If you wish your printing business to thrive in a highly cosmopolitan Washington suburb such as Leesburg, VA, you need to catch the eye of those who need your service. But what exactly does “branding” mean? In a nutshell, your brand is your promise to your customer. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and how people perceive you to be.
Leesburg: from Rural Piedmont to Suburban Bedroom Overnight
Leesburg, VA is part of the Washington metropolitan area’s nearly 6 million people. Like the rest of surrounding Loudoun County, Leesburg has undergone considerable growth and development over the last 30 years. It has gone from a small, rural, piedmont town to a suburban bedroom community for national capital commuters. Therefore, avoiding the five mistakes described below is a must.
Mistake #1: Thinking Your Brand is Just Your Logo, Created in a Vacuum
Your brand is not your logo. It is the perception that your audiences have of your organization and is formed through everything that you do. Your logo is an important part of this. Brand workshops are a great way to bring together a diverse group to talk about what makes your organization special and what it should stand for.
Mistake #2: Not Listening to Your Audiences, Not Knowing Your Strengths
Your audiences are a great source of information about how your printing business is seen, and getting input from many perspectives is important to the branding process. What perception do people have of your printing and how does that compare to the way you’d like to be seen? Think about what your strengths are and build your brand around them.
Mistake #3: Not Having a Good Creative Brief, and Losing Sight of Your Competitors
When you’re ready to speak to designers about creating a new brand identity, you need to put together a good creative brief which gives them a good overview of your printing business and the aims of the rebrand. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and take a look around the wider market to see how you can learn to reach out to them.
Mistake #4: A Consistent, Thorough Marketing Plan
Once you have rolled out your new branding, you need to apply it consistently and police how others are using it. A great way to manage this is by a thorough printing marketing plan with brand guidelines which tell everyone in your organization how the brand identity should be applied.
Mistake #5: Ignoring Social Media, Refusing to Change
If somebody has a bad experience with your printing, this is easily shared online. Monitor social media websites for mentions of your venue and learn how to deal with any negative feedback.Lastly, don’t stick with your branding if it isn’t working for you. Instead, start to think about how it could work and start planning for a rebrand.
Leesburg and Diversity
When you think of printing in Leesburg, think diversity: racial, linguistic, economic, and level of sophistication. These people are on the alert for attempts to overstate a company’s branding. If you do not learn to avoid the five mistakes, you may well be aiming at the extinct small, rural town on the edge of the Appalachians. But if you do learn and learn well, your chances for a printing business success with this sophisticated community are very high indeed.
