A small business can now look remarkably polished before it has made its first sale. Give it an afternoon, a design tool and a few well-worded prompts, and it can have a logo, a colour palette, a dozen social posts and a website that looks ready for a board meeting.
Then someone asks, “Who is this for?” and the answer is, “Well, everyone, really.”
That awkward pause is where brand building actually begins. Everything before it was decoration waiting for a reason to exist.
There is no shortage of advice about how brands should look and sound. Consumer brands are encouraged to be playful and community-driven. Business brands are told to be more human and less corporate. Some of that advice is useful, but it can send a small business straight to the visible parts of branding before it has decided what those parts are meant to say.
Whether you sell to households or to other businesses, two decisions come first: who you are trying to help, and what you can reliably promise them. The answers shape your message, your customer experience and, eventually, the design choices that make you recognisable.
One Like insight: A logo is a signature. It only means something once there’s a promise above it.
Decision one: Who are you trying to help?
“Everyone” feels like the safest answer when you need customers. Why rule anyone out?
The trouble is that different customers buy the same thing for very different reasons. Imagine a locksmith serving homeowners, motorists and property managers. A homeowner locked out at night wants to know whether help is available, how soon it can arrive and whether the person at the door can be trusted. A property manager is more interested in dependable scheduling, clear records and someone who can handle repeat work across several buildings.
The business can serve both. Its message still needs to know which situation it is speaking to.
Marketing researchers have a name for this. Professor Jenni Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute calls them category entry points: the needs, moments and circumstances that send someone looking for a solution in the first place. Her point is a humbling one. As she told Marketing Week, “Category entry points are not about the brand, they’re about the buyer.” Those situations would exist even if your business didn’t.
Interestingly, her research doesn’t argue for squeezing yourself into one tiny niche. It suggests a brand can be linked to several buying situations, while each individual message speaks clearly to one. That’s a useful reassurance for a small business worried that clarity means turning customers away.
[Infographic placement] Same business, three situations. Show the locksmith’s three customers side by side (homeowner, motorist, property manager), each with three rows: what triggered the search, what they’re worried about, and what they need to hear first. The visual point: one business, three different first sentences.
The same thing happens in B2B, with an added twist. A company selling software may be talking to the person who will use it every day, the manager responsible for the result and the person approving the cost. LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, working with Bain & Company, found that procurement, finance and legal teams often judge suppliers on risk and reputation rather than features. Its conclusion is worth sitting with: suppliers often lose not to a better rival, but to one that’s simply “easier to agree upon”.
That research looked at large enterprise buying groups, so a small business selling to another small business may only face two or three people. The principle still travels. “Who is our customer?” becomes more useful when it turns into “Whose decision are we helping, and what do they need to feel confident making it?”
This is why an audience definition needs more than an age range, job title or industry label. Those details help you find people, but they don’t explain what matters to them. Start instead with the circumstances that bring someone to your door:
- What has happened that makes them look for a solution now?
- What are they worried about getting wrong?
- What would make the decision easier?
- What do they need to know before they contact you?
You don’t need to turn away every unexpected customer. You need enough clarity to recognise the people you can serve particularly well. That gives your brand something more useful to say than “quality solutions for all your needs”, a sentence that has worked very hard to reveal almost nothing.
Highlight: “Who is our customer?” becomes useful when it turns into “Whose decision are we helping?”
Decision two: What can you reliably promise?
Once you understand the customer’s situation, it becomes tempting to promise everything: the fastest service, the best quality, the lowest price and an experience so seamless it practically makes the tea.
A brand promise is more valuable when a customer can understand it and your business can deliver it. For the locksmith, “We arrive in 15 minutes” is memorable, but it’s a poor promise if traffic, distance or staffing make it unreliable. “You’ll know the call-out cost before we dispatch” is less dramatic. It may also answer a real worry and be far easier to keep.
Highlight: The most valuable promise isn’t the boldest one. It’s the one you can keep on your worst Tuesday.
For a B2B software provider, “We transform your business” leaves a buyer with nothing to assess. A clearer promise might explain which task the product makes easier, what support is included and what the buyer can expect during implementation. Neither example depends on sounding emotional or formal. Both depend on understanding what the customer is trying to decide.
Your promise should also guide what happens after the marketing has done its job. If you promise straightforward service, is your pricing straightforward? If you promise personal support, can someone actually reach a person? If you promise to save customers time, does your process do that? A brand becomes credible when the experience supports the words.
There’s a timing element here that small businesses often underestimate. Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute observed that, in many B2B categories, only around 5% of potential buyers are in the market at any given moment. LinkedIn’s B2B Institute summarised the implication neatly: “the brand that gets remembered is the brand that gets bought.” Dawes himself treats the 95:5 figure as a rule of thumb rather than a precise law, and it was developed with B2B purchases in mind. But the lesson applies to the locksmith too. Most people aren’t locked out today. What they remember about you when they are depends on what you promised, and whether anyone they know saw you keep it.
That matters across B2B and B2C. The buying process may differ, but neither type of customer leaves their feelings at the door. A household buyer may worry about being overcharged. A business buyer may worry about recommending a supplier who lets the team down. Both are looking for a reason to feel confident.
Let the trends serve the decisions
There’s plenty of room for expressive design, video, community, customer stories and a more conversational voice. Each can help a business connect with people. The useful question is what job each choice is doing.
A playful visual identity makes perfect sense for a children’s activity brand. It may be less helpful if it makes an emergency service harder to read in a hurry. A B2B company can swap dense jargon for clear, human language without pretending its buyers are making a casual decision. The aim is to make the brand easier for its own customers to recognise, understand and trust.
So, before redesigning the logo or planning next month’s posts, try putting two sentences on the table:
We help [these people] when they are trying to [solve this problem].
They can count on us to [deliver this specific experience or outcome].
[Infographic placement] The two-sentence brand foundation. A simple fill-in card with the two sentences above, and one completed example beneath it (the locksmith: “We help homeowners when they’re locked out and anxious about cost. They can count on us to confirm the call-out fee before we dispatch.”). Designed to be saved or printed.
Those two sentences may take longer to write than the entire colour palette took to choose. That’s usually a sign you’re working on the right thing.
A logo can help people remember a business. First, give them something worth remembering.
Sources
- Marketing Week, “Ehrenberg-Bass: Linking brand messages to buying situations wins ‘the mind and the market’”. Interview with Professor Jenni Romaniuk on category entry points.
- LinkedIn B2B Institute, Jann Martin Schwarz and Mimi Turner, “The Hidden Buyer Gap”. Research with Bain & Company on enterprise buyer groups.
- Marketing Week, Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo, “The 95:5 rule is the new 60:40 rule”. Summary of Professor John Dawes’ 95:5 observation.
