One of the most important assets you can develop for your business is a powerful brand. Brands are not just logos or tag lines, they are the culmination of who you are, how you're different from your competition, and why a buyer should do business with you.
Whether you're an established company or small start-up, a brand has tremendous impact. A brand instils confidence, creates loyalty, and many times can command a premium price. But most of all a great brand reduces a buyer's perception of risk and makes the purchase choice easy.
A brand is the sum of all you do. It's derived from all touch points with your customers and prospects. Developing a brand requires having a plan that consistently communicates what your company is and does, along with your distinct attributes, image, and personality. Here at Designsquad.biz we provide a complete range of strategic brand consulting and creative design services.
With online brand management, we have learned that sometimes the best way to say something on the social web is to, "have someone else say it."
In today's world an online or social media brand manager has more than a single audience to worry about. There's the company website, corporate blog, Twitter account, Facebook Page, YouTube channel, and so on and so forth. Staying competitive in today's social media landscape means setting up shop where your fans are.
An online business has a greater chance for success if those who buy its products and services recognize its brand. A recognizable online brand also makes a business's site more attractive to potential advertisers and partners.
Remember: Recognizable doesn't necessarily mean universally known. This idea simply means that a business's brand will increase its chance to compete successfully for attention and market share in the appropriate space.
It doesn't take an expensive global advertising campaign to brand your business. Branding can be accomplished through partnerships, direct marketing, a robust Web site, and a modicum of good public relations.
Fundamentally, branding online is pretty similar to branding offline. The palette is different because the medium is reduced to a screen instead of a billboard or a print advertisement, but the opportunity for messaging is the same.
When a brick-and-mortar company takes its business to the Web, an online brand usually serves as an extension of its offline presence. Think of FedEx, AT&T, or CNN. For these companies, their online brands reinforce or influence consumers' pre-existing perceptions of each.
There do, however, exist companies that, for the most part, only exist online (think Amazon and Yahoo). Dotcoms need to carefully execute their brands and remember that there are more restrictions due to the constraints of the Web.
Your logo is a visual cornerstone of a company's brand. Your company's identity is visually expressed through its logo, which, along with your company's name, is one of the main things that makes your business memorable.
Successful branding helps to position your company as you hope to be viewed in the minds of your prospects. Remember, your brand is not what YOU think it is. It's what your customers think it is. Your branding efforts (logo, website, advertising, etc.) are simply here to influence how your customers think about you.
