Designing Brand Collateral As Unique As You Are

When designing brand collateral, many people jump to the basics: stationery, business card, a tote bag, a branded pen. From a consumer perspective, we’ve all received those items a time or two, and we also know that they’re likely collecting dust somewhere in our homes!

Branding is already an investment and as a small business owner, your goals should be rooted in building a long lasting connection with your customers. Brand recognition plays a large role in turning interested leads into loyal customers and sometimes the basic collateral we traditionally make simply isn’t memorable. Here are some simple steps you can follow when it comes to getting creative with your branded merchandise and never let a lead forget your name!

Who Are You & What Do You Do?

To help you brainstorm ideas on unique brand collateral, first start with understanding who you are as a business and what problems you solve for your customers.

Unique Value Prop

Oftentimes in business, we provide similar services as others in our industry. That’s not a problem as long you understand what makes you unique. This brings us to item #1, your UVP. A great example to use to understand what this is would be the difference between outdoor brands Patagonia and REI. Both of these brands cater to similar customers — outdoor adventurers in need of clothing, wearable gear, and supplies. However, Patagonia oftentimes leans into their dedication to environmental activism initiatives in their marketing whereas REI markets the fact that they’re a Co-Op, offering exclusive deals to their members. Both offer upcycling and resale opportunities as nature lovers, but they market those resources in ways that are specific to their brand story and business initiatives.

Brand Identity

Another area to highlight is understanding your brand identity. Many times we think of this as our logo, typography and color palette, and although those are elements of our brand’s visual identity, that’s not all there is when exploring our full brand identity. Along with our brand’s visuals, our mission, core values and voice/messaging are all key elements when it comes to communicating with our audience. Who are you as a business? Why do you do what you do? How do you speak to your customers so that they understand who you are and why you do what you do? Learn more about these strategic elements of your brand identity in our previous blog post.

Tone of Voice & Personality

A key element of our brand identity, especially when crafting brand collateral, is understanding our tone of voice and personality. Beauty brands such as L'Oréal and Glossier both offer skincare and makeup products, but their brands have very different personalities. Although they may have some audience overlap, the way they speak to their customers is unique to their brand. L'Oréal may offer skincare samples when purchasing their more expensive products whereas Glossier offers goods that speak to their young audience such as stickers and reusable pink packaging. Their brand collateral reflects their personality and the items they offer match their tone of voice using physical products.

Knowing Your Audience

Now that you have an idea of who YOU are, it’s important to understand who your AUDIENCE is.

Who are you trying to reach?

It may seem like an obvious question — your audience is your customer, right? Yes and no. When it comes to brand collateral, the items you choose are based on who and more importantly where they are receiving them. For example, let’s say you run a business offering custom window shades. You may be marketing to both your in-store customers as well as commercial clients at local conferences. Both of these groups are your potential customers, but they’re very different audiences. How can you make your brand collateral unique to match each group? If your brand has a playful personality, you may brand “shades” (sunglasses) to bring to your conferences to make sure those contractors remember you while using your collateral. For your in-store customers, you may offer a smaller item such as a keychain reflecting your brand messaging of “unlocking better sleep” with blackout shade purchases. Both items allude to your brand offering while remaining playful and with different goals in mind. Your potential commercial clients will think of you when preparing their next big project and you’ve rewarded a customer purchase with an item they can remember you by (and that others may ask about).

Leads vs. Existing Customers

This example also works well when understanding the collateral we create for leads vs. our existing customers. When approaching this situation, we can also think of it as a risk vs. reward scenario for both you and your customers. You’re investing in marketing to an audience that may not purchase from you, but if you do it well that lead may become a long term customer. For existing customers, you want to reward them for their purchases and increase those rewards based on long term loyalty (this is why coffee shops offer punch cards or point systems). At the end of the day, this is a budgeting decision and it’s truly based on your business model. If your services benefit from building relationships with individual repeat purchases, it’s worth investing more in rewarding those customers, but if your business offers services that are often used once or twice and benefit from referrals, investing in your leads may be the way to go!

Gathering Inspiration

Brand collateral is not one size fits all, which makes it difficult to create items that feel unique to your business! Here are some tips on how to start brainstorming:

Competitors & Best Practices

Now we’re not recommending that you copy your competition — that’s the opposite of creating something unique to YOUR business. However, a great place to start when brainstorming is to check out what your competitors do as well as some best practices in your field! Steve Jobs did not invent the first personal music device with the iPod, but he did create a product that improved upon what already existed and worked well in his market. If you run a hair salon and all of the other hair salons in your area offer punch cards for a free cut after x number of visits, you just learned that the customers in your area enjoy the reward of free services for their loyalty. If you’re the only salon in town that offers massages, you may make this offering unique to your salon and offer a combination haircut and scalp massage after x number of visits. This same thought process can be applied in brand collateral.

If you want to open a new small grocery store in a town with larger chain stores, you may want to invest in branded tote bags that are free with your first purchase of $25+. Even if the competitor stores around you don’t offer tote bags, this has been shown to be a best practice in your market and can make you stand out as unique while also providing free, passive marketing to other local customers.

What have you received and loved?

Many of us have received business cards or post cards that have gone missing within minutes in our seemingly bottomless purses and briefcases. However, you very likely have at least one item that you’ve received from a business that you loved and make use of. For me, I received a magnetic mini level keychain years ago that, although I don’t have it on my keys, I keep stuck to my refrigerator and often grab when I need to quickly hang a picture in my home. I may not have needed their services much in my own life, but when a loved one needed a contractor, they immediately came to mind! Although your business may not have anything to do with the coffee mug or keychain you received and make use of, reflecting on why you love using that item, whether or not the item reminds you of the business and how that same feeling may translate to your collateral is a great place to look for inspiration.

Our Friend — The Internet

This may seem like common sense, but it’s absolutely worth shouting out! When brainstorming creative collateral, we can fall down a rabbit hole of overthinking ideas and inspiration. Sometimes, it’s best to simply browse the creative work of others. Some great places to do this are Pinterest, Behance, Dribble and Instagram.

Know Your Budget

Being a small business owner, it’s very likely that your marketing budget is also fairly small and that’s not a problem! This item is entirely based on your specific business and therefore it truly is dependent on what you think you have available to you at this moment. The important thing is knowing what your budget is before creating your collateral. Some important areas of focus when thinking about your budget are:

What is worth investing in right now?

Will investing in your collateral have a negative impact on your business at this time? If there’s a possibility that your growth is dependent on investing in small networking collateral, what can you afford to create that can help have an immediate impact? Think of these items in both large and small opportunities. Should you invest in a small flyer with the $40 budget that can playfully reflect your brand’s voice or are you targeting immediate growth and need to advertise at your local radio station? Prioritize and reflect on your immediate needs and go from there. Sometimes the least expensive items can have the greatest impact (stickers, baby)!

What are your future goals?

In contrast to catering to your immediate needs, sometimes brand collateral is worth thinking about with a crystal ball (you know what I mean). If your biggest budget goals are focused on long term growth, that type of thinking can really impact your brand collateral investment. This can happen in two ways: big and fast vs. small and slow. When I say this, what I mean is that you can invest a large amount of money upfront (think billboard or a large event sponsorship) that may build a large amount of long term brand recognition or you can start investing in small items such as reusable packaging in your shipping (such as Glossier’s pink bubble bags) that are small items with long term brand loyalty implications. No one can make this decision for you and when it comes to budgets, this is a similar argument to our previously discussed audience risk vs. reward. At the end of the day, everything is worth testing, but make sure you’re considering your budget, growth goals and audience needs as you plan.

Think Outside the Box

At the end of the day, our goal is to create brand collateral that is unique to you and your audience! With all of the previous items in mind, start getting creative.

Nontraditional Advertising

Let’s say you have a small budget, but you can print posters or afford a stencil and some sidewalk chalk (AND PERMIT). If your city allows it, look into guerilla marketing tactics like wheatpasting posters or chalked ads on local sidewalks. These require permits of course, so don’t try to skimp on the logistics, but they’re certainly eye catching! Get people talking by branding toothbrushes to advertise your street sweeping business that “doesn’t miss a crack”. At the end of the day, the best advertising is something that makes you stop, think, and ideally, laugh a little bit.

Don’t Do It Alone

More often than we think, there are other local businesses in our community also struggling to advertise or market in the same ways that you are. Some of the best ways to build brand loyalty is to share the spotlight with other business owners. If you run a tattoo shop that happens to be next door to your local coffee shop, maybe you can partner with them for shared discounts between loyal customers. Connect with a local screenprinter to create your branded tote bags and allow them to add their shop credits on the bottom for a discount! Community is important when advertising your business, but it’s also essential when building your businesses alongside one another. Grow together!

Finally, Design!

You’ve outlined your brand identity, explored your audience, done your research, prepared your budget and now…what? Based on your budget and goals, you have a few options!

Use A Merch or Printing Platform

There are website and tools dedicated to making design easier for non-designers and as a well-established creative myself, I fully support you using them if your budget requires it! Platforms such as Canva provide tools to create your flyers, business cards and much more with premade templates that you can customize for your brand. ETSY offers an endless amount of local makers and creatives that craft nontraditional, but customizable items you can truly get creative with. Last, but not least, print platforms such as Printify, Bonfire or Printful offer great prices for simple print-on-demand services, allowing you an opportunity to buy in small batches and sell branded items on your website without the upfront cost. Although these are primarily for traditional merchandise, you can explore the item options for ways to brand collateral for your business with great discounts!

Get Some Help & Hire A Designer

Although I fully encourage going it on your own if you need to, sometimes it does help to have a designer standing by to help you out. Second Sister Studio offers custom design services to design brand collateral unique to your business.

Don’t have branding yet? No problem! Check out our free brand readiness checklist to see if you’re prepared to brand your business and when you’re feeling confident and ready to take the leap, book a free design consultation!

You’ve Got This!

Much love, Second Sister Studio