3 ways bad branding is costing you money - and an easy way to stop the bleeding

Let’s level here, you’re a business owner, you know how important having a clear cohesive (don’t panic I’ll grab the glossary out and explain) brand identity is to successfully connecting with your dream clients. But have you thought about the opportunity cost of not having it?

In short - the opportunity cost is the money you are missing out on because you didn’t invest in successful, personalised and stand out branding for your business.

To just clarify for a second - branding is not simply a logo. It’s a whole pick n’ mix station of colours, fonts, logo systems, illustrations, photography styles and acceptable assets that make your business instantly recognisable to your customer.

For example, that ad you watch on tv with the milk jug pouring and the whole screen of purple - you already know exactly who I’m talking about. It’s Cadbury. That’s their branding. Their customers don’t even need to see a product, logo or word before they have that recognition. Which means that their awareness level is so high, next time their customer hits the supermarket for their chocolate fix and they fancy trying something new they’ll head for the purple section because they are aware of Cadbury and they trust them to make good chocolate bars.

The 3 ways bad branding is costing your business money

Here’s what’s happening to your business when it doesn’t have that sleek, exciting branding that you need:

1. You’re losing customers before they get in touch/make a purchase

A customer will often hit 2 or 3 touchpoints of your business before deciding on making a purchase. It’s most commonly a website, but can also be an instagram account, jumping on your mailing list or seeing you on a magazine ad or billboard.

If these don’t visually match, from style of photos or illustrations, to colours and logos - they aren’t going to be having these micro-doses of your brand to give them that awareness to try it out or at least conduct further research into whether or not they should buy from you.

2. They make a hard-to-shake bad first impression

So, your customer heard your business mentioned on the train and they are looking for exactly what you do. They jump onto Google and find your website and it looks like something my nan made in powerpoint! Or has 14 different fonts at once. Or the stock image photo of the woman eating an apple with shiny teeth - and it’s nauseating. They are going to write you off as a low budget business that doesn’t care. And someone that doesn’t care about their appearance, doesn’t care about them, the customer.

Here’s a tidbit of gold to help with your business: people want to feel heard, seen and be cared for. You tick all those boxes, they’ll joust for you in a dinner table battle of who makes the best wine…

More importantly, once you realise that maybe your myspace style website should have been left in the 90s, you employ a designer to give you your branding pick n’ mix trolley and you are SET UP. Sorted.

Happy and excited to roll it out across all your marketing channels - the customer that saw that old website already made their mind up that you suck. So any potential income is really going to take some ego massaging to get out of them.

3. They can’t understand what you do

Heard that old saying ‘a picture tells a thousand words’? Well it is an oldie, but it’s absolutely true. Brand design is based entirely on comprehensive brand strategy. It’s not about looking good, it’s about communicating the brand message (what you do, why you do it) without even saying a word. And the logo is like a final stamp of the brand name just to finish it off.

Without saying a word, Starbucks communicates a home away from home vibe - the deep green with the warm wood, the scent of coffee as you walk in and the clean graphics with plenty of negative space and the high end photography show you that you are getting a luxury product. It’s somewhere you can feel safe, enjoy high quality ingredients and not feel scammed when your coffee costs well over £5. You know why they can charge that much? Good. Branding.

How to fix the 3 bad branding mistakes that are turning off your customers:

• We dont want our customers to be turned off before they even get in touch

• We need to avoid them getting a hard-to-shake bad first impression of your business 

• Your customers need to be able to understand exactly what you do straight away

Your branding can do the heavy lifting for you. You just need to get it done properly (with strategy and your full asset suite) and then use it everywhere. Although once you get your branding done, generally you’re so excited and relieved to have a rule book to follow you can’t wait to start rolling out those instagram graphics, facebook headers, fancy posters and tube billboard.

Brand Design Glossary

One last gift from me: I use a lot of ‘designer speak’ when I talk and I want to make sure you are clued up on the language and understand it so a) you can look really cool in marketing meetings and b) every day is a school day…

So here’s my quick designer glossary words of the day:

Cohesive - Making sure everything matches, or looks like it comes from the same series as everything else. For example - Starbucks use the same shade of green on everything, use an identical logo or have a recognisable photography style.

Assets - All the logo files, illustrations, photos - Assets are the jigsaw pieces used to create the puzzle or poster for example.

Touchpoints - Every point can see or interact with your brand e.g website, social media, podcast, posters, packaging etc.

Negative space - where the main focus of the graphic is surrounded by lots of empty space - it’s a technique used by designers to cause the eye of the beholder to focus on one specific and obvious spot - either an image or a headline, or even a logo.

Ok Becky, I get it, should probably do something about it - where do I start?

Well, luckily I have an easy solution for you. Press on the button below to book a 30 minute Brand Clinic Call with me so we can collaborate on how to make your brand the next big thing in your industry. 

Within a week we can have spoken and have a plan of action to stop your business bleeding money unnecessarily. The question is - can you afford not to?