Brand Development

Branding: It’s More Than Just Your Logo

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Understanding that your brand is not just your logo, but the full spectrum of the experience with your company and its product or service offering, is the first and most important step in the process of building a good brand. This means that anything and everything that interacts with both the internal and external stakeholders should be considered part of your brand, from your company name, your logo, and any visual representation, to phone and personal interaction with you and anyone who represents you, as well as the quality of your product or service, your online activities and how you engage with your audience and other stakeholders, and yes, even how you drive if your vehicle shows your company name. And the list doesn’t stop there!

You only get one chance to make a first impression… taking steps to ensure that it’s a good impression, on all fronts, will help your brand, and your company establish itself. We specialize in

  • Strategic brand development for start-ups
  • Brand mentoring for existing companies
  • Rebranding for existing companies

From the logo and visual representation through how and where your company appears, our goal is to help you find the most cost-effective and productive ways to build your brand and engage with your audience.

Speaking of logos and visual representation, it’s critical to understand the vast difference between graphic design and visual communication. A graphic designer can design something that is visually appealing, but does it convey the desired message?

  • Does the image or design speak to what your product or service offering is about?
  • Does it engage your target audience and compel them to want to buy or do business with you?

If not, you are basically doing the equivalent of tossing spaghetti against the wall and hoping something sticks, and quite probably wasting your hard earned money. In this age of sensory overload and data bombing, you have about the blink of an eye to capture someone’s interest. If they “don’t get it” in that brief moment they will most likely not waste their time asking and you’ve lost the opportunity to engage. A solid branding strategy will encompass all aspects of your brand so your target audience isn’t left guessing, and will ultimately achieve the most bang for your marketing buck.

Give us a call or send an email. We can help!

Good marketing is never one-and-done

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Griffimages dba Colorado Marketing Chick offers creative marketing and branding strategies to definte and improve audience engagement to boost your bottom line.Today’s rich internet marketing landscape, with its never-ending list of potential touch point platforms, means marketing must be even more dynamic than ever. It means that things like SEO, calls to action, and engagement must be ongoing—it means the job is never “done”! It means that you will have to post, like, tweet, favorite, comment, email, blog, pin, poke, scope, or do something, or some things continuously, if you want to stay in business.

Just as importantly, it means figuring out who your potential audience is, and where and how it’s best to reach them, in a way that will provide the most cost-effective ROI.

At this point you’re probably wondering how you are ever going to keep up with all of this, much less stay on top of it. Unless you enjoy, and are good at, all of this social media and online marketing stuff, and you understand what putting together a solid engagement strategy entails, it might be advisable to outsource at least some of it. This is especially important where the overall brand voice is concerned, and making sure that it is formulated properly for the selected platform so your brand and business are putting it’s best foot forward.

Size Doesn’t Matter—Brand Does!

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One only need look around to see that brands carry influence and potency. Large companies, with large marketing budgets, have the wherewithal to saturate the market with their brand and their messaging, but what about the small business that doesn’t have that large marketing budget?

[jbox color=”orange”]Your logo is NOT your brand! Your brand is the umbrella that encompasses and conveys your company’s vision, values, personality, positioning, and image—your brand is the sum experience prospects and customers have with your company.[/jbox]

Running a business in this day and age can be a daunting task. Thanks to the explosion of e-commerce opportunity, the global marketplace is just as available to a microbusiness (defined as less than five employees) as it is to large corporations. Regardless of size, having a strong brand is critical to success in today’s economic landscape.

So what is a brand anyway? A brand is much more than simply an image or a catchy slogan — a brand is the umbrella that encompasses and conveys a company’s vision, values, personality, positioning, and image; it is the face of the company or product it represents. A brand is comprised of every aspect of a company; but especially anything that touches the external world. Your brand is your message, your actions, the actions of your employees, where you show up and where you don’t show up; it’s the promises you make and the ones you keep, and so much more. In a nutshell, a brand is the big picture—it’s the idea or image of a specific product or service that consumers can connect with.

A successful brand is built with intention, a solid foundation, and a well thought-out strategy. Without these, it doesn’t matter how much money is thrown at it, if the brand is built haphazardly, it will eventually fail. Today’s interconnected global marketplace is a platform where people are more than statistics—they are able, willing, and even demand to be able to engage and interact with the brand, to be a part of the process and the story. Brands fortified with a solid foundation are better able to not only allow, but encourage and grow as a result of this engagement.

What constitutes a solid brand foundation? There must first and foremost be a well-defined vision and purpose for the brand which shows that those forming the brand have an understanding of the target market and how the brand will address the market’s needs. The vision and purpose of the brand must be coupled with a clear and believable differentiator that sets the brand apart from its competitors. The differentiator is critical to leveraging the brand’s market potential. Without a differentiator, the brand has no real leg to stand on, and all that remains is a company forced to compete on price.

The differentiator, once defined, needs to be refined into a clear and concise value proposition which conveys to the target market the company’s vision, purpose, and differentiator in a compelling and contrasting way. Finally, the brand needs to be visually communicated to the market. This requires an effective visual representation—an easily recognized logo—which speaks to the brand’s vision, purpose, and value proposition in a way that engages prospects and customers.

Your logo is an extremely vital part of your brand foundation. It is the single element that your audience uses as the key recognition factor when identifying your product or service. Your logo, regardless of where it appears, whether it is in full color, or black and white, imprinted in one color, or embossed with no color, should always be consistent in its overall look and feel.

To build a successful brand, think of it as a composite of many elements, most of which the company is able to determine and control through intention and strategy. But keep in mind, that in today’s social media landscape, there are elements outside of company control such as media, bloggers, consumers, and all of the myriad conversations they have separate of your marketing efforts. The trick is helping to guide these outside elements by providing clear, concise, compelling, and contrasting brand messaging that conveys your value proposition, and then living up to the promises your brand has made so that those outside elements don’t feel the need to change the message.

The absence of communication only leaves room for rumor and innuendo. Hence the importance of developing a strong foundation for your brand, and then employing good marketing strategy to communicate the message to your target market.