Small business branding for the web

Every business should have a business plan, and this is the first step to positioning your online presence. The great thing about a business plan is that it encourages discipline, by this I mean you start by clarifying the product or service you want to offer. Now you can run some market analysis to determine need, competition, perceived value, customer satisfaction of existing providers, etc. Just knowing your offering puts you in a very powerful position.

Even if you know very little about operating an online business you would appreciate that by following that first step you can see at a glance the likely reception your website would receive. With this in mind, why do so many small business websites fail to deliver? I believe its because the owner has missed this critical step, or they've placed their trust in the hands of a designer who has no background in marketing and branding a business.

Ok, you're a small business owner, for the purposes of this article lets assume your business has turnover of less than US$10million, now at that level, how much can you afford to pay for your website? And how much additional business do you need to recoup that cost. Also, what percentage of that cost is being used to pay for market research, branding and positioning of your website, given that the agency you employ also has overheads. Not very much I'd guess.

Branding a small business website is critical to its success and has to be done properly. It involves understanding your offering and pitching your site content at users who want your offering. See if the following examples help you;

• Mark runs a small mechanics workshop and has some machinery that lets him rebore engine blocks. His local market know him well, he runs regular radio ads with monthly specials and jokes about his baldness. Over a 7 year period he's increased his staff to 5. He gets a phone call from a web developer who tells him every business needs a website and frankly his will go out of business if he doesn't also have one. Mark isn't computer literate, but he knows his business and his customers. He revisits his business plan and realises he could attract more business by writing short articles for car enthusiasts on the importance of good maintenance and how much extra performance blueprinting the engine would provide. He mentions his new website on his radio ads and asks his customers to tell their friends and family about his articles. Out of region business increases as other car enthusiasts realise Mark is passionate about his business and really loves what he does.
• Sachin owns a retail store that specialises in surf clothing. Over time he's also added a small selection of sunglasses and beach footwear. Sachin prides himself on his entrepreneurship and realises he could offer his products to other surf shops if he created his own designs, however Sachin's business is too small to employ extra staff so visiting other stores to pitch his product isn't possible. Sachin decides to employ a local web developer to put together a site with pictures of his product and an order form, then he emails every surf store in his country with a pricelist. Over the following 12 months Sachin's wholesale business expands till it accounts for over 50% of turnover.
• Anna makes candles which she sells at a local market. She wants to sell her candles online to increase her market and begin to work full time on candle-making. She attends a course on business plan writing and discovers to her dismay that the market is saturated with candle-makers selling their product online. However, Anna's dream is to run her own business so she looks more closely into her competition to see if she has an edge anywhere. After many sleepless nights Anna makes the startling discovery that the problem she has is shared by all candlemakers. Anna calls a meeting of all the candlemakers in her area and tells them what she's discovered, and that if they work together to create a shopping site and forum for hobbyists they could all increase sales, and their cooperative could then attract a larger share of Internet traffic than other individual candlemakers.

Each of these three small business owners has found an identity, a brand for their website, and this allows them to continue to do what they love doing, still offer a similar product, but also increase their market reach. Each found a way to brand their website so that it becomes successful.

Branding your website needn't be terribly difficult, heck, you needn't even follow the strict dictionary definition of branding, as long as your website has an identity, a brand that is known to your users and generates customer loyalty.