By Amanda Bala
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a “name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers. Wikipedia defines a brand as the identity of a specific product, service, or business. A brand can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, color combination or slogan. What does this mean for your business? How does branding affect you?
When we hear the name Coca Cola, what image comes to mind? For most, it is the vivid red label of the bottle. Though the label has changed slightly through the years, the color has remained constant. So much that there is actually a font color called “Coke Red”. This is their brand. It is a feeling, an emotion, an image that elicits a response. Whether it is positive or negative, it has a strong mental picture and feeling that goes with the company.
Your brand is who you are and what you do personified. It is the look and feel of your business. Many people think a company’s logo is their brand. This is quite untrue. The logo is a part of your brand. However, it is just one piece of the equation. You take your logo and build your brand around it.
Your brand needs to be distinctive. It must set you apart from your competition. Just like the logo is the cornerstone for a brand, your brand is the cornerstone to all of your marketing communications. It strengthens your position and sets the stage for your entire marketing framework.
There are many important things that your brand should convey. It must clearly deliver your message to potential customers. It must connect with them emotionally and confirm your credibility in your area of expertise. It needs to motivate your potential clients to buy what it is you are selling. Lastly, it must promote loyalty from those clients to return to you in the future.
Finally, a brand is consistent. Colors and themes are carried throughout. As mentioned above with Coca Cola, through time they have varied the label slightly. However, the overall appearance and color have remained the same. A brand can be upgraded and enhanced after it has served its time and it can be varied as long as the logo, colors, fonts, etc. remain consistent.
Thank you for the compliment on our website! Our sister company Strive Creative (strivecreative.com) actually designed the site. Our goal was to make the site visually appealing, but also meaningful and effective as far as the content is concerned. We are grateful to receive comments like yours and we really appreciate you taking the time to send us your thoughts. Every thought good or bad is helpful. May I ask how you found us? Thanks again and when you are ready to design/develop your blog, feel free to give us a call.
I actually decided to make a simple video about this, I would be grateful if you could maybe take a second to look it and perhaps leave a message about what you think, I left the video url in the “website” field, hopefully you can get to it, I appreciate it a lot
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Thank you! We try hard to keep the site attractive and informative! Please check back for future blogs!
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One piece of advice we can give for trying to get people to your blog is to try and submit some of your articles to sites like Digg. That may help generate more traffic to your site. People have found several of our articles, but we are still trying to get more out there! Good luck!
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Thank you. Our theme was designed by Strive Creative. You can check them out at http://www.strivecreative.com.
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Thank you for all of the encouraging posts! We hope everyone keeps checking back with us for more information on other topics!
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