More Differences Between Branding a Small Business and a Large Corporation

  • The focus of campaigns and marketing materials. Larger businesses can often afford to create more emotionally-driven branding pieces, such as commercials or ads with no specific call to action or branding message. Small businesses should make sure that each and every marketing piece is highly effective and delivers as much bang as possible for the marketing buck. Your small business can increase the effectiveness of your marketing pieces by:
    • Focusing each marketing piece on one of your offerings. If you try to sell your entire company and solution system in a single marketing piece, such as a brochure, flyer, or web page, you won't be able to be specific about anything. If you can focus on one offering, you can give clients more information and get them interested in what you have to provide.

    • Make sure you include a call to action. Tell readers of your marketing piece what they should do next. Should they go to your website for more information—and can you create a web page as a follow-up to your marketing piece? Should they call you? Register for a teleseminar? Sign up for your mailing list? If you tell them what to do next, it's more likely they'll do it—and get that much closer to working with you.


  • The extent and range of marketing and brand materials. Large corporations often have the budget and staff to create extensive print and online campaigns. Smaller businesses need to focus because they don't have the huge budgets and staff needed to write and manage the creation of these materials—or to distribute many pieces simultaneously. Create the number of marketing materials that you can actually get out to your potential clients. They won't do you any good if they sit in your office, gathering dust.

  • The level of meaning that each of your design and brand elements needs to have. Big companies can take time to teach their audience what their company does and what their logo and images mean. But for a small business, instantly-meaningful brand designs will be that much more valuable as communication tools. They'll carry part of your business's story, even before the client or prospect begins to read your information.