In the rapidly advancing online environment, there may be a lot of potential points of interest for the engineers, the writers and the enthusiasts but for the investors and the purely business-focused teams, it’s only about one clear and distinguishing factor: the popularity of the platform or the number of visitors accessing that platform. With this core strategy in mind, there remains two primary means of generating revenue and both are quite different in what they present and how they perform. Today, we take a look at the much asked question in recent times, ‘what’s the difference between Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay-Per Click (PPC)?’

Though most might be expecting a clear winner but that’s not the case here. There are a lot of variables that are taken into account and at the end of the day; it depends on how you really want the business to function or what your plans or objectives might be right from the start. In other words, there’s no good or bad as long as you’re using either strategy sufficiently and the results reflect in how well your business performs.

The key here is obviously the awareness of the target audience, their liking and demand, coupled with what works best for the company within those limits of the viewer’s demands. Below, we’ll take a look at what are the most essential differences between the two digital search systems and how each can be utilized suitably for the promotion of the desired platform.

What exactly are SEO and PPC?

First let’s take a look at what those two acronyms represent in the sense of their larger meaning in the digital business. SEO is a score attached to every article you write, every post that you publish and every report that is sent out from your website. The score determines the viability of your content and how ‘optimised’ the piece of writing is in order to show up higher when you feed Google the related keywords in its search bar.

The SEO score depends on the clarity of your writing, the accessibility and readability of the text and if the content matches closely with the title and the solution the users maybe expecting. There are also other various aspects including the useful links embedded in the article, how organized things are including headings and subheadings, and lastly a lot of images for reference since books without illustrations are boring and not only kids think like that anymore.

The popular search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing makes use of this technique to sort out the results and provide the user with the most authentic and precise content available across the World Wide Web.

Looking at the other branch of the digital promotion tree, we’ve got PPC. This marketing strategy is much easier to explain as this is what the guys over at the advertisement department are used to. Though less organic than its counterpart, PPC is when you basically pay these search engines to secure a place on the results page, mostly taking the upper half of the page above the SEO results. Of course, there is still some SEO aspects involved between these ads themselves to decide which one secures the top spot but chances are you will definitely get the word out if you pay the top dollar.

So whenever the typed keywords have some sort of relation to the ads, they show up with a rectangular ‘Ad’ tag next to the respective URL to help visualize them differently from the SEO results.

Now that we’ve talked about the two in their elementary sense, let’s delve into what factors set them apart and what impact will those differences have on your strategy of advertising and promoting your platform.

What makes PPC different from SEO?

First and foremost difference is how PPC can help companies utilize the space they paid for however they want to.
This includes anything you would expect in a typical advertisement along the lines of illustrations, contact details, quick-links and pricing information. All of this complements the subtext or the snippet below the URL. This is only exclusive to PPC results and that, coupled with the fact that the results always appear on the top portion of the page adds at least some prominence to them.

PPC can also be highly effective for targeting specific geographic areas. By focusing on Local PPC, businesses can ensure their ads are shown only to potential customers within a designated location, increasing the chances of conversion and maximizing ROI.

Furthermore, unlike SEO results which depend on long-term progress and feedback of the users, PPC are much faster to produce and bring up high enough on the charts of the results due to their different procedure. Though it may appear, from the above facts, that a loss is imminent for SEO results but that’s not the case when you analyse SEO’s potential in detail.

As many internet studies have shown, most of us are subconsciously ignoring paid search results whenever our eye meets the ‘Ad’ tag. Though it’s still unclear why that might be the case even after images being introduced in PPC results, but what’s apparent is apparent and there’s evidence to back that fact. Moreover, when talking about costs, the PPC strategy is based around the whole idea of paying. The more you can invest in your ad campaign, the longer you can keep those results up and high. Things get especially worse when fierce competition lies within the field and there’s always this race to stay on top.

Thankfully, those utilizing SEO don’t have to worry about investing too much in their promotion game. As long as the content is backed on by the support of the community and the content itself follows the guidelines of SEO closely, there’s a good chance the audience will notice your platform among some few others. Moreover, competition still exists but it can only be won fairly without having to invest huge sums of money. Keep producing those articles just the way the audience likes it and you’re all good to go. With that said, it’s a high priority among many platforms and businesses to hire an expert on SEO guidelines who can highlight and educate other employees on how to maintain a good SEO score in their content.

This is where SEO really shines because it feels like a platform by the audience FOR the audience. What trust and credibility can create, no sum of money can even attempt to do so. Even when the platform pivots into new directions and introduces new products and ideas, there’s always a good portion of the community that’s willing to at least give it a try. This dedication and dependence on the user feedback leads to both a higher percentage of click-through rate (CTR) and ROI when your business is really up and running.

So who wins the race?

In spite of weighing the various pros and cons of both the strategies, the victory of either is still not clear cut. For smaller, more focused and specialized businesses, or platforms looking to try out something new before actually delving into it, SEO strategy seems to be the ideal option. With low costs involved and focus being on quality of content, even a person starting out his business venture can find a footing. As for those big businesses and industries which have been in the field for a long time now and can’t see their competitors rise above, PPC is the way to go. PPC also works if you’re looking to rush things a little and plan on building and developing your business gradually with the head-start you get.

Proceed with the strategy that has principles that relate and apply to your business plan. If done with credence and a firm, relentless dedication, the cons won’t hurt as much and if you’re still unsure or you don’t asses your marketing plan correctly enough, even some major pros will appear insignificant.

What are call to action buttons? They are actually digital canvases. You can create your art on them. There is a very simple reason for this analogy. What is art? It is someone’s skill put together to create such an appeal that invokes emotions. We all feel something when we see good art, don’t we? Now, what’s the purpose of a CTA? It’s a small box that you need to fill with as much creativity as possible so that it makes people feel things and they take action – precisely, the action you want them to take. So, CTA is indeed a canvas.

CTA’s are very self-explanatory anyway. I mean, what can you explain in a three-word call to Action which is, quite literally, a call to take action?

CTA buttons are those little ‘Buy Now’, ‘Add to Cart’, ‘Register Now’, and ‘Download Now’ buttons that you use on your website. Even those little Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp buttons that allow you to share with just one click are CTAs.

Yes, they are everywhere.

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They guide visitors towards conversion – they are the actions a brand needs the viewers to take so that it helps them achieve their goals. These buttons are very goal-oriented, and the goal is to make the user click and then complete the conversion. The conversion may be in the form of a purchase, email capture, or signup.

CTAs are mostly part of the landing pages, but they can be placed anywhere you like.

If you send out newsletters, add a CTA to them for people to subscribe. If email marketing is your thing, people will readily signup for more if there’s a CTA. You are placing an ad on social media? Well, guess what, place a CTA so people land directly on the product. Not only these, but a CTA finds its usage in blogs, and on websites, people even go as far as saying hyperlinks are CTA as they redirect you to a new website which is exactly why they were placed in the first place.

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This is the most effective of all call to action button examples. I know most of us don’t see this screen because our Netflix accounts are always signed up on our phones or laptops. But this is Netflix’s CTA for new users. See how simple it is? Smack in the middle of the page, an overlay of popping red with white prominent text – the deadliest text and color duo – on a faded background. New users cannot miss it even if they open the Netflix app with their eyes closed. This is the power of a strong CTA.

Crafting a strong call to action button

Let’s go back to that analogy of a CTA button being a digital canvas. When painting something on a canvas, you have to be mindful of several things like colors, brushes, strokes, shades, etc. Similarly, the art of crafting the best CTA buttons needs a careful eye for color scheme, words, fonts, size, and placement.

Use action-packed words

You would never see a CTA saying, ‘Click if you like’. No! They always have a sense of urgency, as if your life depends on it. ‘Click here’, ‘Buy Now’, and ‘Download Now’ are the terms used on a CTA.

If you’re running an e-commerce website, your CTA buttons should include words like “SHOP”, “BUY” or “ORDER”. This gives out specific instructions to the visitor about the result of the action that they take on that button. If you want your visitors to sign up for your newsletter, your CTA buttons should start with words like “DOWNLOAD” or “SUBSCRIBE”. If you want your visitors to get more information about your brand or business, the CTA buttons should include words like “FILL OUT THIS FORM” or “FIND OUT HOW”.

Using such words or phrases to give out specific instructions to your visitors is a must. The call to action should be direct and encourage the user to perform the action. For example, if you want your users to sign up for your newsletter, using the words “Our latest newspaper is available” would not be as effective as “Subscribe to our newsletter today”.

The second wordplay puts out a strong and direct message to the user. A good call to action button example would include something like this from OfficeVibe. Simple, effective, and offering an incentive.

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Size, shapes, and colors

A CTA is all about a good color that catches the eye, a good shape that doesn’t look ugly, and an ideal size that fits perfectly on the screen.

Every CTA has a background and a foreground. The background is the color, and the foreground is the text. You have to contrast those colors for an eye-popping CTA.

Also, CTAs need to stand out. So, their surrounding should be a light color with plenty of space so that it accentuates the CTA’s colors.

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Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician, once said, “I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

People think writing long essays is laborious, well, they never tried shortening it. It’s a test of your skills. So, what about when you have a box barely two inches long, and that’s all you have to convince people to click and purchase your product?

Now, you have to be vicious with your words, choosing only the most essential ones. Your words need to give them an incentive. For example, with a Buy Now CTA, add, avail 50% discount, or with a ‘Subscribe Now’ for your sales newsletter, you can write ‘Join 500,000 who are growing their sales with our exclusive marketing insights’.

Invoke Fomo

Fear of missing out, aka FOMO, is one of the important elements of human psychology. When people think that they might lose the opportunity and that it might not come around later, they are more likely to hop on the bandwagon.

A key tactic in this would be to offer an instant discount or a sale that wouldn’t come around too often. Most of us receive marketing emails with discount or sale offers for a limited time, and they’re hard to ignore. When there’s a limited-time opportunity or a sale, it prompts the audience to take action right away. As a result, the store gets more visits and conversions.

A great implementation of the above is being done by River Island. They have up to 60% sales on their store, and they have placed the sale banner on top of the fold. See the size of that red banner? This creates an urgency among people that if they don’t buy anything while the sale is on, they’ll miss out on something huge, and hence are compelled to click the CTA buttons associated with their offerings.

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Optimize for Devices

Creating an amazing CTA is important, but for more mobile internet users than ever before, your CTA must be optimized for handheld devices.

Desktop and mobile users have different user behaviors, and mobile searches are more inclined towards user intent instead of direct search terms. Users searching on mobile devices are usually looking for instant fulfillment and are highly likely to take action within the next few hours. Phone call-centric CTA buttons for mobile devices can be the key to generating more leads and sales.

But crafting a CTA for mobile is a vast difference than making one for desktop. See, people scroll on a computer or a laptop using a cursor, so the entire screen is within their reach. On mobile, they are holding the device in one hand and scrolling with the thumb. It means that they can click on anything that’s within their thumb’s reach.

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Research shows that the right hand is the dominant hand in holding mobile phones. Around 67% of users have their right thumb on the screen, while only 33% place the left one.

So, taking the right thumb as our benchmark, the size of an average thumb is around 2.6 inches. Compare this with our giant smartphones, whose screen size is 5.8 to 6.2 inches on average. It means most of the screen is out of range for the user’s thumb.

The ideal placement of a CTA is at the bottom fold or a 60-40 ratio, with 40% distance from the bottom and 60% from the top.

A/B testing

No matter what design, color, or text you use for CTA or wherever you place them on the website, if the users are not clicking them, they are useless.

It is better to test with a number of options and placements before putting a CTA on your website. A/B testing tells what color is catching users’ attention, what font is getting the most clicks, or what is the ideal placement for your CTA.

A/B or split testing is not frequently deployed as it is a complex endeavor, and it takes time to give results. But research has shown that A/B testing boosts conversions by as much as 25%. So the benefit clearly outweighs the complication.

For A/B testing, you must give each CTA iteration ample time on your website. Use two to three colors with varying fonts. Place them at separate locations and then give each one considerable time to see if they are getting clicked. Say you have three options, place each one of them at a particular location for three weeks. This will tell you which is the most hit CTA and where it should be displayed for maximum conversions.

Final Words

A call to action button is the smallest but most effective cog in the whole sales machine. If crafted carefully, this button of a few inches in length can turbocharge your sales and give a boost to your conversion. Implement these CTA best practices and see the magic unfold.

Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Google; do you know what is common among these companies? All of them started with just a garage for their entire operations! As we know, now these companies have grown and evolved into industry behemoths and dominate their respective industries.

We all know the value and importance of the small business industry. In the United States, small businesses make up 46% of private-sector output and 43% of high-tech employment. Especially in the digital industry, if not for startups, the industry wouldn’t be as evolved as it is today.

PNC Logos’ Startup Empowerment Program

PNC Logos specializes in design, development and ecommerce solutions; primarily a tech entity. Fully understanding the plight of up and coming entrepreneurs who have brilliant ideas for a startup but insufficient resources to do so successfully, we have launched a startup empowerment program that gives startups the tools required to set up a digital brand identity.

The main purpose for launching this program was to foster a spirit of innovation and show support to startups and small businesses. Obviously, this program is selective in nature and only the 10 best startups will be selected based on the potential of their respective business ideas.

A Plethora of Branding Services

Coming to the details of PNC Logos’ startup empowerment program, the aforementioned ten winners will benefit from PNC Logos’ design prowess. The design team will assist with the following components of brand identity:

1) Corporate Logo

A logo is the face of a brand as well as its most recognizable element. PNC Logos has years of experience creating logos for businesses from a myriad of different industries. Premium logo designs can cost a company a pretty penny and startups will definitely appreciate this cost saving.

2) Business Cards

Business cards are probably one of the most exchanged forms of marketing collateral. Business branding is simply incomplete without a business card design. The design team at PNC Logos has years of experience of branding and business card designs.

3) Package Design

For a company with tangible products, packaging has a big impact on how you communicate with your target audience. A unique and recognizable packaging design will make businesses stand out from competitors.

4) Letterhead Design

Business letterheads are used in both internal and external communication. Established companies spend quite a lot on branded letterhead designs as it has an impact on brand identity.

5) Envelope Design

Similar to letterheads, business envelopes have the same impact brand identity. If branded the right way, envelope design could communicate a lot about the way a company brands itself.

6) Social Media Cover

Social media platforms are a very popular marketing platform. Design and branding has a huge role to play on highly visual platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. PNC Logos will design branded social media covers for selected startups.

Giving Back to the Community

Starting off from humble beginnings, the team at PNC Logos believes that it should support small businesses and startups so that they have the chance to make it big as well. This in turn helps the overall industry grow and increase its pool of groundbreaking ideas. Unlike venture capitalists, PNC Logos’ startup empowerment program equips startups with the right digital tools to launch their business to the next level.

The details of PNC Logos’ startup empowerment can be found here. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to provide their business ideas in the most detailed way possible so as to stand a better chance of getting selected as one of the winners and receiving free branding services courtesy of PNC Logos.

A brand’s identity, much like a personal identity, defines what it stands for; it’s characteristics, qualities and how it differs from other brands. However, unlike human beings, brands are not born with innate identities and this presents business owners with a blank canvas on which to craft a brand identity from scratch.

While it can unleash creativity, it also poses business owners with a great challenge as they need to design an identity that is detailed, pertinent and memorable.

The reason for this is that a unique and authentic brand identity is guaranteed to capture the hearts, minds and imaginations of your customers much like a robust and unique individual who is forever remembered by everyone he/she interacts with.

According to Paula Scher, the brain behind the brand identity of The Museum of Modern Art; “identities are the beginnings of everything, they are how something is recognized and understood.”

So, how do you create the perfect brand identity? Here, we elaborate on the details of brand identity and how you can go about crafting an exquisite and distinct one for your brand.

It is important to note, however, that the outlined techniques are subjective, and would require you to mold them according to your specific industry and offerings.

1. Lay the foundation on your core values:

All great things are constructed from the bottom up. Here too, you will start by defining the very foundation of your brand, .i.e. its core values. These values define what your brand stands for and should be something that your target audience can connect with.

When you begin the process of outlining your core values, the chances are that you will find some options that seem to fit the bill.

However, you need to screen out irrelevant options and identify ones that are the most significant to your brand. To do so, we recommend this approach by Paul Hitchens. This method entails the categorization of all relevant values into three categories:

a. Core values:

These are integral values that capture the essence of your brand such that if they are altered, it will affect the very nature of your brand.

b. Accidental values:

These are the values that will attribute to your brand due to the very nature of the product/ service that you are offering or the industry that you are in.

c. Aspirational values:

These are values that you wish your brand to have, but you are currently not able to deliver on them with consistency. It is essential to segregate them from your core values because if they remain included, they will lead to a brand promise that you might not able to fulfill.

d. Expected values:

These are the values that customers expect from any reliable brand, for example, professionalism, transparency, value for money, etc.

Once you have categorized all contending values, you can now use your identified core values to lay the foundation of your brand identity which in turn will serve as the basis of all your marketing efforts.

Here, we can look at the example of Villaway that struggled to identify its core values as demands of the online travel industry seemed to change ever so rapidly.

Eventually, Villaway set aside all industry demands to isolate the one value that was guaranteed to stay a top priority i.e. customer satisfaction, and crafted their tagline “the best way to stay.”

2. Craft your brand’s personality:

With the core values in place to guide you, it is now time to craft your brand’s personality. At this stage you can take inspiration from the following factors: 

a. Your ownership and staff:

This factor is particularly significant in the case of small and medium-sized businesses where the ownership and staff are so heavily invested in their duties that they develop unique work values and goals. For bigger firms, however, you can take inspiration from their history, stories about their inception or by looking at how their corporate culture has evolved over time.

b. Your line of work:

You can also look at preferred traits within your industry to get an idea of what your customers look for.

c. Competitors:

In addition to this, you can also analyse your competitors to ensure that you craft a persona that will stand out from the crowd.

Once you have outlined a generic persona you can now start to identify its intricacies. You can do this by filling out a mood board that describes the essence of your brand and also entails the vision that you keep for your brand. This information will then allow you to outline your vision, mission and positioning statements.

3. Identify your purpose and positioning:

Next, establish your purpose and positioning. But before we discuss how you can do this, let’s first understand what these terms mean. A brand’s purpose is quite simply the reason for its existence. Whereas, positioning refers to the specific market segment that your product/ service will serve and how your offering is better than that of your competitors.

To unveil your purpose, we recommend that you consider the method followed by Google veteran Arielle Jackson. She upholds that your purpose should describe how you intend to change the world for the better; an approach can be visually represented as follows:

The circle on the left represents the current state of the world that is relevant to you. While, the circle on the right depicts what your brand is capable of delivering at its best. According to Jackson, the intersection of these two domains will present your purpose. For example, when we take the example of Apple, their purpose is to make the best possible products on earth and leave the world a better place than when they began.

Positioning, on the other hand, is the practice of making your purpose attainable. You can do this by identifying your target customers and differentiating your brand from your competitors. So, how do you accomplish this? Well the key to developing a potent purpose and positioning it is to capitalize on extensive market and consumer research.

This will enable you to understand the current situation of the world around you (as stated by Arielle Jackson).

4. Understand Your Target Audience

During your research, you can conduct phone interviews with a representative sample of your target market. This will give you access to detailed and informed discussions that will help to unveil valuable insights about the human aspect of your business.

This can be a gold mine considering that your underlying aim is to establish an emotional connection with your customers. You can also use online survey tools as they provide a quick and easy means of acquiring huge amounts of pertinent information.

Moreover, you can also use government tools to understand your customers and industry in depth. These techniques are recommended as they will provide you with insights into your customers’ main personas. These personas will in turn allow you to understand the needs that your customers wish to fulfill by using your offering. They will also highlight the personal and professional traits of your target customers.

This deepened knowledge of your customers will allow you to craft a brand personality that your customers can relate to. Once you have gathered all the information you need, it’s time to boil your brand persona down to a single sentence. It will give you a clear point of focus for your marketing efforts.

This is crucial because complicated or vague accounts of your brand persona will ultimately cause you to send mixed messages to your audience that will only confuse them.

5. Create your brand’s visual components:

The final stage of crafting a unique and winning brand identity is to create your brand’s visual components. These include the following:

a. Memorable logo:

The significance of a logo that complements and enhances your brand can’t be overemphasized. Your logo is a central visual element of your brand identity that your customers will be exposed to the most. This is why your logo should embody all elements of your brand identity.

Each of these meticulously crafted logos instantly triggers a unique set of emotions that clearly define what the brand stands for. So, how can you craft a memorable logo that will champion your identity and burn down into your customers’ subconscious to be remembered forever?

Well, you can begin by creating a logo that is simple and easy to recall. The reason for this is that a simple logo provides your consumers a blank canvas which they can use to associate positive experiences that they have with your brand.

Lindon Leader, designer of the FedEx logo also states that “I strive for two things in design, simplicity and clarity. Great design is born with these two things”. It will also go a long way in helping you craft a logo that is versatile and would look equally good on a billboard and as a social media icon.

b. Signature color palette:

One of the most challenging customer-facing components is the signature color palette of your brand. This is because you need to use the emotions that colors convey to devise a palette that will strengthen your logo and will be remembered by your audience.

According to research, the purchase decision made by customers can depend up to 80% on the color scheme of the brand.  We suggest using your 3 primary colors by carefully tinting them to fit your brand image. For example, if you wish to project trust you can combine blue with a tint of black. Conversely, you can combine blue with white to give off a tranquil feel.

In addition to your primary colors, you can also define secondary colors that can complement the former in your marketing collateral.

c. Typography:

Fonts are powerful and easily remembered by your customers, even when they are taken out of context. Therefore, it is crucial that you invest time and energy in identifying a font that works brilliantly with your logo and color palette.

To do this, take into consideration the essence of your brand and then try to identify two typefaces that reflect it the most. These typefaces should include one for the headings and the other for the script.

Needless to say, the heading font should be expressive and more prominent in size while the one for the script should be subtle and easy to read.

You can also go for the time-tested approach of using one font but using different sizes for the headings, sub-headings, and scripts. This approach has been successfully implemented by Nike that uses the sans serif font in uppercase and bold across the board. This allows Nike to express a sense of strength and impact which resonates perfectly with the style of its call-to-action images. The choice of only one signature font will also help you design the graphical components of your social media campaign as they don’t require a substantial amounts of text.

To elaborate the importance of choosing the right color palate let’s take inspiration from PepsiCo’s ordeal of 2009. The company’s popular juice brand Tropicana altered its branding strategy and consequently changed its rather classic font to an upbeat sans serif.

Within 2 months the company experienced a 20% drop in sales which cost it millions of dollars in revenues. The company quickly rectified their mistake and switched back to its old typeface.

d. Brand language:

Your brand language defines how you reach out to your customers via all possible modes of communication including your website, adverts, social media platforms, emails, packaging, etc. According to Melissa Lafsky, “brands that communicate successfully are successful, and to communicate successfully, you need to distinguish and define your voice.”

Here are some tips to help you identify your brand language:

I. Use first person plural in your marketing material as it indicates the presence of a united and happy team behind your brand. This is advisable as people tend to opt for brands that are run by cohesive teams.

II. Try to be definitive in your communications as it will help you establish yourself as an authority figure in your industry.

III. One thing that can you can’t afford is to overlook spelling or grammatical errors as it will undermine the credibility of your brand and the quality of your offering. According to a study, one spelling mistake on your corporate website leads to the reduction of your online sales by 50%. Therefore, be sure to proofread, and edit your content many times over and use multiple people so that no such error is missed. You can also make use of grammar tools that are becoming increasingly efficient in detecting and rectifying mistakes.

IV. Customers prefer a casual tone, so try to capitalize on a friendly and approachable voice to engage your clientele. However, if your brand identity is playful or humorous, feel free to incorporate these attributes in your communication but be careful and do it in a way that doesn’t diminish your professionalism.

Designing a brand identity is a complicated endeavor; however, the key lies in conducting thorough research in all the aspects mentioned above before you introduce your product to the world.

Check the boxes below that apply to you before you invest time in reading this article:

If you checked two or more of the items above, then your time will be spent productively in reading what follows.

In this article, you will understand what you need and want from your online presence.

The goal of active online presence

The purpose of your online presence is to generate qualified leads. You need to attract the right kind of people to your website and social media to engage with your brand.

For an active online presence, you need to have SMART goals, i.e. goals that are Simple, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound.

For example:

• 30% increase in unique visits to your website by March 2018

• 15% increase in product awareness through landing pages

The measures you take to achieve your goal of generating qualified leads to your site should be able to motivate you to keep going steady.

Aligning the resources

To be able to manage the mix of programs to achieve your objectives, you will need to align your marketing, sales, customer service and product development programs to create a unique user experience.

For example:

• Content development: You will need to create resources and content that will interest your visitors, including but not limited to videos, tutorials, social media posts and updates, and newsletter content

• Product development: You will need active mechanisms to inform your product development team of consumer feedback for iterations and improvements

• Customer service: Develop and use customer care and management services, such as FAQs, product specifications, feedback mechanism, response time, query and complaint management, among others

• Marketing and sales: Offer the right kind of deals and packages at the right time [seasonal, weekend specials, etc.] to reach out and engage more customers

• Brand name: Inspire trust by developing a tangible and palpable feel of your brand

Get Set & Go!

Target your audience to get them to your site and use the right tools to get the job done.

When you understand the goal of your online presence and align your resources to realize your goal, you will be ready to make your website a conversion hub.

Tip # 1 – Your neat website

Your website’s visual appeal is the first impression-maker. If done right, your site can be most favorable for your brand image, conversions, and ultimately, sales.

Since conversion complements lead generation and acts as the next step in the sales funnel, your website should be designed in a way to facilitate your users’ responses, thoughts and actions on becoming a customer.

So first, review your own need to improve your website. You’ll need to think of many things, and a good website development team [or template for DIY-ers] will help you do so. You’ll need to focus on the following:

•  What purpose is the website achieving for the user?

•  Is your user able to understand what your brand is all about?

•  Is your website regularly updated?

•  Does it showcase a complete catalog of your products?

•  How quickly does your website load? Is it responsive and compatible with all tech devices?

•  Is your website too cluttered or does it offer a vibrant and balanced design?

•  Is it easy for your visitors to navigate through your website?

•  How are your menus arranged? Are the contact numbers, search bar, sign-up forms, testimonials and blog all functional and readily available?

•  Is your website intuitive in design?

•  Is the call to action button[s] visible?

•  Are there social media link buttons and share buttons for cross-platform transitions?

•  Do you test each page for optimization? If so, how?

Asking these questions and testing your web pages, landing pages, CTA buttons, contact buttons and mechanisms will help you create a website that is a conversion hub.

While it is fundamental to have a great user experience with a great website, your goal is to increase sales and generate qualified leads. If your site is not achieving this goal, you need to critically re-think your strategies.

Tip # 2 – Optimizing your site for conversions

We talked about how to improve the design and navigation on your website to increase conversion rates. With CRO (conversion rate optimization), you will be able to review each page and how your visitors perceive the content and look of your website.

This review activity will make your website pages simple to navigate and intuitive, all the while leading to a logical conclusion or end action, i.e. to sign up for updates or newsletters, download a free resource, or register for a webinar.

The different tools you will be using for your lead generation and conversions – such as SEO, content and video marketing, blogging, advertising and promotional activities – will prove to be far more effective with CRO. CRO will audit your website and help you plan and ensure effective means of engaging visitors to become customers.

Tip # 3 – Conversion path

Whatever action you would like the visitor to take on your website, e.g. sign up for newsletters, webinars, product reviews, or surveys, you will need to create a conversion path for it.

A conversion path will invite and encourage the visitor to willingly give you information in exchange for something valuable. You will need to create:

•  CTAs [call-to-action buttons] on your website for the visitors to find and get attracted to the right resource[s]

•  a landing page after clicking on the CTA button that will have advertising content and images of your product or resource

•  a short form on that landing page that your visitors will fill to avail the advertised product or resource

•  a thank you page following the form to close the transaction formally

•  content for a confirmation email to stay in your visitor’s inbox for future reference

This conversion path begins with a call-to-action. Call-to-action is the pivot that changes the game and converts a lead into a prospective customer. Of course, your product and services will weigh in on the prospect of creating customers – but as the phrase goes, “Well begun, half done,” we think you should focus on CTA as diligently as you would on creating solid marketing content.

Tip # 4 – Share-ability

One of your aspirations is greater visibility for your brand and a compelling online presence.

While your website is the hub of all your content from product listings to resources, videos to subscription forms – social media outreaches in multiple directions. Utilizing an influencer platform can further amplify your reach by connecting with key voices in your industry.

Make sure your active online presence enlists an active social media presence as well.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Your visibility and outreach can increase exponentially with the shareable design of your website to the visitors’ or customers’ social media. For example, satisfied customers should be able to share their experience and be able to refer your brand to others on social media. Happy customers and influencers can be far more authentic and compelling lead generators than other conventional methods.

All too often we see sites not having these options, thereby restricting their growth and possibilities. Many smarter websites are now offering ready made tweets for users to click, share, and return to the site. Then these same brands make an effort to “heart” your tweet and thank you for mentioning them on social media.

For all your articles, make sure there’s a share button. For all your videos, forms, products and services, webinars, addresses and contact details – make sure there’s a share button!

Tip # 5 – Curate excellent content

Your online presence is dependent on unique content that you can use to market your product and services, increase your brand visibility and generate qualified leads.

Paradigm shift: The advent of search engines and the continually revolutionizing purposes and methods of looking up and interacting with the world – the focus is solely on premium user experience.

Long gone are the days when the content was self-glorifying and fixated on the product.

Your content must be unique & educational, enlightening & informing, questioning & probing into usability and sustainability, all for premium quality and genuine user experience.

How to begin?

Magnetize visitors and users of your website with valuable content. Just make good content that will satisfy a need for your reader. If you’re a marketing firm, then your content will include tried and tested tips on marketing strategies, research reports, white papers, and eBooks for your visitors.

Interact with your readers and customers to find out what they need. Offer them content that solves their problems and needs. You could publish product demo videos and tutorials, recordings of webinars and even influencer/testimonial videos to create better understanding and engagement.

Free trials and limited time offers can anchor many leads and turn them into clients. Many people are fascinated by professional courses and content, and get hooked on to websites for more. Leverage on this tendency to generate leads and convert them into customers.

Tip # 6 – Be found

Most users end up seeing your brand in search results and social media. Hence, you should focus on search engine optimization [SEO].

SEO tells search engines that your brand exists; and with targeted and organic keywords, your brand increases in visibility in search results.

SEO will also inform you of user preferences, and you will be able to create content that your readers need.

With CRO and SEO, you will be able to gauge which pages get the most visitors. You could leverage on this information and update your content frequently to keep it relevant to information perusal. Many websites have timestamps that indicate when the page was last updated and for even when the next review is scheduled. A proactive approach informs the user of your stance and professional attitude.

Also, use branded merchandise or collateral to spread the word in more conventional marketing ways. Your stationery, visiting cards, and other mementos could carry your website address to different places and customers.

Public relations, referrals, testimonials, reputation management and influencer marketing, are all powerful methods of getting noticed.

Try customer testimonials as an enticing call-to-action. Customer testimonials can convert leads into buyers. In a 2017 survey, 97% buyers read online reviews before making a buying decision.

This trend is an indicator that your website and social media should have ample reviews and testimonials for users to get in-depth knowledge about your brand. Use statistics to show growing number of satisfied customers and clients.

Tip # 7 – Test your website. Revisit your goals

Lead generation is a continuous process and mainly dependent on market trends, new competition, and modern consumer needs to name a few.

Learn from competitors and the best in the industry. Keep testing the efficiency of your website. A highly empirical and result-driven approach comes from A/B testing.

The A/B test simply puts two models of, let’s say, your landing pages with different positioning of the call-to-action buttons, logo, graphics, content, colors, and even typography, to get exact information on how users interact with & respond to each of the two web pages. By juxtaposing two different variants, you could get accurate information on what to improve on your site.

And lastly, but most importantly, keep revisiting your goals to track your objectives and initiatives. All too often we are tempted to dive into something new and seemingly promising than persistently following a plan. Be consistent and calm – lead generation, conversion strategies and similar initiatives take months to deliver desired results. Define your goals in realistic terms of achieving results over months and not days.

A Bonus Tip: with our favorite advice!

Branding is essential for your identity. Branding is the voice of your business entity. And a brand is created and sustained in two significant ways: visual aesthetics and brand interactions with the community.

Your brand logo must essentially depict and represent what your business entity believes and upholds. The colors, imagery, uniqueness, and typography leaves an indelible mark on your brand’s identity.

Think of the most significant brands known to the world – all have iconic logos that quickly surface in your mind:

Source: Apple

Source: Mercedes

Source: Toyota

While some brand names used great fonts as brand identifiers:

Source: Coca-Cola

Source: Ford

Source: ASUS

All of the above logos bring the iconic products and experiences to your mind the moment your eyes see them in your environment. And their merchandise is something you use [and flaunt] eagerly.

If you are a new company, spend time with experts in the field and explore options for your brand logo, brand colors, typography, along with every minute detail that links to your company.

If you are an established company, and looking to change your brand identity for greater visibility, spend twice as much time to understand what your brand needs, and test all options with sampling groups before implementing any permanent changes. We have many major brands’ mistakes to learn from, e.g. Yahoo! And Gap.

Conclusion

Turning your website into a conversion hub is a trans-formative process; it takes time, diligence and perseverance.

•  We talked about how to align your resources of marketing, sales, customer service and product development to create a unique user experience. We talked about how these resources will be reflected and spaced on your website for an informing and inviting user experience.

•  We discussed methods of getting your site listed in relevant search results using conversion rate optimization and search engine optimization tools. And more straightforward ways such as shareability for greater outreach.

• We also talked about how satisfied customers could be empowered to share their satisfaction with their peer groups.

• Content, of course, is king, and curating excellent content is the supreme strategy for a substantial online presence.

• Towards the end, we talked about how you should keep testing your website for ease-of-access, the simplicity of design, the effectiveness of content and approach for the visitors.

• And how you need to stick to the plan and revisit your goals to strategize and re-strategize according to your needs and the milestones achieved against each initiative.

• And, most importantly, the brand logo, styles and imagery to create a memorable impact.

So turning your website into a conversion hub is a transformative process, as well as a continuous journey.

How will you prefer to embark on this journey? Have you tried something else and has it worked for you? Share your stories with us.

Be it for a small start-up or a large franchise, all designers know the importance of a professional logo design. It represents the brand, communicates their story and symbolizes their product identity to the world. Hence, a poorly designed logo can veritably jeopardize the success of the company it personifies.

No matter how great the products or services of your brand are, if your logo fails to make an impact, you are going to have a hard time attracting customers to your business.

This is one of the primary reasons why many businesses today are investing so much time and effort in hiring the best logo designers and brand agencies. However, we all very well know that designing great, distinctive logos is not so easy.

Even the most renowned planners in the industry encounter challenges when it comes to creating highly professional and effective logos for their clients. Graphic designers are fully aware of the important role  a captivating logo plays in a company’s brand identity.

A good, practical logo should definitely be attractive visually but the deal just doesn’t end there; it has to communicate its brand’s strategies, ethos, and core message effectively. Even the simplest, smallest logo blueprint can take days, weeks or even months to materialize. After all, a skillful design takes a lot of patience and hard work.

The Role of a Logo Design in Building a Brand

As a marketer, graphic design is perhaps one of the most important things you pay attention to as the success of an online business depends on it to a large extent. Mentioned ahead are a few tips that will help you understand why creating a relevant logo is so important for a rising brand.

• Brand Recognition

Your business is a brand, and it’s crucial for every brand to have a logo.

The collective emblem and overall design of your product are what make your company standout and communicate with your target audience, in a way that is professional, attractive and functional. And a good logo design is capable of doing all these things.

The design services by Ballyhoopro, for example, form an instant connection between the consumers and the products provided to them.

• Company Unity

Building a brand’s identity should begin from the inside.

Webpages, publications, advertising, stationary and more should come together with the design image you pick to represent your brand. There are many professional graphic design services available that can create a business from the ground up, or in case your brand already exists, they will give it a boost, making it stronger.

• Professionalism

When it comes to presenting a service to the target market with set expectations, the first impression is usually the most powerful one.

It only takes a fraction of a second for your customer to have a positive or negative perception about your brand.  So, a design that looks cheap, hurried or complicated will make potential customers think that your business cannot afford a professional graphic design. Many agencies out there offer reasonable pricing options without sacrificing quality.

• Communication

Graphic design is not only limited to your logo and website; it also facilitates the development of images and other visual aids that communicate your brand’s vision and ideas. A perfectly designed image can send your customer the important message you want to convey without the need for words. Therefore, using images designed professionally will aid in creating an effective impression.

Since your brand’s logo is not just a ‘fancy portrait’ but an essential element of business reputation management, it should only be handled by expert planners and those with similar expertise. However, hiring a professional designer can turn out to be a costly proposition. This is one reason why crowd sourcing design marketplaces offer a cost-effective alternative to new businesses.

Why Businesses Fail at Designing Logos?

Good logos shouldn’t ever be difficult to figure out and comprehend, or it’s pretty much pointless to have one – unless perhaps your target audience loves solving puzzles. Even then, a label should tell the story of a brand in such a way that it’s vivid, non-patronizing and instant.

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Gap’s infamous redesigned logo, which was launched in 2010, was so poorly received that it was hastily scrapped within a week of its launch.

This proves that logo designing is tough and even some of the biggest organizations can get it wrong. Gap’s new logo was reversed in less than a week and more recently, Yahoo! also faced a problematic reception to their rebranding. It is never an exact ‘scientific’ process.

Besides entailing a standard of creativity, a good logo design also involves the knowledge of knowing how to transmit a message using imagery and colour, which means a certain degree of theoretical wisdom, is also needed when creating a logo.

Keeping this in mind, let’s have a look at some of the common mistakes businesses make when designing logos and why they don’t work.

1. Copyright Infringement

From ideas and logo designs to media and intellectual property, copyright and trademark infringement is rife on the internet. One particular excuse that we usually hear from the logo design companies is that the planner is unable to research and develop a unique blueprint. This obviously hints at crowd sourcing companies, where hundreds to thousands of designers compete to ‘win’ the chosen label, with the rest of them not even receiving a dime for their time.

Any professional and serious designer, regardless, will know it is unacceptable to knowingly steal someone else’s work. And crossing your fingers, hoping to get away with it is definitely not the best strategy.

Try putting yourself into the client’s shoes, who has just paid you to create a new logo. If it turns out to be infringing or stolen from another business label, there will be possible legal ramifications which will require you to spend time and money to fix the problem that shouldn’t have come up in the first place.

Some of the brand labels, created for clients, are often blatantly copied from other businesses. For example, one Russian company used Inkbot design’s logo from graphic design portfolio, without altering any of its elements.

A sane person would obviously feel sorry for the company since they had no idea that their own ‘designer’ had stolen it for the client who was also notified about it. According to a few reports, they sent a polite email to the company, removing the label apologetically and getting in touch with their ‘creative genius’ to sort the matter out.

2. Following Gimmicks and Trends

Whether it’s of web, graphic or even fashion, in the design field, the trends are always changing. Take, for instance, the modern trend of flat and minimalistic design. While there are some stunningly captivatingly sites out there dealing with such designs, you have to ask yourself ‘is this a fad or is it going to last?’

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Getting a brand new logo is almost like buying an expensive, designer dress. It is an investment that should last you many years.

Skype designed their logo at the peak of the faux-gloss plasticity of the ‘web 2.0’ period. It was white-hot in 2006, rest assured, but has since then aged like a quarterly eaten apple. This is a logo forever anchored to a time in history.

Keeping this in mind, it pays to know how exactly the brand wants to be represented. It is, however, more critical to know what its users and customers want.

3. Too Cliched!

This mistake is way too close to plagiarism, but the only difference is that it does not lead to litigation. The temptation to avoid risk and not stand out from the crowd is wrong: After all, why should any customer come to you if there are dozens of similar offers easily available in the market?

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Gap wasn’t really the first company to face severe repercussions from an attempt at re-branding. Tropicana released a new package design for its orange juice in January of 2009. Consumers didn’t like the new label, in fact, they despised it. Sending emails directly to Pepsi Co, the brand that produces Tropicana, and posting on social media, people complained about several aspects of the redesign.

Amongst the complaints, people also felt that it looked like a cliched store brand; one that made it difficult to distinguish the different varieties of Tropicana. Pepsi Co eventually withdrew the packaging and replaced it with the old packaging within a span of just two months.

4. Ill-usage of Typefaces

Being a graphic designer, containing your excitement when working with different fonts can garner benefits as well. After all, a bad pairing of fonts can actually look silly, and picking one that is inappropriate to the brand persona can be fatal.

Designing a logo for a lawyer that uses Comic Sans, for example, appearing too light-hearted and fun, is unlikely to please a client. Therefore, when sketching out an initial blueprint, think carefully about what you want the font to portray, not just in words, but in feeling as well.

The aforementioned, hypothetical lawyer, would then presumably look for something that conveys a certain sense of trust and high-deemed professionalism. Alternatively, a child’s clothing manufacturer might prefer something that seems fun, while also conveying a standard of quality for parents.

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When choosing a lettering to utilise, take into account the following:

• The company you’re designing for – what do they do, how formal you should be and what is the primary message you want to send
• How can you use negative space to gain phenomenal results?
• How will the font work with the overall design?

A good example of the second point is the famous FedEx logo, which utilizes negative space in the lettering to create the shape of an arrow, overtly representing speed and direction.

5. Being Over Simplistic

Sometimes, it’s tempting to create a logo design that aptly shows off your skills, but if it gets too complex, your clever design can fall flat on its face. It may not be used in all scenarios, such as web and print, especially when scaled right down as it will lose its details. Simplicity is the key for a lot of reasons including:

• Instant impact: You want the consumer to be able to understand what the logo says in an instant
• High memorability: A logo that can be comprehended straightaway will allow people to remember it more easily
• Easy reproduction: It should have the ability to be reproduced in any size, for any medium, without losing any of its impact

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As an example, let’s compare Food and Wine Festival logos: EPCOT vs. Newcastle.

EPCOT tells its story using 2 very different typefaces, 10x colours, and a logo made up of pasta and fork, a set of chopsticks, croissant, plum and a cork screw.

Newcastle, on the other hand, narrates the plot with a single typeface, two colors at max, and combines two visuals (the fork and wine bottles) into a single design form. They didn’t need the entire fork – just the essential bits to make it look like one.

Great logos are often about what’s left over, once you have stripped every other non-crucial element off the page.

Simplicity need not be minimal. However, at the same time, it is a good idea to ensure that all elements work well together and there is not too much going on with font and color.

6. Being Over Literal

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As mentioned in the last point, make sure that logos are not instructional drawings or diagrams.

Impactful logos often suggest a theme, but don’t need to literally illustrate it.

For example, The London Symphony Orchestra does not need to draw cellos, kettle drums or violins. Their famous LSO lettering conveys emotion and energy, but also brilliantly hints at a conductor in plight.

The masthead for Families, likewise, does not require to carefully illustrate specific parents and children, or even human faces on its label. Why bother when our brains are naturally designed to deduce human figures?

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Hence, try to capture the essence of an object or organization. It is highly important to be original but also to keep it brief, using colors and fonts prudently and avoiding stock images. Anybody can get hold of them, after all.

Last word:

For many businesses, a strong logo is what consumers associate with your services. Successful logo designs act as recognizable bait for a brand, helping your valued customers identify your products. When it comes to honest and good branding, the right logo design is a quintessential component.

Up to a certain point, design is subjective. But doing your research and knowing exactly who your logo is addressing, makes it less so.

If you’re thoroughly aware of what your target market wants, chances are that you will get it right. That, eventually, leads to a happy, satisfied client; branding that gets consumers and a great portfolio for you as a designer.

A logo serves as the graphical representation of a company, which is the key identification feature of a brand, most visible to the target market. Logos form an essential element of businesses’ overall brand identity as they are a mandatory imprint on the company’s website, advertisement and collateral.

Generally, the colors and design of a logo also serve as a focal point of reference for the designing of its packaging, business cards, and even the outlook of the brand’s offices and other marketing materials.

Importance of a logo

The styling of a logo provides visual insight into a company’s vision and the product they sell. Consequently, the design element of a logo is largely dependent on the perception a company wants to generate about itself among the general populace.

Sharp angular logos exude trailblazing, innovative companies while rounded colorful logos are associated with trustworthiness and exuberance, and cursive typography and solid color depict flair and panache.

Furthermore, when loyal customers come upon a logo of a reliable brand they swear by, it can trigger positive emotions that are more likely to convert into increased sales.

Your accidental encounter with the golden arches of McDonald’s can prompt hunger pangs and cravings for a cheeseburger and fries; such is the power of a widely recognized logo.

A well-conceived design of a logo can also narrate the prosperity and professionalism of a business while a substandard looking logo can become a hindrance when you are trying to appeal to potential customers through it. Thus, various factors come into play during the designing of a logo including its color scheme, fonts, typefaces and accompanying images.

All the basic components that amalgamate to form a logo have a role to play, including the typography which sets the tone of the logo.

Importance of the font in a logo

Before highlighting the impact of a font on the credibility of the logo, let us discuss the basics of typography to better understand the importance of selecting an appropriate font for a logo.

Difference types of fonts

There are thousands of font styles, each distinguished by distinctive features. However, most of these typefaces can be categorized into five broad categories:

Serif: This type of a font is characterized by a small line present at the end of a stroke in a letter. These slight projections at the end make it easier for the eyes to flow through the sentence thus increasing the legibility of this font. Serif is further divided into four sub categories namely Old Style, Traditional, Didone and Slab Serif.

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San Serif: In French, the word san means “without” hence the name San Serif denotes the absence of serif or minor projections. This font has a more constant line thickness as compared to Serif which conveys simplicity. San Serif is also considered to be a contemporary font, primarily found on the display texts of computer screens. It is most commonly used in headings rather than the body of the text.

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Script: It is a more elegant font with fluid, cursive strokes, making it most suitable for formal text such as the ones on wedding invitations and certificates. The font is unsuitable to be used in lengthy texts or small spaces as it gets straining to read.

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Display: As the name implies, the font is intended to be used for large displays and headings. It is a relatively simple typeface most commonly found in prominent headings rather than extensive passages. It is designed to draw immediate attention, which is why it is used in banners, posters and newspaper headlines. The font does not have a fixed style; it comprises various eccentric styles.

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Hand Lettering: This font appears to be written by hand. It is most famous with designers and illustrators and it has a certain charm and spontaneity about it which adds a little character to the words. Hand lettering also imparts a human touch to the words making them more relatable while also channeling a particular mood. There are endless variations to this form of writing which is only limited by the imagination of the creator.

Essence of a brand

In addition to the different types of font used for particular purposes, the font in a logo also represents the core essence of a brand. Each typeface can communicate a different meaning to the same word; these differences can be minimal or drastic and can be the reason for changing the implication of a single word. A font not only channels an emotion but it can also has the ability to signify a particular age and gender.

While the following words do not directly communicate femininity, the font is more suited for female oriented brands as it is elegant and with certain panache.

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The font in the following image is a direct nod to masculinity due to its ruggedness and distressed state. Its sharp-edged lettering channels toughness and exudes power.

The logos below provide a stark comparison between the fonts of two brands that make products for opposite genders. The logo on the left is sharp and more angular while the one on the right has lettering ending with a flourish. The logos instantly indicate the gender they cater to without exhibiting their products in them.

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Thus, it becomes crucial for brands to explore different font options. They should experiment with various combinations of fonts and typefaces to see what best narrate the true identity of the brand and is approachable for their target market.

When you come across a logo of Rolex, the first thing that can come to mind is “timeless classic”. Their sleek, minimalistic design in watches is also depicted in their logo through a dignified, traditional font. If the company had instead opted for a more informal font, it would not have been able to retain its aura of quality and luxury.

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On the other hand, Toys R Us is all about children, thus, they have a more rounded font that comes across as friendly and exuberant. It has softer edges and a non-linear letter placement that perfectly symbolizes the easy-going, fun image of the toy brand.

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Tone of a font

The font and typeface can also narrate the tone of the text quite effectively; consider it to be a form of visual language. Large, bold fonts depict a loud, alarming tone that demands attention while tiny fonts which channel subtlety sound more demure and polite. Tone of the font is of utmost importance as it provides a distinctive perspective to your brand. Therefore, your chosen typeface should be in sync with the tone of the message you intent to convey through the logo of your brand.

Jessica Hische, a well-known illustrator and letterer, noted in Upper Your Type Game:

“Typefaces definitely have personalities…I usually want something even-tempered and laid back but not lacking in personality. Finding typefaces with the right personality balance can be incredibly difficult…”
Hence, the ideal logo should have a perfect balance that gets the point across effectively without appearing to be too aggressive or too overbearing. On the other hand, you don’t want your logo to be too casual for it to lose its impact. When the textual part of the logo is prominent and not overshadowed by its surrounding illustrations and designing, only then will it be comprehensible to the customers. Simply put, the visual characteristics of a logo can actually speak to the readers hence careful consideration is needed when deciding the typeface.

Competency and legibility of a font

A brand’s logo is a visual representation of its name which also highlights its products or services; hence another important characteristic of a good fond is its legibility. If a logo is hard to read and comprehend, it loses its key purpose, which is to convey the brand’s name.

Therefore, when deciding the font of a logo, most brands prefer font specifically designed to be easily decipherable even from a distance. Such fonts have linear, evenly spaced letters making them simple to understand and stand out on a cluttered background such as on a billboard.

John Hopkins’ logo is a perfect example of the above mentioned point. It denotes traditionalism and professionalism with its simple yet striking logo. Each blue-colored letter projecting from a stark white background is of even thickness and positioned at a constant distance from each other.

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In retrospect, a logo’s legibility is not bound by the linearity of its letters; certain logos have a cursive font but are still very simple to conceive.

Coca-Cola is a world renowned beverage company so it is of no surprise that its iconic logo is widely recognized. But let’s separate the popularity of the brand from its logo for a second and view it like a word you have recently encountered. The two words embody a cursive style but are still very clear due to even spacing and a stark contrast between the font and the background color.

Effects of altering the font in a logo

As surprising as that sounds, the font of a logo is a big deal. If you find the statement to be difficult to comprehend and somewhat exaggerating, consider the following incident:

Pepsi Co. is another notable beverage brand. In 2009, their popular orange juice brand, Tropicana, underwent major package redesigning and changed the face and the positioning of its logo on the carton. The alteration in the font, from its classic look to a more contemporary San Serif, had a major impact on how customers perceived the brand causing rift in their customer relations.

This impact was projected on their sales which saw an astonishing 20% drop costing the brand millions of dollars of loss in just two months. The brand moved smartly, surrendering to the consumers’ demand and immediately discontinued the new design.

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On the other hand, if you want your logo to evolve with the passage of time and emanate modernism without causing detrimental effects on your customer-relations, take a leaf out of Chevrolet’s book.

One of the most famous automakers in the world, Chevrolet, began its operation way back in the early 1900s. So, it is no surprise that their logo designing process wasn’t well thought out, in fact, it is widely believed that the logo was actually inspired by a wallpaper design in a Parisian hotel. However, they implemented slight modifications over the period of time, all the while staying true to the brand’s identity.

Apart from one major alteration in the beginning years, the logo retained its classic bowtie look, fine tuning it after every few decades. The current logo is sleek and ultra-modern, perfect for the automobile dominators of the 21st century.

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Conclusion

A logo serves as the visual representation of a brand that helps consumers form an opinion about it. An important part of a logo is its font and the typeface that represents your brand’s personality, values and tone.

Whether your brand epitomizes class and style or channels loyalty and friendliness, whether the people behind the brand are astute and smart or naïve and incompetent; all these aspects can be judged by a single glance at a logo.

Due to this very reason, some organizations go as far as to create their own bespoke font that distinguishes them from their competitors. Hence, when establishing your brand’s identity, give the logo, particularly the font, its due time, resources and attention as they form the foundations of positive and healthy customer relations.

So, once you get your hands on a really cool logo and have some really amazing advertisements going around for your brand, you take a step back and wonder, “Is this it?” Well, hold that thought right there because you are nowhere close to the end; a lot still needs doing.

Branding isn’t just about well-placed advertisements or colorful and attractive logos; there is so much more to it than that. Among all the assets that you or your company owns, a recognizable and valued brand is possibly the most valuable of them all. Nielson’s Global New Product Innovation Survey shows that 59 percent of customers prefer buying from brands that they are able to identify with and find familiar.

To evolve your brand and put it out there for people to love and admire, you need to go the extra mile to build a name for yourself. Once you have successfully finalized your logo, there are numerous steps you need to follow with great care and innovation to effectively build your brand and market it.

If truth be told, brand building doesn’t happen overnight. It is a huge process that can take months; if done correctly, however, you might just get there before you know it. Listed below are some pointers that will surely facilitate the entire process of making your brand a renowned one:

1. Identify Your Audience

Your captivating logo won’t do much if it’s not catering to the right audience. One of the major cornerstones of building your brand is determining the target market that will benefit the most from your product/ service.

If you end up making your brand for everybody, you will possibly make a very big mistake. Research proves that businesses and firms that are focused and have clearly defined target clients experience high growth and  profits in the long run. Hence, the narrower your focus, the faster you will grow and flourish.

The first step here is to understand and decide where you stand in the market and who your potential customer is. To do so, you must be able to analyze how your services or products will be viewed by your targeted audience.

A brand is never what you want it to be or what you claim it is; it is actually what your audience deems it to be and what they say about it, as the founder of the award-winning matchmaking firm PCBA Paul C. Brunson puts it. Hence, to grow your brand, you need to know what people think of your product.

One of the most successful stories of target marketing and market segmentation is perhaps that of Porsche, a global market leader in the automotive industry. In attempts to attract a younger and larger female audience, it segmented its target audience and created products that resonated well with each segment. One of the biggest success factors of Porsche is its approach towards its target market and how efficiently it performs market targeting, positioning and segmentation. This includes identifying Porche’s target market first followed by profiling different consumer groups that have different needs and wants. Then, it chooses one or more of those segments to target and then finally establish and promote the product to the respective target segment. No wonder Porsche has acquired a leading status in the global market in such a short span of time.

2. Research Your Market

Once you have carefully analyzed and established your target market, you might start wondering if you have selected the right target market audience. That is where the next step comes in which is your research of the chosen target audience that will consequently help you understand if you have made the correct decision.

Researching on the targeted client group will help you gain consumer insight and make you understand the client’s needs and priorities. Furthermore, it will also enable you to communicate with them in ways that resonate with them. It is believed that firms, businesses and companies that systematically research their target audience are able to grow much faster and also more profitable.

The biggest example of a company successfully segmenting its audience is Apple, undeniably one of the most successful brands of all time. The secret ingredient that evolved Apple into this corporate giant that we know today is simply Steve Jobs’ strange ability to understand his audience inside out; something he managed to do with his strong intuition and thorough market research.  Later on, these insights enabled Apple to consistently create marketing strategies that resonated with its users.

3. Establish a Mission and Vision

Now that you know who your target audience is and what they may be expecting from your brand, you need to establish what your brand is all about, the value your business provides and what it represents.

To gain your target audience’s trust, you should be able to tell them the core values of your brand and the purpose of its existence. A simple yet brilliant way of concisely doing that is by creating a mission statement.

It will define what your brand represents and validate its existence. A mission statement will also act as your company’s driving force for as long as it thrives in the world of business.

Nike’s mission, for instance, is “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world” and it sticks to it by making products that cater to the needs of all types of athletes. To take it a notch higher, they have further added a footnote to their statement which says, “If you have a body, you are an athlete”. This has helped Nike build such a brilliant reputation and brand following through which they are able to accommodate everyone and increase their target market.

Another great example is that of Honest Tea which does a great job of displaying its mission statement that clearly reflects its values, beliefs, and also defines its level of quality, all in one go.

Honest Tea’s mission statement says that it “seeks to create and promote great-tasting, healthier, organic beverages” and it does so by spending a lot of their time testing its products so that customers are delivered exactly what they are promised.

4. Stand Out

Every time you hit the grocery store to get your favorite brand of chips or cookies, how often are you interested in another brand (of chips or cookies) that looks equally tempting? Ever wondered why you ignore all the other brands for your favorite ones?

There’s a specific science behind it. A distinct brand identity makes a company stand out from the crowd. This is the secret ingredient, and while you can still sell more or less the same products as your competition, you’d still be different – in fact, better.

This goes to show that it is not just your product, but how you position yourself in the market in comparison to other brands that try to give you a run for your money. Your goal here should be to carefully analyze your competition, their marketing strategies and then carefully map out your own to allow your brand to take center stage.

Take chocolate chip cookies, for instance. So many brands to choose from yet somehow, Nestle and Hershey’s seem to have taken the lead in the world of chocolate chip cookies. Ever wondered why? Similar ingredients, similar price range and possibly similar packaging, yet these two have established themselves as icons in the chocolate chip market. The secret to their obvious success lies in the way they scan their competition, position themselves as authorities and do things that their competitors are missing out on.

5. Digital Presence is Key

You may now need to make your presence felt on social media because more often than not, an online presence can make or break your business. Therefore, it’s a good idea to build your own online platform such as a website, or a blog that will help you engage with your audience and communicate with them.

In fact, your website should be your most important brand development tool, as this is usually where your audience will turn to learn about you, your products and get to know about your brand further. Your website will also be your space to put up and amplify content that will later become the crux of your search engine optimization efforts so that more and more people are able to find you online and know about you.

Moreover, your site will also tell your business’s story to the audience including your potential customers and will answer their questions such as who you are, what you do, what your vision is, etc.

Building an online presence doesn’t just mean owning a website or a blog; it is also about using social media to your advantage by creating content that goes viral instantly. Oreo is a great example as it constantly churns out relevant and fresh content on all its social sites. During the Halloween of 2013, Oreo implemented one of its best marketing campaigns where it created a Vine video series that became an instant hit.

6. Stay Updated and Consistent

As a brand, your business needs to stay true to its values throughout its journey and consistently adapt to an audience that is ever-growing and ever-changing.

Being consistent is the key here because that is what will help you gain loyalty from your audience and make them come back to you for more. Imaging walking into three different McDonald’s outlets and getting your McArabia meal wrong for the third time. How likely are you to go back there or how long till you officially switch to a different fast food joint? Immediately, right?

This is what being inconsistent can do to your brand. A good brand, however, is built through years of great work including well-thought out strategies and consistent implementation.

Take Coca Cola, for instance. Brand consistency, among many other factors, is perhaps their major success factor. Their logo has remained unchanged for as long as they have hit the beverage market. Every bottle, every package and every advertisement carries with it the same level of consistency as promised by Coca-Cola. With such a brilliant consistent record, it is no wonder that brands like Coca-Cola have been so successful in their efforts to evolve themselves overtime!

Although the list is not exhaustive, these are the most vital steps that you need to take as soon as you are done with the first few steps of your brand including logo design. As mentioned earlier, brands are not built overnight. The process is long, but with the right strategies and the correct approach, your brand will evolve slowly but surely. So, learn from the mistakes of your competition, and always have a glorious focus on your customers because happy customers mean an uber successful business.

Every business in the world wants to evolve into a strong brand, one with a unique brand identity and instant recognition. Telling a complete story without using a single word is a form of art all marketers strive to perfect. And one of the best ways of incorporating this art in your business is by creating a logo which gets etched in the minds of people forever.

We have seen giant corporations do it, that’s why it is so easy to tell the difference between a BMW and a Mercedes or find a McDonalds without landing at a Wendy’s outlet. It’s all in the logos.

However, before we discuss this topic further, we need to learn a few principles of neuromarketing. When it comes to marketing your business, and cementing it as a brand, neuromarketing can be extremely helpful.

Neuromarketing

When it comes to marketing analysis, asking the consumers “do you like this product?” is often not enough. People may answer in the affirmative and buy a different product at the end of the day. Hence, you can’t analyze a consumer’s buying decision based on verbal proof. Neuromarketing is a field of marketing which uses factors such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study the stimulations and the brain’s responses to it. In simpler words, it’s used to judge consumer behavior through their response to a marketing stimulus.

The results enlighten a marketer about consumer reactions to a certain marketing stimulus, be it the color of a product package, the sound it makes when the box rattles or even their perception of the product compared to a rival brand.

Famous neuromarketing expert, Roger Dooley, however, believes that this field is not limited to analysis only. He came up with the following definition of neuromarketing:

“Neuromarketing is the application of neuroscience to marketing. Neuromarketing includes the direct use of brain imaging, scanning, or other brain activity measurement technology to measure a subject’s response to specific products, packaging, advertising, or other marketing elements. In some cases, the brain responses measured by these techniques may not be consciously perceived by the subject; hence, this data may be more revealing than self-reporting on surveys, in focus groups, etc. A marketing campaign that specifically incorporates that stimulus hoping to create that behavior can be said to incorporate neuromarketing, even though no physical testing of subjects was done for that campaign.”

It’s not a new trick for the seasoned marketer. The use of campaigns to produce some kind of brain activity in the consumer has been a longstanding process. What we need to pay attention to is the data which can be used to repeat the effect on a new campaign. Neuromarketing research can be utilized to launch powerful campaigns which make the target audience perform actions in a brand’s favor.

Coming back to logos and their effect on consumer decisions: while a static logo has always proved to be effective in positioning a brand in the market, this new way of building an animated logo has surpassed the tradition to categorize a brand as a dynamic, customer-centric entity.

When the monotony of a static logo is broken, out comes the animated logo with so much interactivity and stories to offer. The customer of today is bound to love it, because the mobile revolution has made us all habitual of watching short videos which describe a brand story in a better way than any text ever can. It is the world of emojis now, and animated messages are more than welcome by today’s customer. Thus, a brand has more chances of recognition with a creative animated logo.

Animation offers your logo the chance to become lifelike and make a lasting impression on your viewers. There are two kinds of animations when it comes to building a logo;

1. Agent animation
2. Object animation

Agent animation:

Agent animation is the self- directed movement of your brand logo. This means that the elements of your logo are moving and triggering a response. Agent animation makes it look as if the logo were alive and interacting with you. It is up to you to choose if you want it to be a funny interaction or just a plain one.

“If we think that that a logo is alive or that a brand is alive, it’s easy for us to give it a personality. If we have an underlying thought that this thing has a mind, now suddenly it’s much easier for us to feel ‘Oh, that thing is a friend’ or ‘That thing is reliable’ or ‘That thing is exciting.’ says S. Adam Brasel, Associate Professor of Marketing at Boston College. He and his co-researcher, Henrik Hagvedt, found out the importance of logo animation in marketing a business. Marketers don’t really know much about agent animation or its ability to bring a brand to life. “The logo is in many ways the centerpiece of a brand’s persona, and logo animation can help mold a brand’s image. It is therefore important that this is done strategically, to fit with the brand’s overall identity.”

Object animation:

Object animation makes use of objects that are animated alongside a brand logo. Take the example of the Universal Studios logo. We see the earth rotating before the logo comes to take its place in front of the globe. This is object animation in logo design.

According to the two researchers favorable attitudes arise when the brand personality suggested by the animation is consistent with other brand cues, such as brand slogans or the logo graphic. Object animation logos are the signs of brands that are more stable in their services, according to the researchers.

In either case, it is the duty of a company to assess whether an animated logo is required or not. Nevertheless, an animated logo undoubtedly is a great investment which turns your brand logo into a timeless content piece. Your content strategy can certainly get a boost when you use an animated logo wherever you post your content.

Here are some ways in which an animated logo can prove to be effective for your brand:

Brand awareness

The main purpose of a logo is to create brand awareness, and an animated logo can do that in a shorter time span than a stationary logo. In fact, it can make your brand memorable and timeless. If you are the first business in your niche to do this, your logo will also go down in history and become timeless. Your brand can come alive and interact with customers through colors, animation and design. Consequently, the impression that your viewers have will be that of an energetic, forward thinking brand which takes care of its customers. All of these factors enhance your brand identity, since people will be bound to talk about your unique logo.

Virality

We have all seen that little lamp in Pixar movies which jumps on the letter “i” to take its place. In time, this effect becomes rooted in the minds of the audience and people come to expect it at the beginning of every Pixar movie. This is the reach and effect of a brilliantly animated logo. You just can’t imagine the brand without it, because it is so vividly saved in your memory.

Once you build an animated logo, it’s a good idea to turn it into a GIF. Auto playing GIFs are very popular in today’s age of visual content. Almost every social medium has now incorporated a GIF section in their comments, which can increase your exposure. If the logo is really well done, it can achieve valuable virality on the internet.

Good logos are often turned into “memes” as well, which is considered a success for any online marketer. Viral GIFs are memorable and can be traced back to your brand, building value for your business. You can also post these GIFs wherever relevant on your social media posts, to seed the content to your followers.

SEO

Animated logos have to be embedded into the website in order to play. This provides you with an excellent opportunity to boost the SEO of your website in that category. Visual content is more popular than text, so a user is expected to spend more time on your website if you have a video which auto plays when they land on the page.

This can improve the visibility and usefulness of your website with regard to search engines and ultimately, search results. Google and other search engines take into account the visibility of a website, which you can achieve by placing an animated logo. Your website rankings will be improved if the search engines see higher visibility of the webpages.

Competitive edge

Not every brand is incorporating this strategy in their business, and you doing so will give you an immediate competitive edge. An animated logo can describe your brand in a short an effective way, like nothing else.

When it comes to giving the right first impression to the customer, businesses spend millions to be considered unique. With an animated logo, your brand can be projected to the audience in the first few seconds of interaction.

Whatever your business niche, the viewer will immediately catch a vibe off the logo and will feel connected. Your consumers are being bombarded with countless bits of information, advertisements and logos on a daily basis. Your logo can stand out by being animated and gain the short attention span of a user.

Additionally, you will be many steps ahead of the competition if you are working on an animated logo to define your brand. The researchers from Boston College signaled that the low usage of animated logos in the industry can provide early adopters with competitive advantage. They looked at more than 400 commercials and found a small number of brands using animated logos. Therefore, this is the right time for you to utilize this opportunity.

Emotional trigger

Your viewers can feel the depth of an emotion through an animated logo. It works well when you keep the design simple. Well written textual content is also a very powerful way to evoke emotions in people, but an animated logo can overshadow that due to its visual imagery.

This is a good thing, because you can align your brand story with a creative animated logo to make people feel connected to the brand. This can trigger specific reactions in people who watch that logo.

Avoid lawsuits

Creative directors and designers spend months creating a timeless logo, only to discover that after the launch, somewhere, another corporation has an almost identical logo. This leads to lawsuits and lots of messy paperwork for both parties.

When MetLife launched its new logo and rebranded after three decades, they were immediately met with this misfortune. A company called Diffen already had a similar logo and called this an act of theft. The fashion brands Gucci and Chanel have similar logos and the logos of Bentley and Mini also have a similar winged symbol.

That’s why, it is time to move on from the static logo, and turn your logo into an animated masterpiece. Build a brand which is always alive and dynamic due to its logo. This way, you will avoid accidental copyright infringement and become a pioneer in your field as well.

Key Takeaways

• Neuromarketing is a field of marketing which takes into account the responses of an individual when they are exposed to a marketing element. It is valuable to marketers because it finds out the true responses of potential buyers when they see a product, based on color or touch.
• Logos can make use of neuromarketing to trigger certain emotions in the viewers. Businesses can tell their story in a better way by incorporating a creative logo.
• Animated logos are the new tactic on the block, because they are more interactive and memorable than a static logo.
• Object animated logos and agent animated logos are both useful in designing the perfect logo for your business. You must combine them with great content to accomplish the task of building good brand reputation.
• Animated logos turn your brand identity stronger, so people can spot your business amidst a dozen static logos. They also have the potential to go viral, give your business a competitive edge and save your business from accidental trademark infringements.
• Deliver great content along with your animated logo to build an effective brand strategy.