Did you know it takes just 3 second for someone to form an opinion of you when meeting for the first time?
Just as our personal image creates an impression, so does our businesses brand. Customers portray a business in a certain way because of their branding. Big brands spend millions of dollars to ensure consumers are given the desired feel when associating with their brand.
Think of the well known sporting brand Nike.
Their brand represents athletics.
Is this as they sell sports or because they sponsor sporting events or is it as their ads show images of people being healthy and athletic?
Wanting to ensure your brand awareness is portraying the correct message to potential customers? Read on to learn more including:
- The Importance of Logos
- Keep Your Branding Consistent
- Social Media Profiles
- Correct Branding
The Importance of Logos
One way a brands message is conveyed is through their logo. The logo must align with the message wanting to be portrayed by a brand.
Think of Coca Cola whose logo is red, a fun yet solid colour. Coca Cola’s advertising represents fun; spending time with friends and family or enjoying time at the beach or outdoors. The message given is drinking Coca Cola soft drinks is fun.
Your logo needs to represent your business.
Colourful logos are often used to promote a brand where children are involved such as:
- play groups
- day cares
- schools
- face painting
Colourful logos are also associated with art and design, with graphic designers and artists known for having colourful logos.
Is a Colourful Logo Suitable for Your Business?
It depends on your business and what services you offer. Industries such as law, finance and IT professionals may not find it suitable.
When choosing logo colours, you must consider where your logo will be displayed, printed and used. The colour for digital application is a hex colour. A printing application is RGB or CMYK depending on where and how it is printed.
Hex colours have the most colours in the colour spectrum and CMYK have the least. Some colours such as lime green and purple don’t convert very well from digital viewing to commercial printing.
Another another printing colour spectrum are Pantone Colours PMS. These are single coloured inks that are often used when colours don’t translate well from Hex to CMYK. Cadbury chocolate has a specific PMS purple they use to maintain their brand integrity. To maintain the consistency of your logos colour, consider using PMS for printing.
Keep Your Branding Consistent
Once you have your logo, you need to think about your whole branding. Make sure your brand is always represented correctly using the correct colours. It is worth investing in the services of a graphic designer to create a style guide for your business. This guide will include your exact colours for printing, digital and signage so that your logo looks the same no matter the medium it is on. It is advisable this style guide includes instructions on how and when to use your logo. For example, the space required between your logo and anything else on the page or screen.
Social Media Profiles
Consistency in your brand also extends to your presence on social media.
Are all your social media platforms pages the same?
Is your brand recognisable at a glance?
This is especially important when choosing an appropriate picture of yourself as a profile picture. Ensure your profile picture is kept up to date and if you don’t have a recent photograph of yourself, consider having new personal professional shots taken. It is important your profile picture reflects how you look now, and you are using the same or similar photos for all your profile pictures so that you are building that brand recognition.
Should you use a personal photo for your profile picture on social media? Yes, absolutely.
There would be very cases where you shouldn’t.
People do business with people and it is your people that will bring your customers in and keep them coming back.
In The Ultimate Guide to Social Media by Mitch Jackson Dakota Shane Nunley said
“We don’t buy from a robot or a faceless logo. Instead, we buy from a fellow person.”
For this reason, selling goodwill has becoming a thing of the past for businesses as clients will generally follow the owners or staff with whom they have a relationship.
Correct Branding
Getting your businesses branding right is crucial and is often the difference between you being recognised as a hobby business or a serious business.
Branding will often evolve over the years you are in business so it’s important to tweak it if necessary. Ensure your brand isn’t totally on trend otherwise it may not be suitable long term.
Considering Changing Your Branding?
Before you completely change your branding, it’s crucial to think it through as it can potentially cause disconnect with your current customers and set your business back. Unless of course you are completely changing your services or the audience you now want to attract, then a new brand may be best.
Cathy Is The Attraction Maven at CATCO Enterprises and is Your Local Branding and Digital Marketing Expert
Cathy Smith has run the same Marketing Agency for more than 19 years and has helped hundreds of business owners achieve their marketing goals. If you want to build your businesses brand awareness, social media channels, increase traffic to your website or develop a digital marketing strategy for your business call Cathy today on 0409 489 464.
