Building Brand Equity

Brand equity is the value that your brand brings to your company. You can measure in many ways, such as the price premium you can charge over your competitors or long-term customer loyalty. The value of a brand is determined by consumer perception of and experiences with the brand. If people think highly of a brand, it has positive brand equity. When a brand consistently under-delivers and disappoints to the point where people recommend that others avoid it, it has negative brand equity.

"Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment."

Advantages of Strong Brand Equity

While brand equity is intangible, its advantages are not. The value that a strong brand brings to a company translates to very real business benefits. Among them:

• Increased margins. Positive brand equity allows you to charge more for your product or service, because people will be willing to pay a premium for your name. When customers are willing to pay extra for a name they trust and/or value, that boosts your profit margins.
• Customer loyalty. Customers are willing to stick with a company they value and trust. Year after year, they'll come back again and again.
• Expansion opportunities. You can leverage the value of your brand to grow your business, by adding new products to your line, and/or expanding into new markets and and areas.
• Negotiating power. Positive brand equity can give you considerable bargaining power in negotiations with vendors, manufacturers and distributors—power that can lower your cost of goods sold. Aligning with a positively perceived brand will serve as an attractive relationship for civic sponsorships too.
• Competitive advantage. When customers pay a premium price for your products and services…and commit to your company, sight unseen…and flock to your new location…that can mean very good things for your business and not-so-good things for your competition.

Your Visual Brand is Vitally Important

The way you visually present your company in all of your communication is more than just merely creative design. It’s a reflection of your company's culture and commitments. The way a business is presented visually is more than just colors and design. As a business owner / representative, you need to work with an experienced brand designer that can manage their creative team to make sure all creative touchpoints represented align with your the desired message.

Brands having a consistent visual identity resonate better in the marketplace. A carefully style, solid identity will, in turn, give you the benefit of spending significantly less money in the long run on your advertising and marketing materials. The less consistent you are in your visual branding, the more difficult it becomes to be recognized. Avoid using random consultants and graphic designers from newspapers, print shops, local magazines, etc. This will only prove to break your company message and alter the visual aspects of your brand.

Brand identity involves all of the moving pieces that together represent how your brand is perceived, and your visual identity includes the visual components of that.

The Key to Having a Unique Visual Brand Identity

Just like when you’re building your brand story, and you’re figuring out your unique personality, positioning and promise. You need to translate that same story into a visual story. Visual content and graphics are always a strong strategic part of any marketing plan. If used correctly and consistently, fresh, original and informative content and graphics can be a very effective way to capture and keep your customers attention and build a solid reputation for your company as its brand is developing in the marketplace.

Creating elements that are visually appealing and consistent will help you gain more recognition. If you don’t have creative people within your organization trained and experienced enough to successfully to create your brand visuals, which most companies do not, hire a professional.

Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment. It will help your brand’s long-term success and overall marketing initiatives. Successful branding doesn’t happen overnight. Successful branding is a long-term investment that can be measured by its long-term impact. Your brand’s visual identity plays a role in the way your organization presents itself to both the people working at your company as your customers.

The importance of knowing your audience

Your visual strategy really begins with understanding who your audience is and, more importantly, who you’re trying to attract. If you don’t know this, nothing about your visual brand, or marketing and operational efforts in general, will matter. Keep in mind, the visual aspects of your brand aren’t for you. They are for your current and potential consumers, so be sure to have that in the back of your mind throughout the entire process. This is another reason to hire a freelance band designer who can remain unbiased and serve as an advocate for the company's brand.

Understanding consumer their wants and needs will help identify how your company's brand needs to be presented.

How to make your visual brand identity stand out

Be unique – It should truly stand apart from the competition. Now, to truly be effective with this, you must have a deep understanding of who the competition is and what their visual brand identity looks like as well. The end goal is for your brand to have a clearly designed differentiated advantage over your competitors.

Be memorable – Aim to make your visual brand so strong that your audience can glance briefly at the visual elements such as an ad or sign and know exactly what they’re looking at, even without any context.

Make everything match – Each element of your visual brand should be cohesive and tie together effortlessly. A single creative source will b provide the best results.

Things to Consider for Creating a Strong Visual Brand Identity

1. Get your logo right

You will likely go through many iterations of this, but it’s worth it. Your logo will be stamped on almost everything that you do so you want to make sure it is done well. The company's desired brand message should shine through it and it should be distinctly aligned with your business.

2. Create a consistent color palette

If you look at well-known brands, they all use consistent color palettes. These big-name brands are consistent with their colors throughout their texts, images, and designs because it helps make them more recognizable.

Choose just a handful of colors and apply them to everything you do. The colors you choose should reflect the personality of your brand, so if you run a daycare, for example, you may want to use bright colors. If you run a law firm, you may want to be a bit more conservative with the colors you choose. An experienced creative brand designer can assist in this process.

3. Choose a font that matches your brand personality

Along with your color palette, you need to be mindful of the font used as it speaks volumes about your business and the products and services it offers. For example, if you run a serious business, you may want to stay away from playful, trending or whimsical fonts, but if your business is light-hearted and fun and that’s how you want to be portrayed, then a fun custom logotype may be a perfect solution.

Rather than focusing on matching your personality, all fonts should align with your target audience’s perception of your business type, while still maintain a clear difference.

4. Choose images that address your audience and reflect your brand

At this point, this should go without saying, but I’ve seen many companies use images on their website, mailers and social media postings that quite frankly make what they do more confusing than if they just didn’t use any imagery at all. It’s alright to have fun with images but be sure they tie back to your brand and speak to your ideal customers.

5. Don’t forget about layout

Many companies believe that if they have their logo, color, and fonts, then they’re good to go, but the reality is they’re only at the starting gate.

How those elements consistently flow together is equally important. How you present them as a unified strategy can truly make or break your brand recognition.

6. Use the visuals to bring out emotions

Emotions are not only sad or happy but can stem from desires of financial achievement, pressure to react on a subject matter or even the needs to align with a particular people group. The more of an emotional connection you can make with your audience, the more likely they’ll be to trust you, follow you via social media, buy from you an eventually refer your company to others.

What do you want your audience to think and feel when they come across your the touchpoints of your company's brand? Ask yourself these questions, and remember, visuals can more quickly tell customers whether your brand is a good fit for them more than words can.

7. Test your initial concepts

Like anything with marketing, you should test and optimize your visual elements until you land on one that truly resonates strongly with your ideal customers.

Once you have the visual component solidified, have an experienced creative brand designer formally document your style guide within your company’s processes. Should you ever need to use other creative sources for advertising, this will be key in ensuring nothing gets missed as you move forward.

With all aspects of marketing, you must remember to put strategy first. It is the backbone of everything that you do. If you can get that in place, creating the visual elements will be much easier because you’ll truly know who your business is, what it represents, and who you want to attract.

Call Brandetour today,  865-777-2763. Our brand consultant and creative team can help you though this vital part of your company's future.

Building Brand Equity

Brand equity is the value that your brand brings to your company. You can measure in many ways, such as the price premium you can charge over your competitors or long-term customer loyalty. The value of a brand is determined by consumer perception of and experiences with the brand. If people think highly of a brand, it has positive brand equity. When a brand consistently under-delivers and disappoints to the point where people recommend that others avoid it, it has negative brand equity.

"Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment."

Advantages of Strong Brand Equity

While brand equity is intangible, its advantages are not. The value that a strong brand brings to a company translates to very real business benefits. Among them:

• Increased margins. Positive brand equity allows you to charge more for your product or service, because people will be willing to pay a premium for your name. When customers are willing to pay extra for a name they trust and/or value, that boosts your profit margins.
• Customer loyalty. Customers are willing to stick with a company they value and trust. Year after year, they'll come back again and again.
• Expansion opportunities. You can leverage the value of your brand to grow your business, by adding new products to your line, and/or expanding into new markets and and areas.
• Negotiating power. Positive brand equity can give you considerable bargaining power in negotiations with vendors, manufacturers and distributors—power that can lower your cost of goods sold. Aligning with a positively perceived brand will serve as an attractive relationship for civic sponsorships too.
• Competitive advantage. When customers pay a premium price for your products and services…and commit to your company, sight unseen…and flock to your new location…that can mean very good things for your business and not-so-good things for your competition.

Your Visual Brand is Vitally Important

The way you visually present your company in all of your communication is more than just merely creative design. It’s a reflection of your company's culture and commitments. The way a business is presented visually is more than just colors and design. As a business owner / representative, you need to work with an experienced brand designer that can manage their creative team to make sure all creative touchpoints represented align with your the desired message.

Brands having a consistent visual identity resonate better in the marketplace. A carefully style, solid identity will, in turn, give you the benefit of spending significantly less money in the long run on your advertising and marketing materials. The less consistent you are in your visual branding, the more difficult it becomes to be recognized. Avoid using random consultants and graphic designers from newspapers, print shops, local magazines, etc. This will only prove to break your company message and alter the visual aspects of your brand.

Brand identity involves all of the moving pieces that together represent how your brand is perceived, and your visual identity includes the visual components of that.

The Key to Having a Unique Visual Brand Identity

Just like when you’re building your brand story, and you’re figuring out your unique personality, positioning and promise. You need to translate that same story into a visual story. Visual content and graphics are always a strong strategic part of any marketing plan. If used correctly and consistently, fresh, original and informative content and graphics can be a very effective way to capture and keep your customers attention and build a solid reputation for your company as its brand is developing in the marketplace.

Creating elements that are visually appealing and consistent will help you gain more recognition. If you don’t have creative people within your organization trained and experienced enough to successfully to create your brand visuals, which most companies do not, hire a professional.

Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment. It will help your brand’s long-term success and overall marketing initiatives. Successful branding doesn’t happen overnight. Successful branding is a long-term investment that can be measured by its long-term impact. Your brand’s visual identity plays a role in the way your organization presents itself to both the people working at your company as your customers.

The importance of knowing your audience

Your visual strategy really begins with understanding who your audience is and, more importantly, who you’re trying to attract. If you don’t know this, nothing about your visual brand, or marketing and operational efforts in general, will matter. Keep in mind, the visual aspects of your brand aren’t for you. They are for your current and potential consumers, so be sure to have that in the back of your mind throughout the entire process. This is another reason to hire a freelance band designer who can remain unbiased and serve as an advocate for the company's brand.

Understanding consumer their wants and needs will help identify how your company's brand needs to be presented.

How to make your visual brand identity stand out

Be unique – It should truly stand apart from the competition. Now, to truly be effective with this, you must have a deep understanding of who the competition is and what their visual brand identity looks like as well. The end goal is for your brand to have a clearly designed differentiated advantage over your competitors.

Be memorable – Aim to make your visual brand so strong that your audience can glance briefly at the visual elements such as an ad or sign and know exactly what they’re looking at, even without any context.

Make everything match – Each element of your visual brand should be cohesive and tie together effortlessly. A single creative source will b provide the best results.

Things to Consider for Creating a Strong Visual Brand Identity

1. Get your logo right

You will likely go through many iterations of this, but it’s worth it. Your logo will be stamped on almost everything that you do so you want to make sure it is done well. The company's desired brand message should shine through it and it should be distinctly aligned with your business.

2. Create a consistent color palette

If you look at well-known brands, they all use consistent color palettes. These big-name brands are consistent with their colors throughout their texts, images, and designs because it helps make them more recognizable.

Choose just a handful of colors and apply them to everything you do. The colors you choose should reflect the personality of your brand, so if you run a daycare, for example, you may want to use bright colors. If you run a law firm, you may want to be a bit more conservative with the colors you choose. An experienced creative brand designer can assist in this process.

3. Choose a font that matches your brand personality

Along with your color palette, you need to be mindful of the font used as it speaks volumes about your business and the products and services it offers. For example, if you run a serious business, you may want to stay away from playful, trending or whimsical fonts, but if your business is light-hearted and fun and that’s how you want to be portrayed, then a fun custom logotype may be a perfect solution.

Rather than focusing on matching your personality, all fonts should align with your target audience’s perception of your business type, while still maintain a clear difference.

4. Choose images that address your audience and reflect your brand

At this point, this should go without saying, but I’ve seen many companies use images on their website, mailers and social media postings that quite frankly make what they do more confusing than if they just didn’t use any imagery at all. It’s alright to have fun with images but be sure they tie back to your brand and speak to your ideal customers.

5. Don’t forget about layout

Many companies believe that if they have their logo, color, and fonts, then they’re good to go, but the reality is they’re only at the starting gate.

How those elements consistently flow together is equally important. How you present them as a unified strategy can truly make or break your brand recognition.

6. Use the visuals to bring out emotions

Emotions are not only sad or happy but can stem from desires of financial achievement, pressure to react on a subject matter or even the needs to align with a particular people group. The more of an emotional connection you can make with your audience, the more likely they’ll be to trust you, follow you via social media, buy from you an eventually refer your company to others.

What do you want your audience to think and feel when they come across your the touchpoints of your company's brand? Ask yourself these questions, and remember, visuals can more quickly tell customers whether your brand is a good fit for them more than words can.

7. Test your initial concepts

Like anything with marketing, you should test and optimize your visual elements until you land on one that truly resonates strongly with your ideal customers.

Once you have the visual component solidified, have an experienced creative brand designer formally document your style guide within your company’s processes. Should you ever need to use other creative sources for advertising, this will be key in ensuring nothing gets missed as you move forward.

With all aspects of marketing, you must remember to put strategy first. It is the backbone of everything that you do. If you can get that in place, creating the visual elements will be much easier because you’ll truly know who your business is, what it represents, and who you want to attract.

Call Brandetour today,  865-777-2763. Our brand consultant and creative team can help you though this vital part of your company's future.

Building Brand Equity

Brand equity is the value that your brand brings to your company. You can measure in many ways, such as the price premium you can charge over your competitors or long-term customer loyalty. The value of a brand is determined by consumer perception of and experiences with the brand. If people think highly of a brand, it has positive brand equity. When a brand consistently under-delivers and disappoints to the point where people recommend that others avoid it, it has negative brand equity.

"Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment."

Advantages of Strong Brand Equity

While brand equity is intangible, its advantages are not. The value that a strong brand brings to a company translates to very real business benefits. Among them:

• Increased margins. Positive brand equity allows you to charge more for your product or service, because people will be willing to pay a premium for your name. When customers are willing to pay extra for a name they trust and/or value, that boosts your profit margins.
• Customer loyalty. Customers are willing to stick with a company they value and trust. Year after year, they'll come back again and again.
• Expansion opportunities. You can leverage the value of your brand to grow your business, by adding new products to your line, and/or expanding into new markets and and areas.
• Negotiating power. Positive brand equity can give you considerable bargaining power in negotiations with vendors, manufacturers and distributors—power that can lower your cost of goods sold. Aligning with a positively perceived brand will serve as an attractive relationship for civic sponsorships too.
• Competitive advantage. When customers pay a premium price for your products and services…and commit to your company, sight unseen…and flock to your new location…that can mean very good things for your business and not-so-good things for your competition.

Your Visual Brand is Vitally Important

The way you visually present your company in all of your communication is more than just merely creative design. It’s a reflection of your company's culture and commitments. The way a business is presented visually is more than just colors and design. As a business owner / representative, you need to work with an experienced brand designer that can manage their creative team to make sure all creative touchpoints represented align with your the desired message.

Brands having a consistent visual identity resonate better in the marketplace. A carefully style, solid identity will, in turn, give you the benefit of spending significantly less money in the long run on your advertising and marketing materials. The less consistent you are in your visual branding, the more difficult it becomes to be recognized. Avoid using random consultants and graphic designers from newspapers, print shops, local magazines, etc. This will only prove to break your company message and alter the visual aspects of your brand.

Brand identity involves all of the moving pieces that together represent how your brand is perceived, and your visual identity includes the visual components of that.

The Key to Having a Unique Visual Brand Identity

Just like when you’re building your brand story, and you’re figuring out your unique personality, positioning and promise. You need to translate that same story into a visual story. Visual content and graphics are always a strong strategic part of any marketing plan. If used correctly and consistently, fresh, original and informative content and graphics can be a very effective way to capture and keep your customers attention and build a solid reputation for your company as its brand is developing in the marketplace.

Creating elements that are visually appealing and consistent will help you gain more recognition. If you don’t have creative people within your organization trained and experienced enough to successfully to create your brand visuals, which most companies do not, hire a professional.

Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment. It will help your brand’s long-term success and overall marketing initiatives. Successful branding doesn’t happen overnight. Successful branding is a long-term investment that can be measured by its long-term impact. Your brand’s visual identity plays a role in the way your organization presents itself to both the people working at your company as your customers.

The importance of knowing your audience

Your visual strategy really begins with understanding who your audience is and, more importantly, who you’re trying to attract. If you don’t know this, nothing about your visual brand, or marketing and operational efforts in general, will matter. Keep in mind, the visual aspects of your brand aren’t for you. They are for your current and potential consumers, so be sure to have that in the back of your mind throughout the entire process. This is another reason to hire a freelance band designer who can remain unbiased and serve as an advocate for the company's brand.

Understanding consumer their wants and needs will help identify how your company's brand needs to be presented.

How to make your visual brand identity stand out

Be unique – It should truly stand apart from the competition. Now, to truly be effective with this, you must have a deep understanding of who the competition is and what their visual brand identity looks like as well. The end goal is for your brand to have a clearly designed differentiated advantage over your competitors.

Be memorable – Aim to make your visual brand so strong that your audience can glance briefly at the visual elements such as an ad or sign and know exactly what they’re looking at, even without any context.

Make everything match – Each element of your visual brand should be cohesive and tie together effortlessly. A single creative source will b provide the best results.

Things to Consider for Creating a Strong Visual Brand Identity

1. Get your logo right

You will likely go through many iterations of this, but it’s worth it. Your logo will be stamped on almost everything that you do so you want to make sure it is done well. The company's desired brand message should shine through it and it should be distinctly aligned with your business.

2. Create a consistent color palette

If you look at well-known brands, they all use consistent color palettes. These big-name brands are consistent with their colors throughout their texts, images, and designs because it helps make them more recognizable.

Choose just a handful of colors and apply them to everything you do. The colors you choose should reflect the personality of your brand, so if you run a daycare, for example, you may want to use bright colors. If you run a law firm, you may want to be a bit more conservative with the colors you choose. An experienced creative brand designer can assist in this process.

3. Choose a font that matches your brand personality

Along with your color palette, you need to be mindful of the font used as it speaks volumes about your business and the products and services it offers. For example, if you run a serious business, you may want to stay away from playful, trending or whimsical fonts, but if your business is light-hearted and fun and that’s how you want to be portrayed, then a fun custom logotype may be a perfect solution.

Rather than focusing on matching your personality, all fonts should align with your target audience’s perception of your business type, while still maintain a clear difference.

4. Choose images that address your audience and reflect your brand

At this point, this should go without saying, but I’ve seen many companies use images on their website, mailers and social media postings that quite frankly make what they do more confusing than if they just didn’t use any imagery at all. It’s alright to have fun with images but be sure they tie back to your brand and speak to your ideal customers.

5. Don’t forget about layout

Many companies believe that if they have their logo, color, and fonts, then they’re good to go, but the reality is they’re only at the starting gate.

How those elements consistently flow together is equally important. How you present them as a unified strategy can truly make or break your brand recognition.

6. Use the visuals to bring out emotions

Emotions are not only sad or happy but can stem from desires of financial achievement, pressure to react on a subject matter or even the needs to align with a particular people group. The more of an emotional connection you can make with your audience, the more likely they’ll be to trust you, follow you via social media, buy from you an eventually refer your company to others.

What do you want your audience to think and feel when they come across your the touchpoints of your company's brand? Ask yourself these questions, and remember, visuals can more quickly tell customers whether your brand is a good fit for them more than words can.

7. Test your initial concepts

Like anything with marketing, you should test and optimize your visual elements until you land on one that truly resonates strongly with your ideal customers.

Once you have the visual component solidified, have an experienced creative brand designer formally document your style guide within your company’s processes. Should you ever need to use other creative sources for advertising, this will be key in ensuring nothing gets missed as you move forward.

With all aspects of marketing, you must remember to put strategy first. It is the backbone of everything that you do. If you can get that in place, creating the visual elements will be much easier because you’ll truly know who your business is, what it represents, and who you want to attract.

Call Brandetour today,  865-777-2763. Our brand consultant and creative team can help you though this vital part of your company's future.

Building Brand Equity

Brand equity is the value that your brand brings to your company. You can measure in many ways, such as the price premium you can charge over your competitors or long-term customer loyalty. The value of a brand is determined by consumer perception of and experiences with the brand. If people think highly of a brand, it has positive brand equity. When a brand consistently under-delivers and disappoints to the point where people recommend that others avoid it, it has negative brand equity.

"Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment."

Advantages of Strong Brand Equity

While brand equity is intangible, its advantages are not. The value that a strong brand brings to a company translates to very real business benefits. Among them:

• Increased margins. Positive brand equity allows you to charge more for your product or service, because people will be willing to pay a premium for your name. When customers are willing to pay extra for a name they trust and/or value, that boosts your profit margins.
• Customer loyalty. Customers are willing to stick with a company they value and trust. Year after year, they'll come back again and again.
• Expansion opportunities. You can leverage the value of your brand to grow your business, by adding new products to your line, and/or expanding into new markets and and areas.
• Negotiating power. Positive brand equity can give you considerable bargaining power in negotiations with vendors, manufacturers and distributors—power that can lower your cost of goods sold. Aligning with a positively perceived brand will serve as an attractive relationship for civic sponsorships too.
• Competitive advantage. When customers pay a premium price for your products and services…and commit to your company, sight unseen…and flock to your new location…that can mean very good things for your business and not-so-good things for your competition.

Your Visual Brand is Vitally Important

The way you visually present your company in all of your communication is more than just merely creative design. It’s a reflection of your company's culture and commitments. The way a business is presented visually is more than just colors and design. As a business owner / representative, you need to work with an experienced brand designer that can manage their creative team to make sure all creative touchpoints represented align with your the desired message.

Brands having a consistent visual identity resonate better in the marketplace. A carefully style, solid identity will, in turn, give you the benefit of spending significantly less money in the long run on your advertising and marketing materials. The less consistent you are in your visual branding, the more difficult it becomes to be recognized. Avoid using random consultants and graphic designers from newspapers, print shops, local magazines, etc. This will only prove to break your company message and alter the visual aspects of your brand.

Brand identity involves all of the moving pieces that together represent how your brand is perceived, and your visual identity includes the visual components of that.

The Key to Having a Unique Visual Brand Identity

Just like when you’re building your brand story, and you’re figuring out your unique personality, positioning and promise. You need to translate that same story into a visual story. Visual content and graphics are always a strong strategic part of any marketing plan. If used correctly and consistently, fresh, original and informative content and graphics can be a very effective way to capture and keep your customers attention and build a solid reputation for your company as its brand is developing in the marketplace.

Creating elements that are visually appealing and consistent will help you gain more recognition. If you don’t have creative people within your organization trained and experienced enough to successfully to create your brand visuals, which most companies do not, hire a professional.

Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment. It will help your brand’s long-term success and overall marketing initiatives. Successful branding doesn’t happen overnight. Successful branding is a long-term investment that can be measured by its long-term impact. Your brand’s visual identity plays a role in the way your organization presents itself to both the people working at your company as your customers.

The importance of knowing your audience

Your visual strategy really begins with understanding who your audience is and, more importantly, who you’re trying to attract. If you don’t know this, nothing about your visual brand, or marketing and operational efforts in general, will matter. Keep in mind, the visual aspects of your brand aren’t for you. They are for your current and potential consumers, so be sure to have that in the back of your mind throughout the entire process. This is another reason to hire a freelance band designer who can remain unbiased and serve as an advocate for the company's brand.

Understanding consumer their wants and needs will help identify how your company's brand needs to be presented.

How to make your visual brand identity stand out

Be unique – It should truly stand apart from the competition. Now, to truly be effective with this, you must have a deep understanding of who the competition is and what their visual brand identity looks like as well. The end goal is for your brand to have a clearly designed differentiated advantage over your competitors.

Be memorable – Aim to make your visual brand so strong that your audience can glance briefly at the visual elements such as an ad or sign and know exactly what they’re looking at, even without any context.

Make everything match – Each element of your visual brand should be cohesive and tie together effortlessly. A single creative source will b provide the best results.

Things to Consider for Creating a Strong Visual           Brand Identity

1. Get your logo right

You will likely go through many iterations of this, but it’s worth it. Your logo will be stamped on almost everything that you do so you want to make sure it is done well. The company's desired brand message should shine through it and it should be distinctly aligned with your business.

2. Create a consistent color palette

If you look at well-known brands, they all use consistent color palettes. These big-name brands are consistent with their colors throughout their texts, images, and designs because it helps make them more recognizable.

Choose just a handful of colors and apply them to everything you do. The colors you choose should reflect the personality of your brand, so if you run a daycare, for example, you may want to use bright colors. If you run a law firm, you may want to be a bit more conservative with the colors you choose. An experienced creative brand designer can assist in this process.

3. Choose a font that matches your brand personality

Along with your color palette, you need to be mindful of the font used as it speaks volumes about your business and the products and services it offers. For example, if you run a serious business, you may want to stay away from playful, trending or whimsical fonts, but if your business is light-hearted and fun and that’s how you want to be portrayed, then a fun custom logotype may be a perfect solution.

Rather than focusing on matching your personality, all fonts should align with your target audience’s perception of your business type, while still maintain a clear difference.

4. Choose images that address your audience and reflect your brand

At this point, this should go without saying, but I’ve seen many companies use images on their website, mailers and social media postings that quite frankly make what they do more confusing than if they just didn’t use any imagery at all. It’s alright to have fun with images but be sure they tie back to your brand and speak to your ideal customers.

5. Don’t forget about layout

Many companies believe that if they have their logo, color, and fonts, then they’re good to go, but the reality is they’re only at the starting gate.

How those elements consistently flow together is equally important. How you present them as a unified strategy can truly make or break your brand recognition.

6. Use the visuals to bring out emotions

Emotions are not only sad or happy but can stem from desires of financial achievement, pressure to react on a subject matter or even the needs to align with a particular people group. The more of an emotional connection you can make with your audience, the more likely they’ll be to trust you, follow you via social media, buy from you an eventually refer your company to others.

What do you want your audience to think and feel when they come across your the touchpoints of your company's brand? Ask yourself these questions, and remember, visuals can more quickly tell customers whether your brand is a good fit for them more than words can.

7. Test your initial concepts

Like anything with marketing, you should test and optimize your visual elements until you land on one that truly resonates strongly with your ideal customers.

Once you have the visual component solidified, have an experienced creative brand designer formally document your style guide within your company’s processes. Should you ever need to use other creative sources for advertising, this will be key in ensuring nothing gets missed as you move forward.

With all aspects of marketing, you must remember to put strategy first. It is the backbone of everything that you do. If you can get that in place, creating the visual elements will be much easier because you’ll truly know who your business is, what it represents, and who you want to attract.

Call Brandetour today,  865-777-2763. Our brand consultant and creative team can help you though this vital part of your company's future.

Building Brand Equity

Brand equity is the value that your brand brings to your company. You can measure in many ways, such as the price premium you can charge over your competitors or long-term customer loyalty. The value of a brand is determined by consumer perception of and experiences with the brand. If people think highly of a brand, it has positive brand equity. When a brand consistently under-delivers and disappoints to the point where people recommend that others avoid it, it has negative brand equity.

"Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment."

Advantages of Strong Brand Equity

While brand equity is intangible, its advantages are not. The value that a strong brand brings to a company translates to very real business benefits. Among them:

• Increased margins. Positive brand equity allows you to charge more for your product or service, because people will be willing to pay a premium for your name. When customers are willing to pay extra for a name they trust and/or value, that boosts your profit margins.
• Customer loyalty. Customers are willing to stick with a company they value and trust. Year after year, they'll come back again and again.
• Expansion opportunities. You can leverage the value of your brand to grow your business, by adding new products to your line, and/or expanding into new markets and and areas.
• Negotiating power. Positive brand equity can give you considerable bargaining power in negotiations with vendors, manufacturers and distributors—power that can lower your cost of goods sold. Aligning with a positively perceived brand will serve as an attractive relationship for civic sponsorships too.
• Competitive advantage. When customers pay a premium price for your products and services…and commit to your company, sight unseen…and flock to your new location…that can mean very good things for your business and not-so-good things for your competition.

Your Visual Brand is Vitally Important

The way you visually present your company in all of your communication is more than just merely creative design. It’s a reflection of your company's culture and commitments. The way a business is presented visually is more than just colors and design. As a business owner / representative, you need to work with an experienced brand designer that can manage their creative team to make sure all creative touchpoints represented align with your the desired message.

Brands having a consistent visual identity resonate better in the marketplace. A carefully style, solid identity will, in turn, give you the benefit of spending significantly less money in the long run on your advertising and marketing materials. The less consistent you are in your visual branding, the more difficult it becomes to be recognized. Avoid using random consultants and graphic designers from newspapers, print shops, local magazines, etc. This will only prove to break your company message and alter the visual aspects of your brand.

Brand identity involves all of the moving pieces that together represent how your brand is perceived, and your visual identity includes the visual components of that.

The Key to Having a Unique Visual               Brand Identity

Just like when you’re building your brand story, and you’re figuring out your unique personality, positioning and promise. You need to translate that same story into a visual story. Visual content and graphics are always a strong strategic part of any marketing plan. If used correctly and consistently, fresh, original and informative content and graphics can be a very effective way to capture and keep your customers attention and build a solid reputation for your company as its brand is developing in the marketplace.

Creating elements that are visually appealing and consistent will help you gain more recognition. If you don’t have creative people within your organization trained and experienced enough to successfully to create your brand visuals, which most companies do not, hire a professional.

Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment. It will help your brand’s long-term success and overall marketing initiatives. Successful branding doesn’t happen overnight. Successful branding is a long-term investment that can be measured by its long-term impact. Your brand’s visual identity plays a role in the way your organization presents itself to both the people working at your company as your customers.

The importance of knowing your audience

Your visual strategy really begins with understanding who your audience is and, more importantly, who you’re trying to attract. If you don’t know this, nothing about your visual brand, or marketing and operational efforts in general, will matter. Keep in mind, the visual aspects of your brand aren’t for you. They are for your current and potential consumers, so be sure to have that in the back of your mind throughout the entire process. This is another reason to hire a freelance band designer who can remain unbiased and serve as an advocate for the company's brand.

Understanding consumer their wants and needs will help identify how your company's brand needs to be presented.

How to make your visual brand identity stand out

Be unique – It should truly stand apart from the competition. Now, to truly be effective with this, you must have a deep understanding of who the competition is and what their visual brand identity looks like as well. The end goal is for your brand to have a clearly designed differentiated advantage over your competitors.

Be memorable – Aim to make your visual brand so strong that your audience can glance briefly at the visual elements such as an ad or sign and know exactly what they’re looking at, even without any context.

Make everything match – Each element of your visual brand should be cohesive and tie together effortlessly. A single creative source will b provide the best results.

Things to Consider for Creating a Strong Visual          Brand Identity

1. Get your logo right

You will likely go through many iterations of this, but it’s worth it. Your logo will be stamped on almost everything that you do so you want to make sure it is done well. The company's desired brand message should shine through it and it should be distinctly aligned with your business.

2. Create a consistent color palette

If you look at well-known brands, they all use consistent color palettes. These big-name brands are consistent with their colors throughout their texts, images, and designs because it helps make them more recognizable.

Choose just a handful of colors and apply them to everything you do. The colors you choose should reflect the personality of your brand, so if you run a daycare, for example, you may want to use bright colors. If you run a law firm, you may want to be a bit more conservative with the colors you choose. An experienced creative brand designer can assist in this process.

3. Choose a font that matches your brand personality

Along with your color palette, you need to be mindful of the font used as it speaks volumes about your business and the products and services it offers. For example, if you run a serious business, you may want to stay away from playful, trending or whimsical fonts, but if your business is light-hearted and fun and that’s how you want to be portrayed, then a fun custom logotype may be a perfect solution.

Rather than focusing on matching your personality, all fonts should align with your target audience’s perception of your business type, while still maintain a clear difference.

4. Choose images that address your audience and reflect your brand

At this point, this should go without saying, but I’ve seen many companies use images on their website, mailers and social media postings that quite frankly make what they do more confusing than if they just didn’t use any imagery at all. It’s alright to have fun with images but be sure they tie back to your brand and speak to your ideal customers.

5. Don’t forget about layout

Many companies believe that if they have their logo, color, and fonts, then they’re good to go, but the reality is they’re only at the starting gate.

How those elements consistently flow together is equally important. How you present them as a unified strategy can truly make or break your brand recognition.

6. Use the visuals to bring out emotions

Emotions are not only sad or happy but can stem from desires of financial achievement, pressure to react on a subject matter or even the needs to align with a particular people group. The more of an emotional connection you can make with your audience, the more likely they’ll be to trust you, follow you via social media, buy from you an eventually refer your company to others.

What do you want your audience to think and feel when they come across your the touchpoints of your company's brand? Ask yourself these questions, and remember, visuals can more quickly tell customers whether your brand is a good fit for them more than words can.

7. Test your initial concepts

Like anything with marketing, you should test and optimize your visual elements until you land on one that truly resonates strongly with your ideal customers.

Once you have the visual component solidified, have an experienced creative brand designer formally document your style guide within your company’s processes. Should you ever need to use other creative sources for advertising, this will be key in ensuring nothing gets missed as you move forward.

With all aspects of marketing, you must remember to put strategy first. It is the backbone of everything that you do. If you can get that in place, creating the visual elements will be much easier because you’ll truly know who your business is, what it represents, and who you want to attract.

Call Brandetour today,  865-777-2763. Our brand consultant and creative team can help you though this vital part of your company's future.

Building

Brand Equity

Brand equity is the value that your brand brings to your company. You can measure in many ways, such as the price premium you can charge over your competitors or long-term customer loyalty. The value of a brand is determined by consumer perception of and experiences with the brand. If people think highly of a brand, it has positive brand equity. When a brand consistently under-delivers and disappoints to the point where people recommend that others avoid it, it has negative brand equity.

"Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment."

Advantages of Strong Brand Equity

While brand equity is intangible, its advantages are not. The value that a strong brand brings to a company translates to very real business benefits. Among them:

• Increased margins. Positive brand equity allows you to charge more for your product or service, because people will be willing to pay a premium for your name. When customers are willing to pay extra for a name they trust and/or value, that boosts your profit margins.
• Customer loyalty. Customers are willing to stick with a company they value and trust. Year after year, they'll come back again and again.
• Expansion opportunities. You can leverage the value of your brand to grow your business, by adding new products to your line, and/or expanding into new markets and and areas.
• Negotiating power. Positive brand equity can give you considerable bargaining power in negotiations with vendors, manufacturers and distributors—power that can lower your cost of goods sold. Aligning with a positively perceived brand will serve as an attractive relationship for civic sponsorships too.
• Competitive advantage. When customers pay a premium price for your products and services…and commit to your company, sight unseen…and flock to your new location…that can mean very good things for your business and not-so-good things for your competition.

Your Visual Brand is Vitally Important

The way you visually present your company in all of your communication is more than just merely creative design. It’s a reflection of your company's culture and commitments. The way a business is presented visually is more than just colors and design. As a business owner / representative, you need to work with an experienced brand designer that can manage their creative team to make sure all creative touchpoints represented align with your the desired message.

Brands having a consistent visual identity resonate better in the marketplace. A carefully style, solid identity will, in turn, give you the benefit of spending significantly less money in the long run on your advertising and marketing materials. The less consistent you are in your visual branding, the more difficult it becomes to be recognized. Avoid using random consultants and graphic designers from newspapers, print shops, local magazines, etc. This will only prove to break your company message and alter the visual aspects of your brand.

Brand identity involves all of the moving pieces that together represent how your brand is perceived, and your visual identity includes the visual components of that.

The Key to Having a Unique Visual Brand Identity

Just like when you’re building your brand story, and you’re figuring out your unique personality, positioning and promise. You need to translate that same story into a visual story. Visual content and graphics are always a strong strategic part of any marketing plan. If used correctly and consistently, fresh, original and informative content and graphics can be a very effective way to capture and keep your customers attention and build a solid reputation for your company as its brand is developing in the marketplace.

Creating elements that are visually appealing and consistent will help you gain more recognition. If you don’t have creative people within your organization trained and experienced enough to successfully to create your brand visuals, which most companies do not, hire a professional.

Don’t look at your visual brand as strictly an expense but as an important investment. It will help your brand’s long-term success and overall marketing initiatives. Successful branding doesn’t happen overnight. Successful branding is a long-term investment that can be measured by its long-term impact. Your brand’s visual identity plays a role in the way your organization presents itself to both the people working at your company as your customers.

The importance of knowing your audience

Your visual strategy really begins with understanding who your audience is and, more importantly, who you’re trying to attract. If you don’t know this, nothing about your visual brand, or marketing and operational efforts in general, will matter. Keep in mind, the visual aspects of your brand aren’t for you. They are for your current and potential consumers, so be sure to have that in the back of your mind throughout the entire process. This is another reason to hire a freelance band designer who can remain unbiased and serve as an advocate for the company's brand.

Understanding consumer their wants and needs will help identify how your company's brand needs to be presented.

How to make your visual brand identity stand out

Be unique – It should truly stand apart from the competition. Now, to truly be effective with this, you must have a deep understanding of who the competition is and what their visual brand identity looks like as well. The end goal is for your brand to have a clearly designed differentiated advantage over your competitors.

Be memorable – Aim to make your visual brand so strong that your audience can glance briefly at the visual elements such as an ad or sign and know exactly what they’re looking at, even without any context.

Make everything match – Each element of your visual brand should be cohesive and tie together effortlessly. A single creative source will b provide the best results.

Things to Consider for Creating a Strong Visual Brand Identity

1. Get your logo right

You will likely go through many iterations of this, but it’s worth it. Your logo will be stamped on almost everything that you do so you want to make sure it is done well. The company's desired brand message should shine through it and it should be distinctly aligned with your business.

2. Create a consistent color palette

If you look at well-known brands, they all use consistent color palettes. These big-name brands are consistent with their colors throughout their texts, images, and designs because it helps make them more recognizable.

Choose just a handful of colors and apply them to everything you do. The colors you choose should reflect the personality of your brand, so if you run a daycare, for example, you may want to use bright colors. If you run a law firm, you may want to be a bit more conservative with the colors you choose. An experienced creative brand designer can assist in this process.

3. Choose a font that matches your brand personality

Along with your color palette, you need to be mindful of the font used as it speaks volumes about your business and the products and services it offers. For example, if you run a serious business, you may want to stay away from playful, trending or whimsical fonts, but if your business is light-hearted and fun and that’s how you want to be portrayed, then a fun custom logotype may be a perfect solution.

Rather than focusing on matching your personality, all fonts should align with your target audience’s perception of your business type, while still maintain a clear difference.

4. Choose images that address your audience and reflect your brand

At this point, this should go without saying, but I’ve seen many companies use images on their website, mailers and social media postings that quite frankly make what they do more confusing than if they just didn’t use any imagery at all. It’s alright to have fun with images but be sure they tie back to your brand and speak to your ideal customers.

5. Don’t forget about layout

Many companies believe that if they have their logo, color, and fonts, then they’re good to go, but the reality is they’re only at the starting gate.

How those elements consistently flow together is equally important. How you present them as a unified strategy can truly make or break your brand recognition.

6. Use the visuals to bring out emotions

Emotions are not only sad or happy but can stem from desires of financial achievement, pressure to react on a subject matter or even the needs to align with a particular people group. The more of an emotional connection you can make with your audience, the more likely they’ll be to trust you, follow you via social media, buy from you an eventually refer your company to others.

What do you want your audience to think and feel when they come across your the touchpoints of your company's brand? Ask yourself these questions, and remember, visuals can more quickly tell customers whether your brand is a good fit for them more than words can.

7. Test your initial concepts

Like anything with marketing, you should test and optimize your visual elements until you land on one that truly resonates strongly with your ideal customers.

Once you have the visual component solidified, have an experienced creative brand designer formally document your style guide within your company’s processes. Should you ever need to use other creative sources for advertising, this will be key in ensuring nothing gets missed as you move forward.

With all aspects of marketing, you must remember to put strategy first. It is the backbone of everything that you do. If you can get that in place, creating the visual elements will be much easier because you’ll truly know who your business is, what it represents, and who you want to attract.

Call Brandetour today,  865-777-2763. Our brand consultant and creative team can help you though this vital part of your company's future.