Good Marketing And Design Practices Can Help Your Brand Succeed Even Through Tough Times
Internal branding and brand evaluation: what you can do to reinforce your brand.
1. Live your brand at all times. You never know when you may be talking to a potential customer or investor. If your brand image is modern and professional, make sure you portray that image in all your activities, both in and out of the office. Similarly, make employees brand ambassadors. Employees can be walking, talking advertisements for your brand. Make sure they understand your brand story and are enthusiastic about spreading the word.
2. Set clear goals and know your audience. There are two sets of goals you need to keep in mind when marketing your brand. You must set overall goals for your company and individual goals for your marketing projects.
Your company cannot be all things to all people, and trying to be is a waste of time and money. Learn who buys your products or services and target your marketing specifically to them.
To effectively leverage your goals and knowledge of your brand's unique personality, you must understand the changing, dynamic needs and feelings of your audience. This broader view of who you are that incorporates who your customers are will allow your brand to stay relevant and successful even through difficult times.
3. Distinguish yourself effectively from your competition. Being different just for the sake of being different is not effective branding. A thoughtful, unique look and message will motivate customers to remember you.
Distinguishing yourself just takes a little thinking and creativity. This means no copycatting. It is unethical and ineffective. You are your own brand with your own message, and trying to incorporate someone else’s design into your materials will most likely make everything look thrown together and unprofessional – definitely not memorable.
External branding and marketing: tips for stretching your design dollar.
1. Ask about stock subscription services. Compelling visuals are important because images are sticky. People remember pictures first, words second. And with the growth of quality stock sites, good photos can come at a reasonable price. Many design companies, ourselves included, have subscriptions to several stock services and can pass those savings on to clients.
2. Look into open source for web projects. Open source content management platforms have come a long way, and no longer need to be limited to use primarily by bloggers. Themes can be customized for a completely unique site. Designers can create news magazine sites, gallery sites, portfolio sites, e-commerce sites and anything else that can be dreamt up to meet any client’s needs.
Using open source content management programs for your site can save money in a couple of ways. Open source is free, so new, complicated code does not need to be built from scratch. From a site management perspective, pages are easy to add and update, even without any html knowledge. All widely used content management systems offer WYSIWYG page editing through the administration panel. Once your site is designed, non-programmers can layout new pages using tools they are familiar with from common word processing programs. No more calling up your design team and paying for every little change once the site is live.
3. Get the most out of your printing. Getting the maximum value out of your printing dollar just requires a little research and insight into the industry.
Check out your paper size options, and use standard sizes that don’t require a lot of cuts. Printers charge extra for cuts and folds, and a good designer can make your materials stand out without forcing you to waste money on die cuts and unusually sized brochures.
Plan out your marketing strategy so that you can maximize each print run. Often, it is cheaper to print more pieces per run, and in doing so you can avoid expensive reprints of the same materials.
Preview all your materials before printing, including your inks and papers. Look at a proof carefully. It takes a little extra time, but catching mistakes on a proof first will save you thousands of dollars. Test out your colors on different papers. Most paper manufactures will give out free samples, so you can explore your paper choices to make sure you have the most cost-efficient, best looking item.
Kristen Friend is the art director at the graphic design company, Luckynine Design. As a graphic, web, and logo design company, Luckynine has worked with companies of all sizes. To learn more, visit www.luckyninedesign.com.
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