Make your brand stand out in a crowded marketplace!
Cotswold Web • 11 October 2019
You have a brilliant idea for a new business and now need to work on your branding.
How do you ensure your brand will cut through the noise and stand out?
Good branding is not just having a memorable logo (although this is important); it also increases the value of a company, motivates employees, and helps you to acquire customers.
Before you approach a web design agency for help, it will save you time and money if you first identify your ideal market and potential customers, and what you want your brand to portray to them.
Ensure your brand appeals to customers
One of the best ways to ensure your brand appeals to customers is by tapping into their emotions… how does your choice of logo, straplines, colours and images make a potential customer feel?
Up to 90% of purchases are influenced by visual factors—especially colour, which can increase brand recognition by up to 80%.
However, don’t just stop at creating a logo or colour scheme. Your brand is about more than what you do or how you promote a product or service, it is about the effect it has on your customers and how you go about interacting with them.
Let’s use Apple as an example. We are all aware of Apple’s logo (the apple with the bite taken out of it), but Apple’s brand isn’t about fruit (obviously), or even just technology, it is about making people feel connected, fashionable and current!
Understand your business marketplace
Knowing who your target customers are and how they would like to be spoken to is important.
Whatever your product or service, there's a target audience for it out there.
How are you going to reach them … via social media, online advertising, mobile advertising, or print advertising?
If, for instance, you are targeting older people, don’t assume that mobile advertising is off limits. Even if many of them don’t use social media, they often have smartphones, which mean you can contact them via SMS marketing.
Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash
Find your brand personality
Your brand is unique to you and your business, so make sure your website and your other platforms stand out. A bespoke website will differentiate your business from all of the other generic websites that are out there.
Tell your story
… It is easy to make your brand’s message too ‘salesy’, so think about telling a story with your message.
You may, for example, be promoting a new range of microwaves, don’t talk about how many settings there are and what wattage the oven is, talk about how amazing the meals are that your microwave helps you make, and how you have more time to read to the kids in the evening.
You are selling the concept of a better quality of life brought about by using this product.
Be interactive, use images and straight-talking text
Be creative with your branding … aim to have an interactive website that offers the opportunity for customers to engage in blogs, forums, and social networks or that has live chats or clickable maps for example.
Images and straight to the point text (which is free from jargon), will help to drive customers to your site and keep them there.
You should consider offering a call to action such as clicking on a button for more information.
Photo by Balázs Kétyi on Unsplash
Be consistent
It is vital to keep your brand consistent, no matter what the platform. Your brand identity should extend from your website to social media, marketing material, and, if appropriate, product packaging.
You must use the same colours, logos, images and text across the board.
Consistency in branding will help to cement your product or service in people’s minds
– they will come to recognise your brand and will start to seek it out. Apple’s iconic logo is recognised globally for example.
At Cotswold Web,
Cheltenham, we’ve been designing and developing websites since 2008 and have
over 50 years’ collective experience. We love what we do and would be only too
happy to chat to you about ways to improve your website or click here
to see for yourself.
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