do. Your business will feel the most polished when you know who you are, what you do, and who you serve. This can mean defining and sticking to specific types or products and/or services to help niche your marketing efforts and provide high quality to those you serve. It can also mean defining clear customer purchase or service processes, ensuring your customers have a great experience with you that never leaves them feeling confused or frustrated. And, as we discussed throughout this post, you should appear consistent and confident in all the places your business shows up both online and in person.
If you want to read more about how to market your business effectively and define that consistency, check out the full FREE course we made; How To Build A Marketing Strategy That Works—No Matter Where You’re Starting!
Both you and your customers deserve for your brand to be confident, polished, and refined. You got this!
Closing
Thank you for sticking around for the full post, your support means so much to us! If you want more tips and freebies be sure to poke around our website for our Freebies page, read the rest of our Blog, and follow our Newsletter for updates! And if you would like to keep up with us more regularly, we would love if you followed our Tiktok or Instagram for new videos every week.
If you feel like you're loving the ideas, but way too overwhelmed to do it all yourself, maybe it's time to get some professional help? Reach out to us anytime via our contact form to discuss how we can help your business appear polished online and physically through our branding, website, and social media design services.
Have a great weekend, and happy designing!
The Sproutouts Twins
