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4 Steps To Find Your Brand Voice

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Congratulations! You’ve just launched a new service and are eager to create a strong online presence. Or perhaps you’ve just been given the green light for your business’s first website redesign since Al Gore invented the internet. Either way, you’re ready to start the process of crafting a winning digital brand strategy. However, before you start shouting your message to anyone and everyone, there are some important things you need to consider.

The Importance of Brand Voice

First, you need to establish your brand’s voice, or how you plan to consistently express your brand through words. While images, videos, and podcasts have grown in importance, text-based communication remains critical to online marketing. Relatable language lends credibility to your message and can contain the keywords that your customers are searching for.

While you can certainly improvise and have some success, by not having a defined brand voice you risk confusing your audience with different messages. And since 83 percent of customer loyalty is driven by trust, mixing your messages makes turning first-time customers into returning customers that much harder.

Instead, consider how you’re going to communicate your value before you start a conversation with the audience. The process can be broken down into four easy steps:

1. Define Your Major Brand Traits

Think of a few words or phrases that describe your business, your product, or your culture. Are you professional or fun? A thought leader or a product innovator? Whatever words or phrases you choose, these brand traits will form the foundation of your company’s marketing efforts and the cornerstone of your brand voice.

The characteristics should reflect the value you aim to provide. Do your B2B customers want to hear that you’re adventurous? Maybe not. But if you sell gaming products, that trait might resonate with a large segment of your target audience.

2. Convey Why You’re Different

Odds are, the traits you’ve chosen to reflect your company aren’t exactly unique. We get it: here at DaBrian, we’re also quirky and authentic. Remember, you’re trying to reach the same buyers as competitors in your industry. This means there’s a good chance that you’re all defining yourselves in similar ways. However, if you can move past the “what” and the “how” to convey the “why” to your listeners, you can quickly set yourself apart from the crowd.

The WHY is about what a company believes in, not about what you make or how you make a profit. So extend each of your key defining traits so that they begin to tell a story. If one of your traits is “irreverent”, have a plan to explain why you’re irreverent. People want to hear your David vs. Goliath origin story, not the latest software features you offer. Influential companies link their purpose with their brand voice to convey why they are different.

3. Give Your Voice a Break and Listen Up

This is a key step that many companies skip in their rush to spread their messages. Don’t forget that the audience you’re trying to reach probably has its own way of communicating. Take a break from developing your own brand voice and tune in to what your peers, competitors, leads, and customers are saying.

Every industry has jargon that you need to be careful to include – or avoid – in your own messaging. Brands that fail to embrace the language of their target audiences come off as outsiders who don’t care about the people they want to work with. Companies that listen develop stronger brand voices, and come across as consultants instead of the latest in a long line of product pushers.

4. Put Brand Voice into Action

Once you’ve agreed on a few unique traits for your brand voice and confirmed that they align with your audience and industry, it’s time to put your plan into action. Extend your voice characteristics to include a few practical “do’s” and “don’ts” for your marketing team. If your brand voice includes “passion”, you might give the direction to include strong action verbs and to take a stand, even on controversial issues. You might also tell your marketers to avoid passive voice and lukewarm endorsements.

Lastly, make sure your team is on-board. Your brand voice needs to be clearly articulated to everyone in your organization as part of your overall brand guidelines. Go through examples of content that hit the mark. And show content that misses the mark, and make suggestions to fix it. Doing so will provide clarity for your content team and ensure that your brand voice is consistent across your marketing channels.

Conclusion

Developing your brand voice is crucial to conveying your brand’s personality and authenticity to potential customers. With just a few unique traits that resonate with your target audience, you’ll be on your way to digital content that builds brand awareness and customer loyalty.

For more information about brand elements to consider when designing digital content, contact us or leave us a comment below!

Reach 150 Million New Patients with Effective Healthcare Marketing

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In November of 2016, Google announced mobile-first search engine results. Combine that fact with 51% of Americans (that’s about 150 million people) use their mobile devices to research healthcare information. If you handle healthcare marketing or looking to grow your healthcare practice, it’s time that you get on the bandwagon or risk being run over!    

Mobile Friendly Healthcare Marketing

Mobile users within the US are using smartphones to search for healthcare related information ranging from health conditions, refilling prescriptions, and shopping for health or medical products. These potential new patients must be able to easily navigate your mobile website and get to the desired information.  

Connect with Local Patients Online

People are looking for healthcare information and medical products. The closer to your healthcare practice, the greater the likelihood of turning them into new patients. Clearly communicating your healthcare products, services, and doctor expertise across all devices, improves your opportunities to grow. Ask patients for reviews to your local listing such as Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp to increase your exposure to potential patients.

Local listing management services in Reading, Pa
Grove Dental Group’s Google My Business

Create Content to Demonstrate Healthcare Expertise

35% of people go online to self-diagnose their symptoms. Healthcare marketers and medical practices have an opportunity to provide people with unique information to support your expertise and educate them. The content should follow SEO best practices to enhance visibility in the search engine results.

Create Content to Demonstrate Healthcare Expertise

Tell people why your healthcare practitioners are unique and what value your healthcare practice provides. Show some personality by engaging with your existing and potential patients on social media. Don’t just put your branding and mission on paper, demonstrate them with action within your community, as well as your area of expertise.

For more information on Healthcare Marketing, subscribe to our YouTube Channel or subscribe to our newsletter.

Bank Marketing: Creating Your Bank’s Brand

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If you are not careful, a bank can easily become a faceless organization—making one virtually indistinguishable from another financial institution. That is why even though a bank is offering a service which is considered a NEED, not a want, a branding message is vital. Banks have print, digital, and branches that need a consistent message and look. This message is something that should carry across mediums, devices, and generations. To improve your bank’s marketing and financial success, utilize these bank branding guidelines.

Bank Marketing tips and Bank Branding Guidelines

Effective Bank Marketing Starts with Your Employees

External branding is visible to each and every customer, or potential customer, who walks into your bank or researches your firm online. However, without internal branding, it is easy to let this message slip away. Your employees must carry the message, value proposition, differentiation and “live” the brand that you have clearly defined. Your slogans and taglines should be more than just statements; they can be shown through actions and customer interactions. Every employee should understand the bank’s branding. These employees will become ambassadors for the firm and may be responsible for carrying the message to both existing and potential customers.

Guidelines for Branding Your Bank

You need to put together a list of guidelines for your brand so that it appears consistent across all mediums. What font or typography will you use? How will the logo be placed? What color(s) will be utilized? Keeping these consistent is vital. Think about how the brand will be delivered, both in person and digitally, to ensure there are no mistakes. The smallest inconsistency can be magnified when published. As far as for use in your physical locations, you may need to hold training sessions with your employees on how to display any brand elements, too. Finally, don’t forget to cover yourself from a legal standpoint. Protect your logo and other branding elements and make sure you are not stepping on other toes.

Creating Your Bank’s Brand

When your bank is branded, it becomes more and more necessary to take advantage of your digital assets. Even if you don’t plan to use them today. Claim social media platforms when they become available. Get listed in the major directories. Additionally, you may wish to research reputation management and how it can benefit your bank. In certain cases, this can be necessary to give your company the right look and feel.

  • What the bank’s unique value proposition?
  • What differentiates them from other banks?
  • What’s the voice, style, and tone of the bank?

The answers to these questions will help you as you work to create your brand and make it “live” in the hearts of your customers.

Humanizing Your Brand

Your brand doesn’t just exist on paper, so it is important to “make it human.” Continuously reinforce the brand with your staff, customers, vendors and outside firms. This extra effort will go a long way in reinforcing what you stand for and creating something that will not only serve you well today but grow with your bank and become the core of what you are and how you serve those around you.

For more information about bank marketing and branding, leave a comment below or contact us today!

 

 

Why Stock Photography Shouldn’t Represent Your Brand

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5 Reasons Not To Use Stock Photography

Throughout my experience as a Web Designer, I have noticed that many businesses struggle when they have to make a decision on whether or not to use stock photography to promote their brand. Although there are several good reasons to utilize stock photography on branded materials (such as limited budget, accessibility, variety, and quality), the negative impact of using them can prove to be much greater. This blog covers the 5 disadvantages or risks of using stock photography when promoting your brand and what alternative solutions are out there to avoid these potential risks.

1. Limited Restrictions

When purchasing non-custom photography, there are always license restrictions to abide by. Always make sure to read and understand all license restrictions associated with your purchase. Some restrictions may include crediting the author while some images may only be licensed for editorial use versus advertising/commercial use. You can view iStock’s License Help or iStock’s Content License Agreement to get an idea of the type of licenses or restrictions associated to stock photography purchases.

Don't use stock photography for branding your company
Screenshot displaying iStock’s additional image license options.

2. Non-Exclusive

You must remember that the same website you purchase your photos from may be the same website your competitors are purchasing from. This factor alone makes stock photography usage non-exclusive to your brand. There is always that risk of competitors finding and using the same imagery you purchased.

3. Lack of Creativity

It is almost impossible for a designer to come up with a unique and custom design concept when limited to using stock photography. Remember that these images weren’t taken with your brand or products in mind. Therefore, you may find yourself paging through hundreds of images to find that one that you feel will best represents your brand. Although image options are limitless with stock photography, unique or original concepts are not.

reasons your business should not use stock photography
Screenshot showing 10 different images depicting the same woman in similar compositions or settings.

4. Predictability

Images submitted to stock photography websites cover a variety concepts. Since these concepts are limited, image options can seem to be very predictable or clichéd. It’s one thing to have a limitless amount of images to choose from. But, if you have 100 images depicting the same idea or concept, where is the variety in that?

iStock Search Categories
Screenshot displaying 6 of iStock’s 32 images categories to choose from.

5. Unnatural Compositions

When browsing through stock photography websites, it’s hard not to notice all the unnatural positions or “forced” compositions in most of the images containing people; especially people in business attire. Everything looks staged. This is the best way to make your website look like spam.

Stock Photography Example

What Are The Alternatives?

1. Custom Photography

It is always best to utilize custom photography to represent your brand or to tell your brand story. Purchasing in-house photography equipment or hiring a professional to do the job will prove to be a better branding method than using stock photography.

2. Vectors/Illustration

Instead of using photos, more and more companies are using vectors or illustrations to promote their brand. Take Google for example.

3. Customize Your Stock

If you are going to use stock photography, find different ways to utilize the photo. Whether it is cropping out a certain portion of the image or combining two different images or concepts. These are just a couple of ways to make stock images as unique and original as possible while diminishing the chance of someone using the same image, idea, or concept.
To learn more about different visual branding methods and which one best suits your company, contact us! We’d be more than happy to chat with you.

How Home Improvement Brands Can Adopt Storytelling

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The research is in folks, and home improvement customers are heading back to their roots.

The well-known “big box” retailers still surpass equivalent brick and mortar businesses in sales, but that trend is beginning to shift. According to research conducted by The NPD Group, customers want to invest more in their local communities, and they’re becoming more receptive to home improvement locations closer to their homes. These shifts mean that the industry is now heading toward increased competition and a need for greater brand differentiation.

How can these local brands hope to highlight their favorable differentiating factors? Let me tell you a little story…

Your Customer Is Always Right (and very Influential)

We’re all aware that customer or client testimonials are a great way for home improvement providers to highlight the best aspects of their brands. But to really tell the story, reviews shouldn’t be limited to impersonal star ratings or detached mouse-clicks.

Taking a more proactive approach, such as via emailed follow-ups or online satisfaction surveys, will help you in two distinct ways. First, you’ll have the ultimate litmus test for your customer service processes. Second (and most importantly), you’ll have ammo for future marketing materials, including brochures, sales materials, and even online videos.

Bad Local Reviews Can Be Good

Yelp Home Improvement Reviews
Local home improvement businesses should take advantage of local review sites like Yelp to address customer concerns.

As you begin to embrace the collective voice of your customers, you’re likely going to catch your fair share of negative reviews. Whether on a social media platform that displays the inflammatory comment to the masses or an internal survey for your team’s eyes only, bad reviews shouldn’t be feared, and they definitely shouldn’t be ignored.

Instead, your team should recognize the feedback and work to remedy the situation as quickly and thoroughly as possible. In this case, a community engagement strategy can really come in handy. For smaller, local home improvement brands, customer service and conflict resolution is often one of the biggest draws for new customers. Personalize all communication and focus on the customer’s concerns, and your brand reputation will thank you.

The Greatest Story Ever Shown

If you’re part of a locally-run business in a specialty market, then there’s a lot that sets you apart from the country’s larger retailers. You know it and it’s your existing customers do too. But how do you get the word out? The answer lies in what’s known as your content marketing mix.

This mix represents the content you use to convey your brand’s unique story. This can take many forms, but the most effective by far is rich, visual content. Your content can highlight your excellent staff, show off new products, educate your audience, or entertain them. All it takes is a little creativity and focusing on the best parts of your already-awesome brand.

As customers’ attitudes and behaviors change, it’s important for the “mom and pop” businesses to stand out among the corporate juggernaut that makes up their top competition. To do this may mean evaluating your brand’s favorable characteristics, polling your existing customers, or heading back to the drawing board and reinventing the brand altogether. No matter the journey, every brand has a captivating story to tell. It’s just a matter of making it memorable and telling it right.

How has your local business fared in the battle of the brands? Let us know in the comments!

The 5 Different Logo Types and Your Brand Identity

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Introduction

In my last blog on the basics of designing a logo, we covered principles to follow when designing one of the most important identity pieces for your business. We learned that a successful logo design should be simple, yet versatile enough to be placed on a variety of different media. Visually, its design should appear to be memorable and timeless, yet stay appropriate to its audience.

When working to develop a logo, one big consideration is the type of design you choose. There are wealth of resources out there that cover various logo styles, but in my experience, there are 5 that are most prevalent and also most important. Let’s get started!

1. Symbol / Icon

The symbol or icon logo benefits from being the least complicated style yet the most flexible of all the other logo types. Symbolic/Iconic logos should be able to stand on their own without the company name association. This type of logo should only be utilized by large or international companies where language could play a huge role in consumers not being able to recognize the brand.

symbolic logos
Example 1: Here are 3 companies that recently dropped the word mark portion of their logo and now utilizes only the symbol/icon component. Out of the top 100 companies worldwide 6% of them uses this type of logo.

According to a study administered by Tastyplacement.com, only 6% of the top 100 companies in the world implements this type of logo. In other words, startups and other new business ventures should likely stay away from relying on a simple image to define their brand. However, I believe that every business should gradually move towards developing a symbolic/iconic logo because to me it represents a level of awareness that comes with overall success.

2. Word Mark

The second type of logo is known as a word mark. Roughly 37% of the top 100 companies worldwide are represented by this type of logo (via Tastyplacement.com). These logos consist of a type font which is styled or manipulated to convey the identity of a business. Even without being styled or manipulated, fonts tend to give off their own impressions. For example:

● Italic – motion, change, timely, continuous

● Bold – strength, power, stability, security

● Script – formal, refined, elegance, prestige

● Hand Written – friendly, playful, happy, childish

Word Mark Logos - Branding
Example 2: This graphic showcases 3 word mark logos which uses typefaces that are uniquely styled. Some word mark logos may even include a simple graphic element in the design.

Word mark logos are ideal for new startup businesses because it helps customers familiarize themselves with both the brand name and, ideally, a bit of the brand culture or personality.

3. Letter Mark

Letter mark logos are very similar to word mark logos in that they are created using typefaces; however, there is greater focus on just using first letter, initials, or an abbreviation of a company’s name to convey their brand identity. Unlike word marks that may contain a simple graphic for clarity, letter marks tend to be exclusively typographic.

Letter Mark Logos - Branding
Example 3: Letter mark logos are typically typographic using either the first letter, or an abbreviated version of a company's name. This type of logo is utilized by 37% of the top 100 companies globally.

This type of logo is best suited for companies with longer or hard to pronounce names. Companies with names that sound or appear generic can also benefit from letter mark logos as a means of differentiation. As an example, if a friend of yours told you that he was watching a show on “Home Box Office,” you probably wouldn’t have a clue what he was talking about. You may think he was speaking about some new cable network, but “Home Box Office” is none other than the vastly-popular cable channel HBO.

4. Combination Mark

Combination Mark Logos - Branding
Example 4: Combination mark logos offers the most flexibility because they consist of both a symbol and a word, or letter mark. These elements can be presented together or individually when representing a company. 56% of the top 100 businesses globally uses this type of logo.

Logos that integrates both a symbol/icon with text (word marks) are known as combination mark logos. According to Tastyplacement.com, 56% of the top 100 companies globally uses this type of logo style. A couple of benefits with developing a combination mark logo for your company are:

  • Having both a symbol and a word mark to represent your company gives you an additional level of flexibility on how your brand appears to customers. As your business grows and changes, parts of the mark can be altered, combined, or separated, but always retain a level of consistency. Many businesses today are following this trend.
  • Combination mark logos are also easier to register as a trademark than stand alone symbol/icon type logos. Many symbol/icon logos can appear similar without uniquely styled text (word marks) associated with them.

5. Emblem

Emblem logos can be considered combination marks to a degree. They are similar because they both include a symbol and text; however, unlike combination marks, emblem style logos are more integrated and enclosed to appear as one single graphic.

Emblem Logos - Branding
Example 5: A large portion of the automobile industry is represented by this type of logo. Emblem logos are also very popular in sports and the beer industry.

Because of this, emblem style logos cannot be presented as separate identity pieces like a combination mark logo, which gives them very little flexibility, especially in print applications or when resizing. This type of logo is very popular in the automobile industry as well as in the sporting world. Emblem style logos tend to resemble a badge or an official seal.

For the last example I decided to showcase DaBrian Marketing Group. Our logo would be classified as a combination mark because it consists of a word mark, a symbol, and a tagline. This type of logo is ideal for our company because we are a small and only made up of 9 employees. We are not well known outside of our coverage area therefore the combination mark logo serves us best.

Different Logo Types - Reading, PA

Are you looking to design a new logo or take your current one in a new direction? Join the discussion in the comments!