If you’ve always dreamt of starting your own camping or glamping business but don’t know where to start, read on for tips on branding your business. Motivated by our own journey, we’re running a series to help others discover their ideal camping, leisure or tourism business.
Within the series, we’re going to look at ways of discovering how to start a glamping business, which is covered in detail here:
- Great business ideas;
- Business brands and branding elements;
- Fundamental elements of the idea (i.e. what do you need to make it happen);
- How to become a social media guru with great strategies for success;
- How to get a well-designed, styled and written website, including branding and professional photography;
- What to do if land is involved and what permissions you will need;
- How to make sense of procurement and service agreements;
- What you need to do to get good marketing skills. Partnering with professional banner printers helps small business owners turn creative brand identity concepts into high-impact, real-world visual displays;
- Basic office systems you will need, including storage, maintenance, signage, email, stationery, bookkeeping and accounts, public liability coverage, reservations and administration;
- How you can develop a launch plan or re-launch plan to make the most of good PR and set your business plan rolling.
From names and symbols to logos, taglines, and more, branding makes your business different from other organisations because it is unique to you.
It shapes how people see your business and helps them identify your presence, both physically and virtually.
It can be a low-cost advertising tool that builds customer confidence and trust, making them more likely to buy your product or service. It builds loyalty, so happy customers keep returning, and it strengthens the business’s identity because people can recognise it quickly.
The brand includes the business name, logo, and tagline, and if you plan to have an online presence for your camping business (let’s face it, you’d be mad not to!), it also includes a domain name. All this together creates the business brand, identity and first impressions visitors and customers have of your business and any contact you have with them.
If you have a business idea and don’t know where to start, we recommend putting branding at the top of your list. Specifically, you should:
- Think carefully about how you want your brand to make people feel, and whether that is right for what you’re trying to achieve;
- Consider how you can hint about what you do, how you do it and who it’s for;
- Try to be different to other businesses in your niche of the market;
- Search for a business and domain name that includes some or all of the above elements.
A really important element of your brand is your logo, and you should think about it carefully once you’ve decided on your business name. If you’re not a designer, it’s not a problem, as there are plenty of companies to help, no matter how large or small your budget is.
One such company is 99 Designs, an online resource that gives you access to graphic designers worldwide. However, before you start, research logos you like and use them as examples with whoever you work with, in a clear, well-communicated brief. You can research these simply by typing “images for camping logos” or “images for glamping logos”, etc., into Google.
Not every business adopts a tagline in its branding, but if it does, it should work like a newspaper headline: it gives the reader a rough idea of what it’s about and makes them want to find out more. Most of all, it’s about grabbing the audience’s attention.
For example, our tagline is… “Inspired Camping – Smoothing the edges of roughing it”
A good tagline helps the reader see why your business is different from your competitors. Be aware, however, that if it’s good, it will pull in some visitors, but it will also turn others away.
With all that in the bag, all you need to do now is think about your domain name and website, and specifically:
- If you’re going to get the website and branding elements designed or do them yourself;
- You will also need a domain name and a host for your website;
- You will also need to decide if you are going to use WordPress or another website design (BTW, we thoroughly recommend WordPress);
- There is also the option of using a WordPress-compatible template to easily improve the look of your site;
- And of course, you may need help if you don’t have the skills. However, we recommend trying it yourself, as once you have basic WordPress skills, everything else is easy to pick up. The added bonus is that you’ll be fully in control of your website’s design and content.
These days, it’s difficult to find a domain name that’s available to represent your brand name. However, it is worth the effort and time to research and secure what you want. Whatever that is, make sure it’s memorable, different from your competitors, and attractive (it doesn’t have to include keywords about your business, but it can help your Google ranking within your market if you do).
An example is the camping business, ‘Billy One Horn’. It’s memorable, creates a great identity and is definitely different from anything else we’ve seen in this vintage camping niche market. After working with the business and learning the reason behind the name, it’s now locked in our memory, so it’s easy to recall the details whenever we want to return to it.
If you’re starting to think about your dream camping business and planning for the future, then it’s essential you think through all your options thoroughly. This is what we did before we set up Inspired Camping. For those who want to know more about our own journey, you can read more about the decisions we made and the work we did before our launch by visiting The Inspired Camping Story, through the eyes of its founder, Sarah Riley
If you are thinking of setting up your dream camping business and are at the stage of thinking about naming and branding your idea, or already have a great brand and you’d like to shout about it, we’d love to hear from you, so drop a note in the comments section below or say hello. We’ve also put this article together for you to read about starting a glamping business.
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Inspired Camping
Picture Credits: Inspired Camping
