Brand building for Small Business. Don’t stop with only a logo

We believe there’s more to a brand than just the logo. It’s the value proposition behind the brand that conveys what the company and its product stand for that resonates with customers. So we are trying to promote our logo and brand “DMZ International” to reach the customers and they understand what we stand for.

Most small businesses tend to create a logo and some basic packaging and leave it at that. As they cannot afford to hire expensive agencies, they lose out in the marketplace even though they might have a great product. That’s a mistake since in an age of DIY-everything, branding is not an exception.

Now a days with Google and Facebook increasingly become the fulcrum of the ad world, it has become possible to reach our target group at a precision and pace never seen before. As our brand promotes handmade Indian handicrafts and handlooms, we are able to target the right group using these online platforms. As we started promoting our brand and products in Amazon India recently, Amazon ads is giving our products a good exposure to stand out of the existing similar products which have hundreds of positive reviews and which comes on top in organic search in Amazon.

We can see that consumers today seek to associate themselves with a brand that has a belief system they can identify with. Having a brand idea and effectively communicating that story to the audience is what matters. It’s not enough to be selling pickles that taste great. The buyer would like to know if you are an equal opportunity employer or care about a greener Earth. We make sure that our customers know that our main aim is to promote age old handmade handicrafts and bring the artisans and weavers to the front of the world using the power of E-Commerce & Internet.

However, be careful not to indulge in woke-washing if your brand doesn’t actually go the extra mile in working towards the cause. That will make it seem like your brand is bluffing — and insincerity isn’t a value any customer would reward.

What we can see that a big chunk of customers today are open to trying out new brands rather than sticking onto a preferred product even they are promoted by celebrities. This means there is a huge opportunity for small businesses to dish out innovative products and steal customers away from legacy.

Apart from the logo, a brand’s visual identity also includes typography, color palettes, graphics and icons. These elements should be used on packaging, websites, apps, merchandise and business cards to carve a distinctive visual identity for the brand. We are trying this in our products and we provide the products wrapped on gift packs. This avoids from similar brands to map to us. If the product is presented properly and all the qualities and pointed out, we can even charge premium price for it. But we should make sure that our product doesn’t have compromise in quality. Otherwise, if sales happens also, return will be more and Business will be affected. Customers Consumers are more likely to trust a new brand with their time and money if they believe it knows its onions.

Like it’s important for a writer or a singer to find their ‘voice’, brands too need to discover a unique tone that sets them apart in the cluttered marketplace. Your branding and communication could be zesty and quirky, restrained and sophisticated or even sassy and ratchet! The tone sits adjacent to the brand’s values in helping the buyer make an association with you.

One common branding mistake many small businesses make is ripping off parts of a more successful brand’s identity markers. That’s a complete branding disaster as you have already conceded that you have nothing new to serve up (a lack of original ideas) and wasted money in helping propagate the other brand — as they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Here’s what a Coca-Cola executive once said about its brand equity: ‘If Coca-Cola were to lose all of its production-related assets in a disaster, the company would survive. By contrast, if all consumers were to have a sudden lapse of memory and forget everything related to Coca-Cola, the company would go out of business.

In today’s cut-throat and cluttered marketplace, there’s only one way to rule — branding that sweeps the customer off their feet. We are giving a try in this path now.

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Nishanth Muraleedharan, also known as "Nishani," is an IT engineer who transitioned into entrepreneurship, driven by a profound passion for the textile industry. As the president of Save Handloom Foundation, (SaveHandloom.org) and the Founder & CEO of DMZ International Imports & Exports Pvt Ltd., I am passionate about reviving the Indian handloom industry and empowering the weavers and artisans across the country. With 25+ years of experience in the textile industry, I have developed deep market insights and a rich network of handloom weaving societies, master weavers, and self-help groups, who exclusively make products for our trust.