It’s difficult to keep track of every aspect of your business’s public image. Websites, contact information, business cards and employee bios are all things that are constantly changing yet remain difficult to keep track of. And while you should certainly keep track of all of those things, here are a few relatively simple changes you can make to your brand that will immediately improve the perception of your business.
Standardize your email signatures
This one is easy, and it seems like a no-brainer, but it’s rare to actually see it done in small businesses. It seems like a trivial issue – are email signatures that important? Is maintaining them worth the overhead?
These are valid questions, but the simple truth is that an email signature is part of an organization’s brand in the same way a logo is. If everyone has a standardized signature, the perception of a unified front increases, and your entire business looks more competent as a result. Consistent email signatures look well-thought-out and organized, with the benefit of controlling the exact message you want to send to clients.
Update your business cards
Simply put, everyone who deals with clients should get a business card, and they should all look the same. Does this mean every client-facing employee should have an individual business card? Not necessarily, though it wouldn’t hurt. Having a general business card is fine, as long as it matches your current brand.
Phone numbers change, logos get overhauled and websites get updated. All of these will quickly put a business card out of date. And while it’s a lot to keep up with, here’s the good news: business cards are cheap. It’s better to have a business card that doesn’t require a caveat (“sorry, let me write down my new number” or “that’s our old logo but the information is still valid”) than to have a really fancy card that is too expensive to update once or twice a year.
Contact Information and Bios
Your business’s website, at the very least, should have contact information; after all, the primary goal of a website is to bring in new clients. Most businesses have some sort of basic employee information, be it individual team bios, a list of executive staff members, or a general overview of the company. Like everything else, it’s easy for these things to fall behind.
Here’s an easy fix that requires only five spare minutes and a notebook. Navigate to your site’s contact page. Read the information carefully. Is the address correct? How about the phone number? Is it a toll-free number that you never use? Give it a call and see who answers, just to be sure. Does the page have a contact form? Use it. Who receives the email? If you don’t know the answer to any of these questions, write each unknown variable down and find the IT guy who can answer them.
Don’t stop there. Do the same thing with your employee bios. Are their email addresses and phone numbers accurate? Is one of them displaying their social media channels, but the rest aren’t? Do all of your employees have high-quality head shots except for one guy sitting next to his dog? Remember, consistency and accuracy are key. These are problems that can be easily fixed, but just as easily overlooked.
Don’t stop there
These are three relatively easy avenues where you can start, but can easily take this lesson in consistency a step further. Take a look at your whole website, or the brand on your general marketing material and stationery. These are bigger issues to tackle, but you can identify them the same way.
Unsure of what to do now? Don’t know who can answer questions about your website? We can help!
