Are you setting up a new business?

Every new business begins with creating a brand.

This brand acts as the overall personality of your business and allows you to stand out in the market. The brand in which your company creates is the way that your audience will perceive you.

Are you a modern and cutting-edge business that relates to millennials? Or do you opt for a classic, straightforward design that identifies with a more senior audience?

Without establishing a solid, consistent brand for your business, your target audience is far less likely to identify and interact with your brand.

If you’re starting a new business, you’re going to want to ensure that you read this. We’re outlining a guide fit with five essential tips for starting a brand from scratch.

1. Identify Your Target Market

First things first, you’re going to want to target exactly who you are looking to market your product toward.

Ask yourself who you want to sell your product, idea or service to. In asking yourself this, be sure to consider age, gender, socioeconomic status and even the location of this audience.

Without a thorough understanding of who exactly your audience is, your brand will fail to connect with them. And, without a solid connection, your audience is less likely to interact with your business.

This audience is the basic platform for who you will build your brand upon.

2. Create a Logo

Next, you’re going to want to create a logo to represent your brand.

Whether you’re a small business or a large, multi-faceted business, creating an effective logo is one of the most important steps in establishing your brand.

Think of your logo as the face of your brand. After all, your logo is often the first taste of the brand that your clientele is able to see.

Taking this into consideration, you will want to ensure that your logo is attractive and appealing to your target audience.

If you have identified your target market as millennials, opt for a brand that is unique and cutting edge. This automatically sends a message to your audience that your brand is not only current, but also unique in comparison to the other established brands.

Fortunately, there are online services that allow you to create a logo in a way that is simple yet still professional.

3. Understand Your Competitors

In creating your brand, it’s essential to understand who your competitors are and what their brand is.

Evaluate your competitors brand and determine ways in which you’d like your brand to differ. Ask yourself how your competitor’s brand is falling short and how you can prevent that in your own brand.

It’s also important to note that you will likely share a target audience. That being said, study how they interact with their audience and establish the areas that need work. If you’re going to interact with the same audience, you need to ensure that your brand is offering them someone that no other brand is.

In order to best stand out from the competition, you first need to understand exactly how your competition operates.

4. Choose Your Brand Personality

When it comes to the personality of your brand, it’s helpful to humanize your brand. In doing so, think of your brand as a human and what you’d like their personality to be like.

You can begin by asking yourself what sort of human characteristics you would like your brand to possess. So, what is the overall character and nature of your brand?

For example, a comedic brand that is looking to sell online merchandise may look to have a brand personality that is pessimistic and sarcastic. On the other hand, a financial brand that provides online financial services may look to have a brand that is friendly and honest.

Remember, in order to resonate with your target audience, you must possess similar values and characteristics. In fact, 64 percent of consumers report that having a shared set of values with their brand is what allows them to have a trusted relationship with that brand.

It’s also important to determine how you expect your brand to identify with your audience. Ask yourself these questions:

• How do you want your brand to make your audience feel?
• Do you want your brand to make your audience laugh?
• Do you want your brand to resonate emotionally with your audience?

Determining the personality of your brand will determine which sort of people choose to interact with your business.

5. Hire Professionals

Sure, hiring professionals may appear to be a costly investment at first.

However, it’s important to think of this as a serious and worthwhile investment in your business.

In creating a successful brand, there are multiple hats that need to be worn. And, for entrepreneurs, it’s important to acknowledge the limitations of your expertise. While you may excel in establishing creative solutions, you may need help in the graphic design or marketing departments.

You may consider hiring multiple in-house departments or, instead, choose to outsource these projects. Today, there are countless freelancers that are searching for work in multiple departments.

The Essential Guide to Starting a Brand

If you’re considering starting a business, it’s important to begin by creating a brand.

Your brand is the face of your business and sets a precedent for what your audience can expect from your business.

But, starting a brand that is effective and resonates with your audience is not always easy. In fact, only six out of ten marketers believe that their brand aligns well with their overall business plan.

Fortunately, there are steps any business can take to create an effective brand from the start. From identifying your target market and creating a logo to fabricating a brand personality and enlisting the help of professionals, these tips are sure to keep your business on the right path.

For more tips on brands, logos, and design, be sure to visit our blog!

With every PowerPoint presentation, you put your brand on the line.

What? PowerPoint? Really?

It’s true. It’s easy to forget that PowerPoint presentations are also a form of marketing. Not only do you want to educate your audience, you want to increase brand awareness with every slide.

That’s why it’s important to show your logo in the most effective way possible.

But how do you do this without being too pushy?

Read on to find out more.

Is Your Logo the Right Fit for Your Brand?

If your logo doesn’t translate well across your marketing materials, that’s a sign that you may need to go back to the drawing board – literally.

One of the basic principles of successful logo design is adaptability. Ask yourself: How well does your logo adapt to brochures, social media, TV commercials, and informational marketing materials like PowerPoint presentations?

A strong logo should maintain its integrity when it’s shrunk down for business cards or blown up for billboards.

The same applies to your PowerPoint presentations. If your logo still distracts despite being minimized, transparent, or animated, you may want to rethink your logo design altogether.

Focus groups and A/B testing can reveal whether or not your logo successfully adapts across all marketing material.

How to Brand Your PowerPoint Presentations

After fine tuning your logo, your next step is to ‘brand’ your presentations.

But what does ‘branding’ a presentation even mean?

For starters, it doesn’t mean plastering your logo all over your slides. It means working in tandem with other elements to successfully reflect a brand’s message. You can’t successfully integrate a logo without the right accompanying font, color scheme, tagline, slide border design, and media.

You’ll want to find a way to integrate these branding elements without coming across as pushy.

How to Master the Art of Subtlety

Informational marketing, in particular, must put authoritative information front and center. This includes your data, statistics, charts, results, case studies, and company forecasts.

One way to subtly integrate your logo is to tweak its opaqueness to create a more transparent look. This is ideal for introductory slides, conclusions, and slides with testimonials, mission statements, and company history.

Ideally, only your introductory and conclusion slide should prominently feature your logo.

Show Your Logo ‘In Action’

If you’re including professional photos in your slides, make sure your logo is visible on employee uniforms, equipment, company vehicles, packaging, and work environments. This is a great way to show your logo ‘in action.’

Ask yourself how you want people to feel about your brand and put that feeling to work in your presentation.

If you’re an organic garden company promoting your new plant food, you may want to include a picture of a customer using your name-brand plant food.

Likewise, if you run a factory, make sure your company logo is visible on your workers’ attire.

Integrate Digital Media

You’ve heard time and time again that content is king, but don’t forget that video is the king of content. Still, more than 70% of consumers prefer video and almost 60% of executives prefer watching video.

As content preferences continue to evolve, it’s vital to read more on how to improve your PowerPoint presentations. That’s why more companies are integrating digital media into their slides.

But how do you include digital media without pushing your brand too hard? Branded company videos.

Make sure all your company videos begin and end with your logo. Preferably, animate your logo to grab your audience from the start. You may want to consider an original instrumental to accompany your animated logo as well.

Integrate Social Media

Another way to subtly show your logo is to embed social media content into your slides.

Content can include:

• Twitter polls
• Popular Tweets
• YouTube videos
• Facebook posts
• Instagram photos
• Hashtag campaigns
• Snapchat snaps

Embedding your branded social media content is a clever way to integrate your logo without going overboard.

Let this also be a reminder to brand your social media accounts ASAP! Embedding branded social media content allows online audiences to share your slides with colleagues. This is a subtle way to increase brand awareness without being pushy.

De-Clutter your presentation

It’s easy to go a little overboard with your graphics, pictures, media, graphs, and yes, your logo.

After completing your slides, make sure there isn’t too much media plastered on each slide. If your slide already has a branded video, you don’t need to add more photos or graphics.

Avoid overlapping your logo with graphics and using background wallpaper with your repeating logo. You want your presentation to look as clean and professional as possible.

Don’t worry about whether or not your audience remembers your logo. If your mission, content, and brand design are consistent and strong, your audience will have no problem making a positive connection with your logo.

Day of the Presentation

It’s finally presentation day!

Your presentation is complete. Here are a few tricks to help your audience remember your logo.

As mentioned earlier in this article, your introductory slide should prominently feature your logo. Make sure your presentation is fired up and ready to go several minutes before the presentation starts. This will give attendees funneling in an opportunity to see your logo before the presentation starts.

The same applies to your conclusion slide.

After your presentation is over, don’t immediately shut off your presentation. Let the conclusion slide stay up on the screen until you’re finished mingling with attendees.

Remember, your company’s logo is the first and last thing your presentation attendees should see.

Your Next Step

Your next step is to put these new principles into practice.

Remember the following:

• Choose a logo that speaks to your brand
• Choose subtlety over flash
• Show your logo in action
• Use digital and social media
• De-clutter your slides
• Highlight your intro and conclusion slides

Most importantly, never stop improving your presentations. Remember to bookmark this article for future reference and check back often for more tips and tricks on mastering your logo.

You know that designing the right logo is an essential part of your branding and print marketing process.

Your logo can help decorate your product labels, jazz up the cover of a product catalog, or even make your storefront stand out.

But have you stopped to consider the importance of logo design as it relates to your website? Are you taking the necessary steps to ensure that your logo is working as effectively in the digital world as it is in print?

This post is here to help you find out.

Keep on reading to learn more about why the use of company logos on websites — and other web presences — is so important.

We’ll also let you know where you can create stunning logo designs online.

A Logo on Your Website Builds Brand Recognition

You’ve worked hard to create products and services that you’re proud to stand behind.

However, no matter how unique what you have to offer to customers is, you’ll always have competitors. The right logo can help to set you apart from other brands within your industry. It ensures that people end up with the products they want from your brand and not the lesser version of what you have to offer from your competitors.

In other words, the right logo design can eliminate consumer confusion.

But there’s another reason for the importance of logo design within your website. A well-designed logo will increase your overall brand recognition.

This means that your customers will be able to create an instant connection between your products/services and your brand. That’s because you’ve included the main symbol of your brand, your logo, on your website.

After all, nearly 80% of Americans say that they prefer to do their shopping online.

In other words?

If you don’t brand your company online, you risk losing up to 80% of your business. Can you afford to lose 80% of your profits every quarter?

We didn’t think so.

Now, let’s talk about where else you should put your logo online.

A Logo Creates Consistency Across Your Web Presence

The importance of a logo isn’t only about helping you to increase your brand recognition on your website alone.

It also helps your target market and current customers recognize you wherever you are on the web. (Your company’s website isn’t the only place that your brand exists on the Internet — right?)

Take a look at your current social media pages.

If you have different profile pictures on your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pages? Your market is going to have a tough time determining if those accounts belong to your brand, or if they belong to another company with the same name.

But if your profile picture is consistently a photo of your company’s logo? Customers will know right away that it’s you.

The same goes for your third-party listing sites, like Yelp and Google My Business. Even if you write guest posts under the company name, your “About the Author” photo should be a picture of your logo design.

In brief: while using a company’s logo on your website is important for brand recognition, your website isn’t the only place that you should use it.

After all, you didn’t work so hard on creating your logo design to limit it to one place, right? And speaking of logo design…

When Should You Consider Professional Website Logo Design?

We’ve covered the importance of logo design as it relates to both your website and your overall web presence.

Now, let’s talk about how you can bring your dream design to life.

If you’re struggling to create a design that’s clean and simple but still reflective of your company’s values, hire a professional design team.

Of course, you need to know what to look for in a quality website design company. Companies like L Form don’t only help with SEO and responsive website design. They also assist you with corporate branding and logo design. Visit the site to learn more about what to look for in the right web design company.

You should also ask your web design team to help you to find the best place for your logo on your website. Remember that your company’s NAP (that’s name, address, and phone number) should appear on every page of your website. The same goes for your company’s logo.

This is because not every visitor to your website will land on exclusively your home page. If you’ve developed a strong internal and external linking strategy, they’re more likely to end up on specific blog posts or product pages.

The Importance of Logo Design: Wrapping Up

We hope that this post has helped you to understand the importance of logo design as it relates to your website as a whole.

Ready to try out some of your ideas, and see if they look as good on the page as they do in your head? Use our free online logo maker tool to get started.

Plus, even if you do decide to go with a professional web design company or graphic designer, having a few mock-ups of potential logo designs will help to make sure they understand your vision.

So, what else goes into making a strong logo design? How do you choose the right colors, fonts, and images to make a lasting impression on your market?

We’ll continue to cover all these topics and more, so keep on checking back with us for the latest logo news.

What do you think of when we mention the colors red and white along with a family of polar bears? Unless you’ve had your head in the sand for the last half-century, you likely conjured up images of those heartwarming Coca-Cola Christmas adverts.

This, in essence, is what branding is all about. Using as few words or details as possible to create something that sticks in the minds of your customers.

And while we may not be able to help you become the next Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, we can help you understand more about branding practices and the principles behind them.

Ready to take your brand to the next level? Check out these nine awesome branding tips.

1. The Significance of Semiotics

You’ll need to understand the ‘Why’ before you understand the ‘How.’

There’s so much more to branding than awesome logos and catchy slogans. And if you want to create a truly effective branding campaign, you’re going to need to understand that.

That all begins with a quick lesson in semiotics. In short, semiotics is the academic term for the study of signs and signals along with how we interpret them.

Think of a traffic light, for example. The colors red, yellow, and green don’t really mean anything on their own. It’s only when we assign meaning to them — stop, slow down, and go, respectively — that they actually hold a value.

Semiotics and branding go hand-in-hand. Take our Coca-Cola example, for instance! Those colors and images have become synonymous with soda through decades of branding.

But we don’t just know these things. It takes tons of repetition and brand awareness to make these work for you.

2. Call In The SWOT Team

Fortunately, this doesn’t actually involve calling in any sort of militant presence. Instead, it involves you and your team sitting down to take a good hard look at your company’s past and present to determine its future.

SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

The former two are quite self-explanatory, but the latter half of the acronym is where you’ll really start to flex your marketing muscles. Who is your biggest competition and what opportunities are they seizing that your company currently isn’t?

The more you flesh out your company’s standing in the market, the more successful your efforts will be.

3. Analyze Your Values

Whether conscious of it or not, every brand exudes certain values. A surefire way to make branding a business easier is by taking a hold of those values and leveraging them in a positive way.

What is it that you set out to do when you first created your company? Furthermore, what sets you apart from any other business in your field?

Admittedly, these questions can be difficult to answer. However, they’re often actionable responses, such as an increased focus on customer service or an open mind and desire to help the local community as your business grows.

Whatever the case, your brand has values, and you’ll want to make sure they’re sending the right message.

4. Assess Your Audience

Whether you’re in the midst of a campaign that isn’t quite making its mark or you’ve never launched a branding campaign before, you’ll want to take a closer look at your market.

Who, exactly, are you trying to sell your goods or services to and why did you choose that market?

5. Create A Customer Avatar

This step works in perfect tandem with your assessment. Once you have a clearer picture of who you want to sell to, you’ll want to create a fictional individual that exemplifies your audience.

Personifying your audience can make your marketing seem more tangible, in a way, as you’re no longer selling to a faceless group. Now, you’ll have an (albeit fictional) person to market toward.

Include at least basic elements such as their age, gender, income level, language style, and degree of education.

6. Develop Your Brand’s Voice

Branding a business is about setting your company apart from the pack. And part of that includes humanizing yourself, as well as your audience.

One fantastic way to achieve that humanization is to develop a voice for your brand in conjunction with your customer persona.

Speak like your audience speaks. If they’re using casual language, go casual. If you’re trying to sell directly to other businesses, use a more formal, buttoned-up approach.

It is worth noting, though, that warmer language and more personalized content tend to generate better results. So even if you’re a B2B company, try and implement warmer, friendlier language.

7. Make A Memorable Logo

While the more humanistic aspects, such as your brand’s voice and customer persona, matter a great deal, it’s likely your logo that is going to best stick in customers’ minds.

It’s hard to nail down what makes a great logo, but every successful logo has a few things in common:

• Simplicity
• Elegance
• Use of color psychology
• Brand relevance

As you begin to create your logo, think of how you can use each element together to create something your audience will remember.

8. Establish Branding Guidelines

If your marketing team consists of 15 people, and each of those 15 people has their own ideas of what is and isn’t going to help your branding, it’s safe to say that your campaign is going to be quite muddled.

We recommend teams work together to create a set of guidelines and best practices for their personal brand so that branding remains consistent across channels like social media, your website, advertising, and pamphlets.

9. Be Patient

As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. And, unfortunately, your branding won’t be, either.

Be patient throughout your campaign and don’t expect results to flood in instantaneously. It’s going to take some time for your efforts to have a noticeable effect.

These Branding Tips Can Make A Corporation A True Brand

These branding tips are designed to give you the basic outline of a strong branding campaign. Now, it’s up to you and your team to create something truly revolutionary!

Ready to get started on your branding? Make sure to check out our free logo-making program that can help you create the next memorable design. And best of all, it’s completely free!