Designing A Logo On A Shoestring Budget
Does your brand have the right look and feel? If not, it’s time to get back to basics. Start by reviewing your logo – and don’t let costs hold you back.
How To Develop Your Personal Brand
Marketers now widely acknowledge that personal branding is an important business-building tool, whether you’re a sole trader or CEO of a company.
The Four-Step Sales And Marketing Audit
Are your promotional materials delivering the best possible outcomes? Here we go back to basics to identify the pieces that need refreshing in four simple steps.
3 Pillars Of A Healthy Business
We all need to focus on three key pillars for success: marketing our businesses to build clients and income; management practices and procedures to establish the framework for our business as it grows; and mentoring support to keep us on the right track, and provide different levels of support as our business grows.
How Strong Writing Helps Build Your Brand
Among the many factors to consider in building a strong brand, it’s easy for the non-visual elements such as language, consistent messaging and grammar to be overlooked. How do yours stack up?
How To Communicate Your Brand To Stand Out From The Crowd
Whether you are in big business or small business you need to communicate to people about who you are, what you do and how you make a difference. In essence, build your brand. We would call it public relations.
The Magic Of Measurement
Measurement is absolutely critical to making sure your marketing spend is as effective as it can possibly be. Who wants to be blowing their money these days?
Is Your Business Marketing Beige?
If your business is more beige than neon, then it's time to do a marketing tune-up.
5 Steps To Building An Amazing Brand
Building an amazing brand begins with you. Do yourself a favour, devote some thought, time and budget to it now.
Positioning Yourself, Product Or Company As Preeminent In Your Market
These 15 points are personality building blocks that will help you position yourself, your company, and/or your product as a preeminent persona in your marketplace - poised to stand head and shoulders above the competition.
Small Business Branding: The Power Of Integration
One of the most important things any small business can do is to ensure that the branding for its company is 100% integrated.
Creating A Powerful Corporate Brand
Your corporate brand needs to be thoroughly thought out, planned, nurtured, executed, monitored and, when necessary, modified. It is the organisation's most valuable commodity and deserves to always be treated as such.
How To Maintain Your Brand In Turbulent Times
Most people remember the pain of losing money on the stock market more than they remember the pleasure of making money in a rising market. So what will the world financial crisis and potential for recession mean for your business - and your brand in particular?
Developing Your Brand
Your brand is so much more than your logo or visual identity. It's the essence of who you are as a business.
How To Conduct A Brand Audit
Brand is what differentiates your company from your competitors. Taking an outside-in view of your company will drive initiatives that create greater market share and build customer loyalty. So how do you conduct a brand audit?
Brand Visibility
Forward-thinking people know that communicating - and doing so frequently and effectively - is a very important aspect to the success of their business.
Reveal Your Brand
Ten seconds is all it takes to make a first impression - whether it's your personal presentation or the first contact a potential client or customer has with your company.
Know Thyself: A Critical Strategic Element For Enduring Brand Success
It's astonishing that the majority of businesses, both large and small, have little, or no, consensus within their organisation as to whom they are and what they stand for. However, to know oneself is to uncover the keys of branding success and competitive differentiation!
Conduct A Brand 'Health Check'
Lots of companies potentially compete with what you do - what makes you different to customers is how you do it. So it's worth getting a good handle on it!
Build, Brand, Sustain
Being a leader, taking a stance and setting the agenda are good ways to build what I call "reputation capital". Increase your reputation capital and you will increase your financial capital by following these three tips.
The Dos And Don'ts Of Branding - Art Versus Process
In this article we explore the importance of branding to SMEs and look at cost-effective ways to achieve results.
The Dos And Don'ts Of Branding - A Minefield Of Names
A company's brand stands on three legs: Name, Logo and Tagline. None of them is easy to get right, yet all of them are keys to defining the company, building recognition in the marketplace and developing loyal customers.
The Dos And Don'ts Of Branding - Taglines And Fault Lines
A tagline is to a logo what clothes are to a woman - they reveal more about her character and, in the same way, the tagline is a defining element of the brand.
The Dos And Don'ts Of Branding - Logo Logic
Your logo should reflect who you are. The main function of a logo is to create and reinforce company or brand identity.
Brand Rejuvenation
Established brands are resilient, elastic and vital. However, continued good health is not a guaranteed condition.
Rethinking Global Brand Strategy
In order to remain competitive, many large companies today feel compelled to create a global brand strategy. In fact, for most brands, "going global" is not only an elusive objective; it's a destructive one.
ABC Of Branding
ABC, which stands for Actions, Beliefs and Clothing are a brand's basic building blocks. You have an authentic and strong brand when these three aspects work together harmoniously.
Your Brand Is Everything
Your brand is everything. Don't think that just because you're not Nike or Coke that you don't have a brand. You ARE a brand.
How Are You Known In The Marketplace?
How does the world see you? It may not be the way you see yourself. Either way, it's time you find out!
Building Your Brand
Five steps to building a strong brand and an optimised customer experience.
Don't Be Scared Off By All That Brand Talk
A great brand can set your company apart, give you a competitive advantage and encourage loyalty from your customers and staff.
What's In A Name?
Naming or re-naming a business or product can be thrilling, or terrifying, or both. There's a lot at stake, from legal ramifications right through to the future sale price of your business.
Build Better Business With Better Branding
Branding is the overall intellectual and emotional impression people have when they think of your company.
What’s In A Name? The Six Essential Elements You Need To Know
Selecting a name for your new business is not easy. A name does more than identify your company. It tells customers who you are, what you do, and more than a little about how you do it.
Implementing A Brand Scorecard
Improve your marketing performance tracking system and learn from lessons learned by organisations that are further down the road. This article also summarises the factors that lead to successful implementation and outlines a value-based approach to performance tracking.
Great Brand Design Is Much More About Business Than Art
Great brand design has to make sense. Don't waste your time with multiple options of sameness or averageness, jargon, nor art. Keep it simple, zero in on the important stuff — the stuff that will make the difference. There is power in the simple ideas, not me—too ideas. This is a brand design process which delivers measurable bottom line results with innovative rather than me—too design solutions — the 7 steps to grow a brand and get it right.
The Myth Of Branding
At best ‘brand’ is a useful word. At worst, it’s a dangerously misleading management tool.
Use Market Research to Understand Your Markets. Use Brand Research to Understand Your Customers
Senior executives engage in market research when they are seeking to quantify demand for their current products and potential demand for their new products. These same executives should engage in brand research when they want to learn how their best customers perceive them, why those customers choose them over competing brands, and how to express their brand universally and crisply across all print and electronic media.
Branding Your Business Know-How
The ability to build successful brands and the resultant repeat business are tightly linked to business and manager know-how.
BrandAid ©
An easy process to self analyse your marketing and promotional materials. In this article I will describe 10 simple ways to analyse your own marketing material and how you can implement changes that will forge a successful branding strategy.
Heritage: A Master Brand Builder
If there is any one single characteristic and attribute of a brand that provides sustainable competitive advantage, it is heritage. We all know, buy, and experience brands that have a great heritage. For some of us, it is Mercedes, Philips or Disney. For others, it is McDonalds, Heineken or Gucci. What makes these brands great, what they all have in common, is that they have had the time to build a meaningful and relevant past — a heritage.
Brand Momentum: Speed Can Kill
Marketers and brand managers are responsible for building brands. Their success is often measured by an ability to develop forward motion or ‘momentum’ for the brand. Momentum can help deliver high brand awareness scores among target customers. It can also bring about positive publicity which supports paid marketing efforts. Yet, few brand managers are trained to understand the behavior or physics of momentum. There is a wide—spread belief that forward momentum is always a positive and desirable state. There is also a belief that once the brand is in motion, it will stay in motion. Neither point is true. Momentum is a force. And as a force, it will yield competitive advantage if it is managed. If it is not managed, it will inevitably lead to brand dilution.
Is Your Brand Going To Graduate Or Be Stuck In Adolescence?
The best brands succeed because they excel at each stage in their lifecycle. They don’t skip steps. Great brands are founded on more than a compelling promise and innovative marketing communications. The stewards of these brands recognize that compelling promises and marketing only bring you to your customers’ doorstep. In order to enter their homes and become integral parts of their lives you must also excel at delivering positive buying and using experiences.
Knowledge Based Brand Marketing
Client and target market research is one of the most important steps in brand development.
How To Build A Million Dollar Brand
For many successful companies, brands are their most valuable asset. Trevor Choy from Choy Lawyers explains how they identify and develop their brands from an idea into a million dollar value.
Brand Development - The Lifeblood Of Business
There are thousands of products and services out there, but not many brands. This article explores the potential, the pitfalls and risk reduction in creating new brands or evolving existing brands.
New Brand Name, New Service Culture? Surely Not!
Recently we have witnessed a number of organisations re-branding as a result of a merger or takeover, and more is yet to come. But does this mean that we will see a change in the service culture of the new look organisation? The truth of the matter is MAYBE NOT!
Brand Paradox
The critical issues of branding...
Getting Results From Branding Advertising
Getting results from advertising can be a minefield of agencies, media reps, anecdotal customer experiences and aggressive competitors. It doesn’t have to be if you apply a few basic principles.