Branding Boards- Business Tips and Marketing | Photography Mentoring | Pro Photographer Tips | Small Business

It is so daunting, knowing how to start marketing your small business. Logos, names, fonts, websites, social media… the list is never ending. Luckily for you I like to nerd out on this subject and I’ve put together a little lesson for you…

The Branding Board

My advice to my mentees is always this- start with a branding board. This little document will really hone your business down to it’s key marketing elements, and then from this you can draw inspiration, understand the direction you need to go and also figure out who your target market it.

It is also a great document to record/change branding as you go- include hex codes, font names and even you keywords. search Canva for some great, free templates.

Key elements to branding-

Colours, Fonts, Logo, Imagery and Emotions.

Colours and emotions

Colours and emotions tie in quite well- what colour you use actually affects the feelings and emotions that you invoke in your consumer. Bright, punchy colours can very ‘in your face’, fun or demanding whereas muted tones are calmer, softer and more serene- what are you trying to say with your colours?

Fonts

Are you trying to stand out? Blend in? Is it important for you that your marketing is easy to read or would you rather look for a beautiful, hand written script? Try choosing 2 fonts- one serif and one sans serif to ensure that you have a formal and informal choice that work in tune together. Set Sail Studios is my favourite place for fonts.

Logo

Keep it simple, meaningful (don’t use random symbolism if it has nothing to do with your branding, dont create unnecessary confusion) and as classic as possible- remember logos and branding will date and so the key is to make it as undateable as possible.

Imagery

Did you know that the human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Not only that but consumers are 80% more likely to read content if it’s paired with colorful visuals. Second, visual content is 40x more likely to be shared across social media than any other type of content- so when advertising you really do need to be thinking about the images that you are using to convey your message.

Try to include your branding colours in your image- I acheive this by basing my branding coours on average and common colours that appear in my work.

This is just a taster of my marketing and branding geek-out that I offer during my mentoring sessions, drop me a message to learn more…