What is a brand and why should you care? Your brand is everything about your business, it doesn’t matter if you are a retriever trainer who trains one dog a year or a breeder who produces several litters a year, if you are in business you have a brand, it’s up to you to make conscious decisions to craft your brand into something you want it to be, or let consequence do it for you.

What makes up your brand is your policies, philosophies, identity, voice and tone, how you or your employees conduct themselves, how you answer the phone, uniforms/attire, your business name, your location, what you do, pricing, experience, and your customer service. Your brand is how customers and colleagues on the outside feel about your company and what they say about your company to friends and family.

Your brand is the impression your company leaves people with. People buy from brands they trust, brands that align with their own values, those who partake in the same lifestyle, and brands that represent how people see themselves. Brands earn loyalty when they practice what they preach and when their products or services live up to expectations.

Brands gain a good reputation by providing real value, and bad reputations when they don’t deliver.

A mistake many make when developing a logo is they attempt to force meaning into it, when in reality your brand is what will give your identity meaning.

Your brand identity is not your brand, rather a visual representation of it. Think of a story with an accompanying illustration, the story is your brand, the illustration is your identity.

The identity of your brand is made up of visual assets, your logo, typography, color, and more. A mistake many make when developing these assets is they attempt to force meaning into their brand identity when in reality your brand is what will give your identity meaning. In other words, it’s a mistake to design your logo showcasing all you do, your logo is not an ad, instead, you should focus on a style that matches the brand (policies, philosophy, etc.) and build around that in a sense that feels like the brand you are crafting vs. literally saying everything the company does.

So what elements make up a brand identity? Here is a short list, but depending on your company this list can go on, and on…

• Brand Name
• Logo
• Color Palette
• Type Styles
• Illustration Style
• Mascot
• Taglines
• Slogans
• Writing Style
• Voice & Tone
• Iconography
• Photography
• Print Ads
• Social Media Posts
• Digital Ads
• Video
• Website
• Handouts; business cards, stickers, brochures
• Packaging
• Trade Show Presence
• Attire / Merch
• Signage
• Event Banners
• Sounds / Audio
• etc.

Your kennel brand identity will make you money

Your branding is what sets your business apart, and your identity and the consistency of its use is how people will recognize and remember your company.

You might be one of 5 kennel businesses in your area, perhaps you all focus on retrievers but some offer puppies for sale, some offer basic training only, some specialize in show dogs, and some specialize in finished hunting dogs.

Crafting your brand will help customers make informed decisions about which of kennel business is the best fit for their needs, not doing this could prevent your business from reaching the right customer.

Your branding efforts will help you align your company with your ideal clientele, position your business properly, and make you money.

Take customers from a negative sense of having to pay, to feeling privileged be your customer

The day you start your business you are building your brand, but if you have not been thinking about it the way mentioned here you may be missing out. Building a brand for a dog business, trainers, breeders, etc. does not have to be rocket science, it’s about planning, knowing who you are, and who you want your customers to be. Defining these aspects is huge, once you know these things you can work toward designing your brand identity elements for positioning.

As you develop your brand identity assets you should put them to use everywhere, on your own website, on 3rd party websites like your ProLitter breeder page or trainer page, print ads, in magazines, club newsletters, show or event sponsorships, social media post, videos, reels, and more.

One key in developing your brand identity is knowing that having—just anything—is not enough. It’s easy to skimp on this these days, there are a lot of online tools tempting business owners to do it themselves, or with too-good-to-be-true offers. Understanding your brand identity is about first and lasting impressions, getting professional help will ensure things are done strategically, thoughtfully, and well-crafted in order to be effective. Giving in to the temptation of good, fast, and cheap risk all the time and hard work owners put into building their business. A great analogy about this, a homeowner building their dreamhome with no electrical expertise should leave wiring up to a professional or risk losing everything to electrocution or fire. That may sound extreme because your business may not feel like life or death, but in reality it is potentially life or death of your business, your success, and your livelihood.

Another aspect of building your brand is crafting your customer’s journey, defining how your customer should experience working with you intentionally goes a long way when it comes to ensuring positive results. This could be as simple as putting yourself in the shoes of people who you deem as customers, answering questions about what you’d expect if you were the customer, plus take this one step further and look for ways you can add some positive surprises along the way, we call these gold nuggets.

At the end of the day when branding your business is a conscious effort, not an afterthought or natural consequence, the perception of doing business with your company can go from a negative sense of having to pay for something, to feeling privileged be a customer and happy to pay the cost of entry.