Having a brand identity is extremely important to your business’s success. However, many business owners have misconceptions about brand identities that can damage their businesses.”Brand identity” is the result of the combination of consistent visual elements that are used in your marketing materials. A basic brand identity consists of a logo, business card, letterhead, and envelope. It can be extended to include a website, brochure, folder, flyer, or any other professionally designed pieces.I’m not a big company: I can’t have/create/build a brand.Just because your company’s not huge doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from creating a brand identity. Even for the smallest company, a brand identity will make you look bigger than you are, will make you appear more professional, and will make your sales process easier. You’ll also have a starting point for designing all of your marketing pieces, and your brand identity will make your marketing a breeze as well.You might not be able to create a branding program that is as comprehensive and self-sustaining as those of some of the big companies, because you won’t be able to educate your clients like they can. Big companies with immediately recognizable logos and brand materials have made those logos and materials recognizable by spending a lot of time, money, and effort on educating the public about their brands. This is mainly done through advertising.But this isn’t to say that you should jump out there once you have built a brand and start advertising; for many small businesses, advertising is expensive and doesn’t offer a good return on investment.I run my business in a personalized, one-on-one way: building a brand would make my business impersonal.Building a brand identity isn’t necessarily a depersonalizing tactic. You can build a brand that’s very personalized, and even centered on you and the way that you work with your clients. You can even use the personalized way that you run your business as a differentiation tool. That personalization can be one of the pieces of your business that makes you different.Some major brands are built with this personalization. For example, Mrs. Field’s Cookies is built all around her story, techniques, and recipes.Having a brand identity shouldn’t change the way that your business works. There might be some slight changes when you start working on the inner layers of your brand, but brand identity just changes the face of your business to the public, making it look cleaner and more organized and professional. You can even design your brand identity to look personalized by using a signature, initials, or even your photo in your logo or Visual Vocabulary.Creating a brand is too much work.There is a lot of work involved in creating a brand identity and then creating the rest of the brand to match it. But it’s all part of the overall work that you should do when you begin your business: determining your differentiators, creating your brand foundation and creating some of your brand basics, and positioning your brand.Doing this work will give your business a clear path, and will make all aspects of your business easier. You will have the groundwork for your business laid out, and you’ll be able to build on that groundwork to create success.Beyond this groundwork, you shouldn’t have to do much work; if you pick a good designer, you should be able to take more of an advisory role. Beyond answering some initial questions about your business and brand, you should be able to sit back and make the choices between options presented to you by that hired specialist, throughout the development of your logo and brand identity.Your level of involvement in the design process will also vary depending on the amount of personalization that you have in your business. If you’re running a very personalized business, then you will probably want to guide the design process closely, since in a personalized business your logo should reflect your tastes and style. If you’re building a bigger business, then the style of your logo should reflect the industry and what’s best for your business; often, a designer will guide those choices.I can’t use a symbol that’s been used before: I have to be entirely unique.By using a variation of a symbol that’s been used before, you’re leveraging the recognition and meaning that the symbol already has. This is often the best course of action for small businesses, because you won’t have a large budget to spend on educating your audience on the meaning of a new symbol.What should be unique about your brand identity is the way that you use these symbols. You can develop new combinations of symbols to communicate your message. Or you can arrange the symbols in a different way, or use them in place of letters in your logo to make it more unique.Another way that you can make your symbols unique is to draw them using different techniques or effects, such as calligraphy or paint strokes, or using different proportions. These techniques make your symbols unique and interesting, and can also communicate more of your brand’s personality.

Restaurants need to encompass considerable marketing avenues for the sake of success. Without publicity and marketing, there are chances that the restaurant may not survive in the market. But with thorough planning and enactment, the restaurant’s promotion can grab the customer’s attention just like that.

The restaurant business is quite tough. It is difficult for the owners to flourish in this thrift and with very low profits. Restaurant owners are enthusiastic about food because not much profit is left after paying all the mandatory expenses like produce, wages, upkeep, and maintenance. Better so than eternally, restaurants publicity and marketing are necessary.

Some restaurant owners thoroughly expand their profit margin by contracting their business prototype and resemblance to others, assembling a franchise, spreading their reputation, and cultivating a future passive income. While others choose to concentrate on their flagship eatery, trusting that quality over quality is vital for drumming up future business.

Smart advertising encourages the restaurant owner to create a good reputation in the market and reach customers who might not even have heard about the restaurants near them. It also promotes the restaurants with discounts, offers, special occasions, and new items to the menu.

For marketing purposes, the best way is social media. Whether people are seeking someplace to dine in safely or looking for the best takeaway service, they turn on the social media app. The more the traffic drives to your specific website or page, the more you will succeed in this business.

What the advertising brings to the restaurants

It helps to target customers, as if the customers like the taste of the food at a specific restaurant, they will start recommending that place to their colleagues and friends. Advertising helps target particular types of customers and proves to be more effective.
Advertising certainly helps to stay competitive in the business. The competitors will be advertising their specific establishment to the customers. They will assume that the establishment has lacked publicity, is less thriving, and offers less than the other competitors.
Publicity and advertisement are thoroughly an investment. If the restaurant owner is investing wisely, they will surely profit from that. But the amount to be spent on publicity depends upon the area and type of restaurant. Usually, casual and family-specific restaurants do not spend more on advertising, while fine-dining restaurants spend more because they must create a lavish image.
Publicizing can certainly help to develop crucial aspects of the restaurant’s reputation. Advertising fetches the customers by creating the business’s reputation in the community.
Hiring a marketing agency can reduce almost all of the burden regarding advertisement. A good social media marketing agency can maintain whatsoever the name’s niche and aesthetics through social media. Great brand recognition can lead to more followers, leading to more traffic to the site and a boost in orders.

The hardest part of starting a new business is getting your business known. You are trying to compete with hundreds of thousands of other businesses out there. Whether or not those businesses are successful or not is not necessarily your concern. What your focus needs to be is getting your business to be successful in the sea of choices available to your target audience. Think about how your business is unique to the rest, and build your brand around that.Your brand is what will keep you on the short list of choices for your target audiences. We all know the differences between national brand and store brand products. The biggest of those differences is usually the cost of the product. While the national brand may not be the best choice, they are often priced higher simply because they are nationally known brands. In short, you are paying a higher price for notoriety. Store brands, while usually specific to a region, are often better quality products, and of course they almost always cost less.The first task to consider is the name of your business (brand). It should be relevant to what you are doing, and catchy enough for people to remember. It is often a popular choice for a business name to include a reference to the area you are doing business in, as well as a reference to the product you are selling or producing. For example, an investment firm based on San Francisco may choose to call themselves, ” Bay Area Investments.” This type of name is not only relevant to the business operations, but very easy for the consumer to remember in a pinch. If they were to advertise on the radio, while the consumer may not remember all of the ad, they would most likely be able to remember that they heard an ad about an investment firm in the San Francisco Bay area. Googling that would most likely provide them with a list of relevant businesses, and they would be able to easily discern which firm they heard the ad about.Another important task to complete, is your logo. This is the visual for your business, and again needs to be relevant to the business, as well as eye catching. You wouldn’t put a photo of a plumbing fixture on the Bay Area Investments business card, would you? No, you’d put something related to a stock portfolio, and possibly an image of the Golden Gate Bridge to represent the company name. Your logo should be able to depict the written name of your business. Just like in the cave man days, they drew pictures to describe what has happened, your logo should do the same. This will provide a cohesiveness with your name, and again will allow the consumer to easily remember the company. As your business grows, you can even use just your logo as your advertisement, and people would be able to recognize your business from it.Tag lines are also very important. If you put just your name, and logo on a business card, and hand it out to your contacts, that is surely an effective way to get yourself out there, but not overly compelling. You need to be able to sum up your business’s intention in just a few short words or phrases. Bay Area Investments may aim to provide exceptional service on a smaller personal level than what you would find from a national company, such as Bank of America. Their tag line may say something to the effect of “small town service with big city results.” This of course would inform the consumer that they will not sacrifice service for results, or vice versa. Anyone who has ever experienced less than stellar service from their investment firm, would more than likely be open to speaking with a firm that truly cared about their customers’ investment success.The last, but most important aspect to getting your brand recognized is getting your brand recognized! Your challenge when just beginning, is to get your target audience to at least try what you are offering. When you first begin, often free trials or giveaways are the best way to get this to happen. Once someone tries something and likes it, their rate of return for a paid service is around 85%. So don’t be afraid to offer coupons, discounts, freebies, etc. Bay Area Investments may offer a free initial review of their potential new customers’ current portfolios. From there, they can make the needed recommendations, and attempt to close the sale of their product with their prospective client. Happy clients will usually tell their friends about great products they’ve tried, and in turn word of mouth advertising often is the most lucrative for your business. And of course, it is always the most flattering, because it tells you that your customers are happy with your product! That in and of itself is the most successful way to build your brand.Your success is only limited to your imagination, and drive. Get creative with your brand, it is yours!Carmella MartinezLowKeyMedia Marketing Team