Firstly – what is a brand?

There’s a good question! The answer is complex in that it differs for everyone. But simply put, a Brand is everything your prospective client feels or believes when they hear and see your name and logo.  It is their emotional response and their instinctive reaction to your company name.

A strong brand is the sum of all the positive associations that have been forged between the company and the client – it cannot be bought or designed. It can however, be earned through building excellent relationships with your audience. These relationships are what set you apart from your competition.

Lets’s take a look at five ways to strengthen a company brand.

1. Create A Strong Logo Design

Designing a logo is easy, right? Think again!

Creating a unique, memorable and versatile logo takes time and experience and is a vital element of a brand. It is essential to get it right!

A logo is often a customer’s first introduction to a company and can impact their attitude towards products, affect buying decisions and set an overall perception of a brand. Hiring a Graphic Designer to design or update a logo offers the best creative solution to ensure a seamless process to produce effective and lasting results.

2. Tell the Story of Your Brand

Everyone loves a happy ending, so why not share emotionally moving and compelling stories with your audience. Allow them experience first-hand how your product can help them grow and improve their business.

And it’s not all about the ending, so share the journey too. Stories of how you got where you are and how you achieved it can inspire others in ways you can’t measure.

Case studies and testimonials are a perfect starting point to grow your brand and instil trust and confidence in your customers.

Take a look at some of our own success stories.

3. Engage with Your Audience

Social media has become part of our everyday work and personal lives, with almost 70% of Irish Social Media users following brands and businesses via  different platforms multiple times a day.

Social media is ideal for a variety of purposes. Whether it’s social selling, content marketing or customer support, social media gives you the perfect opportunity to reach your target audience and build your brand.

Interacting and engaging with your customers via social media can be a great way to reach your customers in a more personal way and posting occasional staff news and photos allows your customers to get to know the people behind your brand.

However, it is important to find the right platforms that support your brand image. Here is a brief outline of the most popular platform and their uses:

• Facebook is by the far the best platform for promoting brand awareness, and has a diverse user base.
• YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos.
• Instagram is a great option for brands that rely heavily on imagery.
• Twitter is used to share short messages and online news. A hashtag—written with a # symbol—is used to index keywords or topics on Twitter.
• Pinterest is an excellent social network to reach women, especially for brands selling jewellery or clothing.
• LinkedIn is a stronger choice for promoting business-related content and connecting with other corporate influencers.

Each platform also gives you the option to advertise your brand and completely customise your look. Using your profile pictures, headers, and banners to their full potential can be tricky but thankfully our designers can help you create inspiring and clever designs like this example below.

4. Use Printing as a Marketing Tool

Be more proactive during meetings by offering your customer a well designed and informative brochure rather than suggest they search for the information online! While websites & social media platforms are great online marketing, tools they should work alongside printed material, rather than replacing it entirely.

Focused entirely on a business and its offerings printed materials avoid the distractions of hyperlinks and pop-ups and capture the attention of all potential customers who browse through it.

Brochure printing is perfect for direct mail marketing campaigns. Especially relevant are the discounts that are usually offered with bulk printing, making it is very cost-effective.

Bottom line: your brand is not a fancy symbol, but what the public feels (and then shares!) about you. By clearly communicating who you are and what unique value you provide, the world will eventually see how great you are too.

5. Produce a Brand Guidelines Document

Finally, it is essential to manage your brand and protect your brand identity. We recommend drafting a Brand Guidelines Document whose primary purpose is to give guidance to others as to how they can use a company’s branding when they create any new material. This material includes anything that visually represents the business such as business cards, brochures, signage, websites or packaging.

By explaining the importance of a brand and describing how to correctly use its elements, the strength and integrity of the brand is protected, thus continuing to create value for the company.

If you would like guidance in producing a brand guidelines document, our graphic design team is here to help.

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