Jewellery Business Week: Make your brand work for you

It’s said that your brand is what people say about you or your business when you are not in the room.

So whatever you choose in terms of logos, colours, packaging etc, the name of your business and your online presence, it needs to reflect what you want said about your business.all

Here are a few ideas to help you build your brand.

Brainstorm

Before you do anything with your branding, sit down with a large sheet of paper and coloured pens and brainstorm what you want your business to stand for. Think carefully about the message you want to send out and what types of customer you want to attract.

Ask others to help too and test your branding ideas on friends and family.

Create a mind map for your brand to help you gather all your ideas

Find your style

Choice of colours or fonts communicates certain things to potential customers – do you want to be seen as classic, funky and modern or ecofriendly? So think long and hard about what that message it is. You may love red but does that send the right message to your customers and even then different shades may make people think differently about your business.

You then need a logo, some beautiful images of your work and usually a basic flyer or printed material to promote your work with. A great way to get your logo designed is using an online marketing place such as DesignCrowd and Concept Cupboard  where you post up what you are looking for and designers compete for the chance to win your project.

You also need to remember that once you have chosen colours, a font, a logo and so on they are going to be part of everything you do. An essential for any brand if that there is consistency so that customers come to recognise and associate it with your jewellery.

London Jewellery School and now Jewelry From Home have distinctive colours and logos, and rules to ensure these and the brand colours are used consistently

So you want your logo on everything – packaging, price labels and so on – but you also want your boxes, bags and tissue paper to tie in with that. So source them to match your brand colours.

Printing

For labels, stickers and business cards have look at what online providers such as Moo.com, Solopress and Vistaprint have on offer. You may find that one is better value for stickers and another for business cards.

It is always cheaper per item to order large amounts of cards and labels but be realistic about how many you expect to use. And remember you may want to change your branding a bit if early on you discover something doesn’t work.

Online

Social media is crucial for developing and growing your jewellery business (come back tomorrow for advice on this aspect of business). Make sure you use the same colours, logos and images on your social media pages as you do in real life and on your blog, website and/or Etsy shop.

This is all hugely important for your business, particularly for the marketing of your jewellery as it is this consistency and quality-control checking, as well as a clear communication of why you are unique, that will make you stand out as a professional and trustworthy business.

During business week, London Jewellery School is offering 20% off all day and taster business courses plus the Business Bookcamp if you book between 2 and 9 February 2014. To get your discount call 020 3176 0345 and book your class quoting BIZWEEK20. Find out more here.