If you own a business, it’s up to you to manage everything to make sure your business is successful. You might know that the devil is in the details when it comes to how your business looks. I’ve seen many things go wrong when it comes to branding a business. Here are some common branding mistakes that many entrepreneurs tend to make.

1) DIY Creations

There comes a time when you are running your own business when the budget will become low. One way that business owners cut around the corner is with their branding. They will try to avoid hiring a designer and quickly make a logo in powerpoint or sketch out an advertisement with a design app. This is a big no-no. Your audience knows what looks professional and what does not. Unless you are both a designer AND a business owner, invest some cash into a designer so that your design assets do not come off cheap, quick, or handmade (…or even worse, all three).

2) Lack of Consistency

If you take design and branding seriously, you’ll look professional and then you’re customers will know you want to get straight down to business. One way to come off as a joke is to be inconsistent with your business image. For example, if you change your colors too often, you customers will not be able to know which specific colors represent you. We can relate red and yellow easily to McDonald’s because they have not changed their branding basics (such as the colors and the golden arches). If you are consistent with your logos, colors, symbols, and overall image, customers are more likely to remember you and associate you with those things.

3) Underpay their Designer

If you’ve heard of Fiverr, then you’ve heard of cheap design work. Underpaying your designer is generally a good way to skimp on the quality of your branding. If you want to pay less for common design work, don’t expect the best quality, service, or speed. Any graphic designer that will offer you a too-good-to-be-true price for a service is not going to live up to the expectations that you have in mind. It’s easier to go straight to a designer whose work you really enjoy and simply pay them the full asking price. If you pay 100%, you’ll get 100% from your design artist.

4) Misrepresentation

Branding is a great way to sum up the purpose of your business. Your business goals and what your business stands for should be fully represented in your logo, letterhead, etc.. If you mismatch your ideals with how your business comes off to the public, you’re off to a bad start. If you happen to have made this mistake, it is never too late for a re-design in order for your brand to properly represent your business goals.

5) No Branding at All

Do I even need to elaborate on this one? You might happen to start your business off with a nice, clean slate, but don’t let it stay that way when it comes to how it is represented in the terms of branding. All businesses deserve to have professional branding. Start small and think of the basics and purpose of your business. How your business looks is just as important as what it does. Both should go hand in hand, that way your audience knows your purpose.

Have you ever made one of these common branding mistakes? If you’re a business owner, please take your branding seriously and hire a designer, such as myself, to help answer your basic questions when it comes to the image of your business. Your business will only be taken as seriously as how it looks to the public. So go ahead and invest in your business image and it will end up looking and doing great.