Your brand image is the essence for your practice, making it extremely important to all aspects of your business. Yet, many practices struggle with maintaining a consistent brand image throughout all of their office materials.

It can be easy to forget about branding on smaller documents around the office, and that is why we've asked our in-house designer to come up with a branding checklist of all the things that you should be focusing on in your practice to develop a strong brand.

We hope the checklist below at least gets your wheels turning when thinking about how you represent your practice, and how you can work to improve your brand image before the end of the year.

The Ultimate Eyecare Practice Branding Checklist

In our checklist we go over a few of the big areas that you should be keeping consistent when it comes to your overall brand. From there, you'll see a few examples of different materials that might fall into each category. 

Download Your Own Brand Checklist Here

Corporate Identity

Pay attention to the items that represent you and your company to the outside world. These are some of the most important areas when it comes to branding because they are some of the items that your patients will see most often.

• Business Cards
• Letterheads
• Envelopes
• Store Fronts
• Signage

Internal Documents

Even though internal documents are just seen by you and your employees, it is still important visually. If you're putting in an effort to keep your brand consistent internally, it will serve as a reminder to keep your brand consistent externally as well. All staff should be familiar with your brand guidelines.

• PTO Forms
• Time Sheets
• Expense Forms

External Documents

These documents are especially important for your practice because, again, they are documents that are sent out to clients and patients. These documents should be a clear representation of your company, and the viewer should immediately recognize your practice from the documents before even reading them.

• Invoices
• Patient Recalls and Reminders

Marketing Materials

The more clear your practice is about your brand image, the easier it becomes to successfully market yourself. You should have plenty of materials on hand with you at all times to hand out to potential new patients. These materials should answer the questions that people might have about your services and products without making them refer to your website. The less work they have to do, the easier it is for them to learn about your practice.

• Brochures
• Business Cards
• Catalog
• Look Book/Portfolio
• Price Lists

Advertising

When your practice is ready to begin spending some money on advertising efforts, you should make sure you have the necessary materials ready to go. If you're taking the time to invest in advertising your practice, making sure you're investing in creating ads that represent your practice.

• Print Ads
• Banner Ads
• Flyers
• Branded Swag

Online Marketing

If your client base consists of younger adults, then you should spend some time focusing on online marketing. Your email campaigns should be properly branded so that viewers can clearly tell that they have been sent from your practice. Even small things like email signatures should be consistent throughout your office.

• Email Newsletters
• Email Signatures

Direct Mail

Some practices still prefer snail mail, and that is perfectly fine, just keep templates branded. You don't have much time to capture the attention of your viewers so make sure that your brand and logo are presented across all pieces of mail.

• Postcards
• Greeting Cards
• Holiday Cards
• Return Address Labels

Social Media

This is a big one. Even if your practice struggles to post online on a regular basis, your social media pages should still maintain the proper branding for your practice. Remember that the Internet is the primary source for your patients to find information on your company, so your practice should be recognizable from your social accounts.

Unfortunately, developers for social media change size requirements for images pretty frequently, so try to stay on top of checking your accounts to make sure headers and profile images still appear correctly. Otherwise you might risk your logos and images to appear cut off, making your social profile less professional and appealing. We've talked a lot about Canva, which is a great design resource to help you easily create images for your social profiles.

• Facebook Profile Photo
• Facebook Cover Photo
• Twitter Profile Photo
• Twitter Header Photo
• LinkedIn Profile Photo
• Linkedin Header Photo

Photography

Photos supplement the products and services you offer, so you should have a wide variety of photos that represent you and your practice. Investing in a professional photographer allows you to have access to high quality photos that directly represent you and your practice in a unique way. These are great materials to have on hand that can be used for marketing materials and profiles.

• Landscape Shots
• Office Interior
• Headshots
• Lifestyle Shots
• Signage

Website

Since you know people will be searching for your practice online, it is important to have updated and relevant information on your website. Make sure that if you have extensions of your website, they all match and are cohesive.

• Company Website
• Online Store
• Blog Page

Dispensary

If you have a dispensary in your practice, there are a whole list of items that should be consistent throughout.

• Loyalty Cards
• Labels
• Price Tags
• Stickers
• Packaging
• Posters
• Receipts

Stationary

Like it or not, pens and stationary will be taken out of your practice (especially pens), so make sure you're using this opportunity to continue branding your practice. Those pens will be shared and left around town so take advantage of that advertising space!

• Note Pads
• Pens
• Post-Its

As you can see, there is a lot to keep in mind when it comes to branding. We've created a PDF checklist for you to download and print out to make sure your practice is staying on top of your game when it comes to branding. We've listed the items we see as most important, did we miss any?

All our small business tips can be found in our OD Handbook: Small Business, Big Profits. Read it today.