You’ve probably heard the saying “It takes years to build a good brand, and only seconds to destroy one.” It’s a cliche in the marketing world, but that’s because it’s absolutely true!
Unfortunately, there are a lot of easy ways that businesses can devalue their brand. Here are 10 common mistakes that you should avoid in order to build a solid brand and become the next industry leader:
1. Poor Logo Design
Your logo design can make-or-break your business! If it’s too busy, it can come across as childish and unprofessional. If your logo is too bland or generic, it can get lost in the sea of brands that consumers are faced with every single day.
Hiring a professional graphic designer or firm is the best way to give your business a unique, memorable logo that will actually stand out and cut through the noise.
2. Low Quality Images
How would you feel if you were researching a company and all of their images were fuzzy or pixelated? Probably not very confident!
Low quality images are one of a potential customer’s first warning signs that your business might not be as professional and trustworthy as you want them to believe.
Put your best foot forward and invest in high-resolution images!
3. Cheap Photography
Photography is a customer’s preview to your business. If your images don’t show off how awesome your products or services are, people will move on to your competitors.
It’s tempting to take photography yourself, but don’t do it! Well-lit, carefully edited photos make a BIG difference when it comes to brand interest.
Only a professional photographer can offer the quality, composition, and post-production needed for good looking photos that will keep people interested enough to give you their business.
4. Forgetting About Branding
Maybe this seems like a no-brainer to you, but it is far too common of a mistake!
If you don’t establish a brand identity, then your website, social media pages, business cards, flyers, etc. will all take on their own look and feel. How are people supposed to recognize your company from one place to the next if it doesn’t LOOK like the same company?
If you want brand awareness, you must first have brand consistency.
That means EVERYTHING your businesses uses should match, from color pallets and fonts to overall design composition. The more familiar your brand feels at all points of contact, the more likely consumers will be to seek you out again in the future!
5. Outdated Website
None of the above points will do you much good if your website is outdated and/or poorly designed. This is the age of technology, and potential customers are looking at your website first before you ever have the chance to speak with them.
An outdated, ugly, or broken website will quickly turn people off to your brand. Since nearly 72% of smartphone owners are using their phone to research businesses online, this can easily mean that ready-to-buy customers are clicking on your website and immediately leaving to go somewhere else.
6. Over-the-Top Promotions
Promotions are great to generate quick bursts of interest and income, but you need to be careful not to look too desperate!
If your business is constantly running “50% off” promos, it comes across like you are just trying to drum up business. No one will take your brand seriously if it seems overly-eager to get any customer it can, in any way it can.
Instead, promotions should be relevant and still convey high value to the customer. That’s not value in terms of money saved, but value in terms of paying a fair amount for what they get in return.
7. Contributing to the Counter-Culture
Medical and recreational cannabis is legal in several states now, so it is ridiculous for cannabis brands to keep clinging to the black market culture. Instead, we should be striving for the higher-end ideals that help cannabis look and function like a legitimate industry.
Create a cannabis brand that even your grandma would support!
Your cannabis brand needs to be relatable to the mainstream market. It’s going head-to-head with thousands of other cannabis brands now, so there’s no point in wasting time looking tacky.
8. Sharing for the Sake of Sharing
Nobody wants to be “that one account I had to unfollow because they bombarded my feed.”
When it comes to social media, a good rule of thumb is this: If you don’t have anything relevant to say, don’t say anything at all!
Good, quality content is much more important then how frequently you post. So if you aren’t sharing something that’s actually worthwhile to your followers, you aren’t doing your brand any favors.
9. Negativity/Attitude
Want your brand to stay in the highest respects of consumers? Keep your cool.
There will be people, reviews, and other business owners that test your patience. No matter how tempting it may be to reply to them in a snarky or defensive way, make sure you and all of your staff respond as gracefully as possible!
The second you show any sliver of a bad attitude, your brand starts down a slippery slope of looking unpleasant and unprofessional.
10. Over-Promising and Under-Delivering
Regardless of how many awesome things you’ve done for them, customers can have a surprisingly vivid memory when it comes to the one thing your company did that they didn’t like.
Don’t overreach your ability to meet expectations.
This includes exaggerating results, over-promising on service, or preparing customers for features or products that fell flat and/or never made it to market.
It’s easy to promise the world, but once you do, customers will expect just that! So make sure to set realistic goals.
Not only will you receive positive feedback for meeting your deadlines, but if you go above and beyond, your customers are much more likely to sing your praises to everyone they meet!
-=LCS=- Stoner_Guy_420
Posted at 09:14h, 08 SeptemberWow, that is so spot on, not just for cannabusiness, but for all local business.