HAMLET – Local business owners looking to discover the basics of how to properly brand their company found out everything they needed Thursday afternoon on Richmond Community College’s campus.
“Branding Basics” overtook the Cole Auditorium conference room as the Richmond County Chamber of Commerce and the Small Business Center of RCC hosted the event.
From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., the seminar was led by instructor Cyndi Fifield. Fifield and her team at Novae Design Group, located in Southern Pines, specialize in business branding and offer services such as website development, logos, business cards, photography and other media-related services.
The Branding Basics seminar went over what branding is, and what it is not. Fifield made a point to remind those in attendance that branding it is not a logo, corporate identity or your service or product. Instead, it is how a person feels about a service or product.
The seminar also covered marketing, logo design, computer file types and proper use of color when creating brand identity, which is anything one might use for advertising.
The seminar was also interactive, allowing attendees to get first-hand experience of how to properly brand their business. A few important questions that Fifield asked the group were why should clients, customers, or consumers trust services and also why do particular products or services matter?
Answers included the fact that they were local and provided all services at their businesses instead of consumers having to go elsewhere further away to get what they needed and at more than one place. Significance was also placed on having a clear vision for a business, and hopefully employees ultimately feel the same way about the product(s) that the owner does.
The last topic discussed was buying local and patronizing local businesses.
“It (buying local) is important to my business and myself because it allows me to be able to spend more money for my family, money that I also spend locally,” Keri Humann, of Classic Apparel, stated.
Tom Wells, of Sandhills Linings and Accessories Inc., agreed saying, “If you don’t do business locally, you won’t maintain and draw business locally.”