Four Fundamental Questions to Consider When Building a Brand
Emma Elliott has spent more than three decades helping brands grow, adapt, and position themselves within highly competitive consumer markets. As the founder of Chalk PR Comms & Consultancy, she has worked across the health, beauty, wellness and nutrition industries, advising entrepreneurs, emerging brands and global businesses on communications strategy, reputation management, influencer partnerships and industry events. Alongside her consultancy work, Elliott also developed How To Build A Brand, with Eike from BeSisu, a guided programme designed to help founders navigate the practical realities of building and scaling a business. Combining video training, structured workbooks and membership clinics with live Q&A sessions, the programme reflects the same principles she has applied throughout her career working with brands at different stages of growth.
Building a brand rarely happens within neat job descriptions. Many founders and senior team members find themselves switching roles constantly, moving from Chief of Marketing to Head of Sourcing, from Sales to PR Director, often within the same day, while still ensuring the business is generating enough income to keep the lights on. Are you one of the many business owners or senior personnel who swap hats halfway through the day, all whilst ensuring the business is turning over sufficient income to keep the lights on? If so, this article is for you, and the multi-tasking majority who have smaller teams or who are sole traders. I would like you to consider some very important questions to ensure you are future-proofing yourselves for growth.
Take a look at Your Branding
Is your branding used consistently across your business, at every external and internal touchpoint? If not, this needs to be addressed, as cohesiveness means people recognise you whether they find you via the web, on social media, on the high street or through newsletters you send them. A brand guideline book is one of the most important tools you can have to ensure you show-up in the same guise as you grow. If you do not have one, make this a priority. Include your Brand Colours, Your Logos (in all the different sizes you need), Your Fonts/Typefaces, Logo Placement rules – these are some of the simplest rules to map.
Why is this important? It’s not just that you are always you, it saves so much time as you grow when checking and proofing assets – because your team know exactly what they should be doing design wise, and so do you.
Review Your Website
Is your website legally compliant? This is essential to protect your business. Does it also have the expected policies visible for visitors to give them the confidence and assurance to spend time on the site and spend money with you? If not, then this needs addressing. You must have a Privacy Policy: legally required, particularly if you gather personal data. You must also have Terms & Conditions: compulsory for websites selling services or goods. You must share your Business Identification: company name, registered address and contact information. We also recommend you share your Terms of Service (all though these can be covered off in Terms & Conditions) and your cookie Policy.
Why is this important? Compulsory policies are legally binding, and you can be fined if you do not observe them. The additional policies suggested, help show you are a responsible company. Both should be regularly reviewed – we recommend every quarter, or more frequently if your trading approach changes.
Consider Your Marketing Plans including PR outreach, Influencers & Events
Do you have a 12-month Marketing Plan? If not, you should. This will give structure to your business activities and is an essential tool to focus on what happens when. You need to consider within it your store, your website, your social media, your PR, your digital paid for activity, your customer outreach, your Influencer outreach and any eventing, as a bare minimum. Once you map it, be prepared to change it but most importantly look at how each area will support each other so that the main message your customer gets from wherever they are interacting with you is the same – that’s where the greatest impact will lie as you grow.
Why is this important? Consistency is so important here, as with Branding. One master plan to be referred to on a weekly basis and adapted as needed (things will change!). This blueprint can then be shared as you grow, so that everyone on your team knows what their focus will be at any one time.
Review Your Retail
Retail is of course partly considered within your Marketing plan addressed above. But have you looked fully at the cost of Retail, and how those costs are really impacting your business. You may be in your own store, or you may be in other people’s stores. You may be a Service only business and, in this instance, I suggest you consider the question of whether it’s wise to expand into a second or third, or tenth location instead. Ask yourself the hard questions, is the turnover in each store outweighing the costs of being in that space? Consider sales margins, staffing costs, delivery costs, warehousing costs, marketing charges extracted from a retail partner, and do not forget to calculate how much time you are personally spending on servicing that store, and how much team members are too. Charge your time at a realistic cost – you are valuable and so is your time. Keep a spreadsheet of each cost for each store and compare it against sales results regularly, so you really have a view on how each store is performing.
Why is this so important? It can be very exciting to enter the work of physical retail, but many businesses underestimate the costs of doing business, over stretch themselves or expand too quickly with significant outcomes. To future-proof your business, make sure you understand fully the true financial costs and expand when it makes sense to do so.
Larger organisations can of course afford to have departments with in-house experts devoted to each of these seven key areas: Branding, Website, Marketing, Retail, PR, Influencers & Events areas, so when you get there, these concerns will be taken care of internally or by external agencies. For now, if you are not confident in any of these 7 areas outlined, you should upskill in them, so that you can help your business grow, having the necessary level of understanding of each discipline needed to execute, or brief others to execute going forwards.
