Part 2
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Archive for July, 2010
Building Your Brand, Building Your Business: Strategies
Monday, July 26th, 2010
StrategiesBuilding Your Brand, Building Your Business
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Part 1When you build your brand, you build your business…and then if you are building your business you are building your brand [Thank you James for expanding on this!
As mentioned, your Brand includes more than your business name, logo, and look and feel. It includes your Visibility, Reputation, and Influence to attract satisfied clients that are happy to give you Referrals. Unlike the linear Visual Plan, you action plan elements are multiplied to reach higher results. Note the red stars. Online branding includes a website, social media, blogging, forums, video, photo and radio sharing. These are fairly new elements in branding and are quickly becoming a marketing standard as print material has been for years. Influence now plays a role in your action planning since your use of websites, blogs, social media and new media allow for customer interaction. Branding has become more complex and involved and does not stop at your trade name or logo. Keep this in mind so one does not fall into the “…if you build it, they will come” syndrome of doing nothing once your site it up an running. Continuous updating and content posting and customer interaction will help build your visibility, reputation and influence. |
]. Your brand is be more than your trade name, logo or website. A company’s brand touches all aspects of a business, from marketing awareness to reputation and referral potential.
The Branding chart provides a breakdown of the key elements involved in branding. Building your brand is your Visual Plan. Building your business is your marketing and Action Plan. Neither Plan can exist without the other, nor can your Brand and business exist on only one element of each plan.How Does Visual Marketing Help Your Business?
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
Visual Marketing spans into nearly every portion of your business’ communication and advertising and is the front runner to your strategy and plan to branding your business image. In order for your company to be heard, it must also be seen…and seen a lot as well as remembered. As visual creatures, we are attracted to images that help us remember information and therefore the branding of your company’s public image is crucial to building awareness of your service and product. Your visual marketing may include your logo, website, blog, online advertisement, banner ads, print material, magazine or newsprint ads, TV, webinars, and online short videos…nearly any medium your customers can see whether online or traditional.
A business should approach their Visual Marketing with a design plan and strategy. Often times this includes understanding your business’ own target audience and demographics so that the visual design work meets your audience’s interests. If your target audience is 13-18 year olds , the visual graphics, and even choice of lettering (fonts) may want to be hip, cool and fresh compared to a traditional feel of an older demographic. Once you have established your target audience, a plan must also be in place to determine where you will market and how you will want to use the different mediums available. Your visual message may need to be adjusted depending on the marketing realm you would like to focus on. Online marketing like a website or the use of Social Media outlets may require a new approach compared to traditional print ads.
Full Circle Design and Marketing is an approach to maintain consistency in your image across all marketing mediums. Older established businesses that opened prior to the computer age and Internet, may wish to make an adjustment to the new online mediums requiring a slight change in their traditional look. Although it is not recommended to change a logo, sometimes just the colors, or the graphics surrounding a logo can be updated for a newer fresher look if a business is transitioning to an online medium. Working directly with a graphic designer or visual marketer can help your business have a clearer plan to a marketing strategy and consistency in your visual marketing on a variety of mediums.
Ultimately a business wants to use appealing visual graphics to keep their message in the public eye and stand out from their competition. Visual marketing helps to bring the business’ image and look together as well as help improve traffic to a website or other marketing mediums including your store front and business location.
