Branding And Image: Are You Just Another Amateur?

With the popularity and ease of use of desktop publishing, every employee can and usually creates and designs his/her own letters, presentations and virtually every document he o she needs to pass to a coworker, customer, etc. But the question is: Is everybody trained and capable of doing it in a manner that is aligned with the company’s image and goal? Is your business being consistent? or are you just another amateur?

Coherency and harmony should always be present in all the information conveyed about your business. People learn by repetition. They have done so since they were born and they will continue the same way forever. Once they learn, they don’t have to “think” about it (a new skill, a telephone number, a brand, etc.) anymore. It is imprinted in their mind, available at any time and with little or no effort. Whether you want to learn something new or make other people remember your company, repetition is one of the golden keys. But not just blunt repetition; believe it or not, there are some rules!

Hocus Focus: dispersion of your energy is not the way to go. Every company has a limited amount of resources that must be used in an efficient way. The communication of your message must be focused in those channels that reach the customer in a subtle -yet powerful- way. A professional business card is more effective than just blurting out the name of your business at every person you meet or at the beginning of every paragraph you write with an advertising purpose.

Coherency…again: : It is useless to spend hundreds of dollars in a great logo, if you are not going to use it properly. All your stationery must be designed as an organic marketing tool. Every employee must have the same tools when handing out a document, sales letter, business card, etc. Your company is not a democracy where everyone can design their own personal image of it. Everyone must know which letterhead to use in each case, which personalized and designed mail must be sent within and out of your company.

Message behind the scenes: Although most people are not aware of it, they can instantly recognize the quality of the message and subconsciously make a decision of accepting or discarding it along with thousands more. You must be aware of the message you are conveying. People (aren’t they the ones who will buy our product or service?) don’t like to be reminded of qualities like weakness, insecurity or mediocrity. There is plenty already to go around. Your message must be about strength, uniqueness and excellence. But you have to believe it. Otherwise, they will notice it right away and turn to the next message.

Professionalism: If you want to save a couple of hundreds and ask your “artist” friend to design your company’s image, it is your choice. But remember that it is only professionals who deliver professional work. They are up to speed on what the latest trend is, which colors go with which product and -as a result- how to make your company look bigger, more professional and more competitive. If you are afraid of going professional, your customers will be afraid of following you.

So, why do you need professional designed stationery for your firm? Your business card, brochure, letterhead, email, etc. are the most common devices that come into contact with your customers. Use them! Seize every opportunity to deliver a professional and reliable look of your company.

by Mark Gries

How Branding Benefits a Business

A brand is the unique identity that a company creates for its business. This brand identity plays a vital role in earning the trustworthiness among the clients to purchase the company’s product or service. Branding is an efficient and easy way to approach the client’s in a market place. It connects to your target audience and strengthens the customer loyalty.

Building a corporate brand identity is not an easy task. It happens only after years of consistent business, customer credibility and maintaining persistent marketing strategies. A formation of a brand foundation layer happens when the customers benefit from innovative products or services, engaging content, creating a unique business model and delivering high quality services.

A brand is defined by its name, colour combination, design, slogans, symbol and lot more combinations. A corporate branding company will focus on developing integrated branding features to enhance their public contact. Corporate branding incorporates features such as logo, brochure, catalog, flier, business card, letterhead, colour palette and tagline.

Take a look at the different ways of branding a business.

Remarkable Logo:

A logo is a visual symbolization of your company that should create an everlasting impression on the client’s memory. People should target on creating a unique logo design that creates yourself as an established enterprise and maintain a reputable position for your company that attracts more clients. A tremendous logo will strike the customers’ memory when they think of a product or service.

Well-designed Brochure:

A well-designed brochure is the foundation of setting up an effective business strategy. A brochure gives the complete description of a company’s product or service. A brochure design and quality acts, as a promotional tool that creates a quest amidst your target audience. It is easily portable and efficient marketing tool to withstand the cut-throat competition in the relevant field.

Single page Ad-flyer:

The flyer is a cheap and efficient promotional tool. Most of the branding companies opt flyer as their marketing tool because it requires very less cost and it’s easy to produce. The flyer embraces attractive offers provided by the company that hooks the customers to purchase their product or service. Some special festival offer flyers may result in an unexpected hike in product sales.

Professional Business card:

If you’re a job-seeker, entrepreneur or representative of any organization, then a business card is the most significant spectrum in your career which makes you professional among the plenty of other competitors. A business card portrays yourself and leaves an impression on your clients that reflects your business motive. There are several branding companies that give you the perfect business card that look and feel great.

Stylish Letterhead:

A professional letter-head style sets you apart from the large pool of competitors. It represents your corporate image among your potential customers. If you have an extra-ordinary letter, then certainly people will consider your product as a quality product. A branding company can boost your corporate image among the clients.

Informative Catalog:

A catalog is used by several industries because of the extensive advantage it provides. An informative catalog benefits the customers with detailed description of the product, including product photographs, services and price details effectively. The catalog will be kept safe if it’s informative and printed with high quality. The catalog is a simple and effective marketing tool.

Conclusion:

A brand interacts with the customers in all aspects, whether a logo or brochure, it delivers the motive of a business. People get attracted by these brand images or messages and emotionally get in touch with a product or service. A company’s image is highlighted by its stationary designs which include logo, brochure, business card, letterhead, etc that creates a space for your company and identify your efforts in developing quality products. This corporate identity creates a revolution in your business by increasing the number of sales.

Social Network for Branding Your Business

No matter whether you’re a designer, a blogger, or an entrepreneur who wants to sell something – you’ll definitely want to get people hear about you. Obviously, this is the number one reason why you should make your brand visible online. Your power of convincing your target audience to connect with you is actually a pretty significant aspect of an important marketing concept, known as branding.

To get it started, let’s check if you understand what a brand is.

A brand is a name, a trademark, a symbol, a design, or a combination of all these aspects, which makes a certain product or a service unique, different, and most importantly, easily recognisable by the target audience. The elements of every brand are its identity, value, recognition, and brand awareness.

How can social networks help you?
Social networks can be a really helpful way of getting significant online visibility and recognition – they may help you attract the audience by acquainting you with your audience as if you and they were two persons. This way, your brand becomes more accessible not only to your loyal customers but to new ones, as well.

Of course, when things are put this way, it sounds really easy. However, sometimes you have to make the real effort for things to work out for your brand.

First of all, you have to define the mission of your branding.

We all want to be special and unique but often we’re not really aware of how to do it. In order to be different and stand out, above all, you have to know what YOU are doing. In other words, you must have a vision. Defining the mission of your brand is the first step in the process of creating the message you want to send to your consumers. This is the message they’ll understand and they’ll relate to, the message that’ll make them make their decisions without thinking only about the price but also about the value of your brand.

How can you give the value to your potential consumers?
First of all, decide what your vision related to your product or brand is. Then you have to transfer it to the consumers. The process of vision transfer (the time you spend explaining your ideas and devotion to the audience) is what gives the value to your brand and it is a great way of connecting with consumers because it deepens your relationship and makes it seem more than a simple business transaction.

That would be the essence of branding – especially internet branding. Don’t forget the honesty is the most important thing in the branding process. Your branding won’t mean anything if you promote something you don’t trust in. The vision of your brand has to be based on something you actually believe.

How to choose a social network?
There’s a wide variety of social networks where you can brand yourself. But once you decide to do it, you have to think about which one of them is the right choice for you. If you create profiles on too many social networks and start branding on each of them, it may become too complex for you to handle it. This can have a negative effect on your brand – you may not realise your full potential and may not reach your target audience.

This is the reason why we should take a look at the most popular social networks and see what they can offer to your online branding.

  • Facebook, as a social network actively used by more than a billion people on a monthly basis, represents an unavoidable social network for online branding.
  • Google+ is the perfect social network for building a relationship based on mutual interests and professions. This platform will make it possible for you to access and share the information you are interested in. That way, you’ll become closer with your audience and followers.
  • Twitter is a great platform for conversational branding. Conversation is an awesome way to attract people and apart from that, Twitter is also the social network providing you with the latest news worldwide.
  • LinkedIn is the social platform dedicated to companies, entrepreneurs, and professionals, which means, it’s a B2B oriented platform, ideal for connecting with other businesses, companies, and brands, as well as finding new employees.
  • Pinterest is another great social network which is the best branding option if your target audience is female population. Therefore, if you want to promote makeup, cosmetics, jewellery, shoes, or clothes, this is the network whose potentials you should use.
  • Instagram is a fantastic choice for those who rely on visual elements – the jewellery or clothes shops, especially if the youth is your target audience.

In the end, all you have to do is to think about the type of relationship and the type of communication you want to establish with your potential consumers. Do you want to attract them with useful conversations or striking images? Do you want to find your way to youth or interact with other brands, companies, and professionals? Users can also do brand search at Indian Trademark Search engine. Don’t forget that the honest answers to these questions are the keys to your success.

Celebrity Branding – Capitalizing on A Star’s Popularity

One of the commonly viewed advertisements today is called Celebrity Branding advertising. We see popular and talented artists endorsing different products in television shows, programs, special events and commercials. Branded clothes, perfumes, make-up, sports gear, and the likes are making good in the market. All of these items carry the signature names of movie stars, models, actors and actresses like Jennifer Lopez, and others.

Customers have the flexibility adjusting to products that are offered in the market especially if it is new. More so, if they find out that the products are represented and endorsed by famous personalities, they become eager and excited to purchase them either for personal use or for gift giving purposes. Through further studies and research of brand specialists, they assign top personalities who can represent a specific product based on different aspects like their personality, occupation, physical attributes or even their capacity to effectively deliver to consumers the real essence of the product or charitable project. Miss India Aishwarya Rai crowned Miss World possesses stunning and expressive eyes and she effectively campaigned for an eye donation big event. Voice over method of advertising taps celebrities with distinct voices that captivate and attract more customers. Advertising is always full of creative ideas and strategies that really work.

As of this time, almost 20% advertisers make use of the celebrity endorsed promotional method. Once a famous personality signs a contract with advertisers, many products and brands will definitely boost in the market. Product endorsers are experts in projecting the image of the product and company to buying viewers. Different products with a single popular endorser can even effectively shift from one personality to another just to be able to relate the significance and function of a specific product to interested consumers. Many have actually done this like David Beckham in endorsing Gillette and Passion.

Another Celebrity Advertising method is through the use of Celebrity logos or graphic images that can totally represent a well known figure such as actors, models, and more. Even simple initials like Jennifer Lopez’ fashion brand logo JLO. The product brand JLO enables different products related to Jennifer Lopez appear branded and highly regarded because of Jennifer’s stardom. Their popularity as well as their talent is enough to draw a big crowd of consumers even in their absence. Any product that will be represented by superstars’ logos, initials and designs will somehow carry out the advertising purpose.

Big names in the business industry really set up a budget for celebrity branding method in advertising their products and services. Nothing can compensate the load of customers that will be magnetized by superstars. Popular and credible personalities can create business tycoons out of a single product. One of the successful ad agencies that created an exclusive ad company that focused on celebrity endorsement is Davie Brown Entertainment. They exquisitely screened celebrities to represent their products and designed ads that would co-relate to their chosen endorser. Their rigid strategy is a proof that they are selective and meticulous when it comes to customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction spells out business success.

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