Yes, Visual Branding Does Matter to Your Service Business
What is Branding?
At its most basic, branding is everything your audience knows about your business. It’s what they associate with you. This encompasses the entire business – everything from how you or your employees answer the phone, how you treat your customer, how you make your customer feel. It also includes how your customer will remember you through your logo and other elements of your visual brand.
Multiple Touch Points
You know that it takes multiple touch points to make a sale. First there’s awareness of your business offering a service the customer might need someday. They see your vehicle while waiting in traffic. If you’ve invested in advertising, they might see your ad on TV, YouTube, or the OBBM Network, or they might hear it over the radio or on a podcast. Maybe they see your billboard. Unless it’s an amazing and memorable ad, they don’t give it much, if any thought, yet.
Consistency is Key
Still, each of these are a touch point. If your visual brand is consistent, it ties each of these touch points together. If it’s scattered – sometimes with the logo, sometimes without, sometimes red, sometimes blue, a mixed bag of messaging, fonts, and imagery – what is there to remember? A picture is worth a thousand words, right? A consistent visual brand that ties together your signage, ads, business cards, fliers, and employee uniforms helps create awareness and recall of your service business.
Take that same customer, exposed to your message multiple times – now they need your services. What was that business name again? They search on Google for “[service needed] near me.” Do you show up? (That’s a topic for another article.) Assuming you do – is your brand recognizable? Do they put two and two together because they’ve seen your consistent visual branding around town?
When they land on your website, do they see the same logo they’ve seen on your vehicle signage? When a neighbor refers them to you with your business card, and they look you up online, are there other visual cues to let them know they found the right business?
We’re living in a visual world. Make sure you’re giving your potential customers strong visual cues to help them remember YOU when they need whatever it is you offer.
