148. Baking it Down - Branding Woes

🪧 Branding Woes - The process to proceed with the perfect branding.If your commitment-averse (like yours truly), you'll find branding one of those long-term relationships you may eventually regret. So how do you build a brand when you're not sure of what you're building in the first place?Fair question. The answer? It's a tricky blend of approaches. Oh yeah - and it's very frustrating. But you know what's more frustrating? Having to re-brand after you've already established a committed following because you didn't follow this approach first and now a lawyer has enforced a trademark you didn't bother looking up before you launched.Here's our process on checkin' to see if you'll still be able to use that name on the bank account to cash those corporate checks.😭 Branding Woes - the Legal OnesBefore we fall in love with anything - let's fall in love with the legal system first - because no amount of love is gonna get you out of legal hot water. When it comes to branding - you can check two places to make sure your catchy name is in the clear: the trademark patent office and your local state's database of registered businesses.🧐 Searching the USPTO Trademark Search"Generally, copyrights protect creative works, and trademarks apply to brand names, phrases, and logos." So when it comes to logos and branding - we're talkin' trademark law. Filing a trademark for a name gives you the right to use that name nationwide for your business's products or services. It also prevents others from using your name or piggybacking on your brand. That also means that you won't be able to violate someone else's trademark just because you thought up the name - so search before you say "I do" to that perfect brand name.Search the database here: https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/🧐 Searching your State's Registered Businesses Database. 🚧 Now this is going to be state (or country for my outta-country-ers) specific. Meaning, I'm in Virginia, so I'll need to see if someone in my state is registered using the name. "In most cases, a business name registration protects a business and prevents others from using the same name in the same state."🚧 You may be thinking, "Oh great - so as long as they are outta state, I'm good to go get a name tag!" Hol'up there horsey, we have to think about similar names in terms of marketing as well as legal. You surely didn't think it'd be that easy, now did ya? For those subscribed to the email list - here's what a complex rebranding looks like - a Google Business Profile that features both names (and the risk of keyword stuffing). It's a pain.😭 Branding Woes - the Printed OnesOkay - so we passed the "legal" vibe check - but we're not in the clear just yet. 🤔 Consider how your brand will look in print. 🙄 "Heather, it'll look fine as long as I'm not getting sued for trademark violations." Fair - but, when logos and business names get too ✨fancy✨ they lead to a printing problem. 🚧 Tiny text - even if it's the catchiest name in the world - will spell disaster on printed materials. I find myself asking these questions when I see the potential for branding broken rules:📰 Could the logo be made more simply? Complex logos make for complex printing issues.📰 Does the logo print well using a thermal printer (the Munbyn test)📰 Does the logo fit on a 3x2 business card?📰 Does the logo fit in the square (cropped to circle) ratio for logos on Facebook / Instagram pages?📰 Is the logo unique? Does it use easy-to-access design elements (think: Canva / Etsy)?

Om Podcasten

👋 Hey - Heather and Corrie here with the Baking it Down Podcast with Sugar Cookie Marketing (a group on Facebook full of sugar cookiers turned business owners). 🍪 We're here to help you rise with your reach, flood with new followers, bake up new ideas, and make that all-important dough (while makin' that dough - see the pun there?) 🤑. What’s it about? We’re a Facebook Group turned Podcast, Membership, Book Club, and Baking 101 that’s dedicated to assisting bakers in effectively marketing online to generate more sales and better manage their businesses. 🧠 With free Facebook Live classes, hundreds of resources, and thousands of like-minded bakers, there’s a lot to learn in "SCM" (aka Sugar Cookie Marketing). ️🎧 As an extension of our Facebook group, this podcast is here to let you learn by listening. 📈 We'll cover group topics, marketing trends, and more (leaving this wide open in case Corrie wants to start singing). 💸 We take the sweet art of selling online to the cottage bakery world with marketing methods that move products (and pastries).👂 So open up those glorious ear canals because we have a podcast! Just when you’ve thought you’ve “heard” it all with those marketing "miracle" twins (that's our last name - not a proclamation), we’ve got something just for you each week! 🥣 As a baker, you don't always have the luxury of two hands needed to scroll in Sugar Cookie Marketing Group or crack open a book in Sugar Cookie Bookies, but what you can do is listen (unless you're my kid asking “what’s for dinner” for the millionth time). 👐 Hands full of flour? No problem! 👍 18 dozen iced cookies due tomorrow? Let’s do this. The Baking it Down Podcast by Sugar Cookie Marketing is a weekly podcast geared toward helping you grow your bakery business - dropping (almost) every Tuesday. 📅 We choose a topic each week that's either something new and emerging in the world of social media or something that we saw in "The Group" that was a hot topic and we bake it down... I mean, "break" it down for you. 🗯️ What you can expect in the podcast is about an hour of chit-chat with the meat and potatoes right at the beginning of the episode. 🥔 That’s when we dive into the marketing topic of the week! 📞 Oh yeah, folks can call / text / email in with their questions too - a fun way to hear from other bakers out there. Our promises to you: 1️⃣ We always make it clean = no cursing. We understand that you are busy and could be around little ones while also trying to get your weekly dose of business growth so we make sure that each episode would make our grandma proud and keep it clean so you can listen while also living your life. 2️⃣ We always make it fun. There’s a lot of negativity in the world so we try and make the podcast an upbeat and fun learning experience for you. I mean, we try to make the Instagram updates and changes as happy as we can, but come on Instagram! Give it a rest! No more changes! 3️⃣ Other than that, we take a positive approach to marketing We are also *not* professional podcasters. I feel like we need to say this because, hey, sometimes we get giggles! We do our best to extend our marketing knowledge to you all free of charge each week at the cost of listening to our higher-than-normal pitched voices and the occasional giggle spree. 4️⃣ You can find the podcast on all the major platforms and you can typically expect a new episode each Tuesday afternoon (unless life happens). We invite everyone to listen. Either start from the beginning or work backward! The episodes don’t build off themselves so you won’t be confused hearing one before the other. You just might miss new Lives we mention but you can always catch the replay in the Sugar Cookie Marketing Group on Facebook!