When you’re a small business owner, it can be tempting to stick to tried and true methods for branding and promoting your business. However, the marketplace is constantly evolving, so what worked last year isn’t guaranteed to work this year. Because branding largely determines how your customers view your business, it’s critical to be in touch with current branding trends.
The following are 2016’s most important small business branding trends and how to best use them to your advantage.
1. Personal Branding is Now Mandatory, not an Option
Your personal brand and image as the owner of your company is just as important as your company’s brand and image. The two are interrelated and are equally important. For instance, would you take health and fitness advice from a business run by someone who appeared unhealthy and out of shape? If your personal brand doesn’t align with your company’s, that disconnect will put off potential customers and damage your bottom line. This methodology is called “CEO branding,” and it’s the art of using tactics such as PR, social media, book deals, speaking engagements, and award procurement to provide the clearest point of differentiation any great company has, its leadership. Our business Ascendant has been doing this for over a decade https://www.ascendantgroupbranding.com/
2. Increased Social Media Budget
Organic reach isn’t dead but it isn’t what it used to be, either. In April 2012, Facebook for Business reported that pages organically reached about 16% of their fans. In 2015, that number plummeted to 2.6%. The fact is, if you want to reach a bigger audience on social media platforms, you’re going to have to pay for it. However, don’t despair. Truthfully, Facebook and Instagram are doing a great job making these services much more efficient and measurable than other forms of advertising. Twitter and Pinterest have followed suit. While LinkedIn advertising tends to be more costly and, in my opinion, has a while to go before it becomes a more efficient spend.
See the full article here: http://sales.hoovers.com/small-business-branding-trends/