To stand out in a digital world, you need great business branding.
Especially for businesses with digital products (Hi there! That’s us too!) having an established branding guide is essential. It’s more than just keeping your colors and fonts consistent. Your branding touches every component of your marketing including promotional gear and other physical goods that are crucial for every business.
What is Business Branding?
Branding your business is how you differentiate your company from your competition. Branding includes everything from your business name, your logo, the colors you use, the voice of your brand, and the style of your products and marketing efforts.
Think of it like this: if someone sees your product, you want them to immediately know it’s yours before they read the label.
This covers everything your business does! You want your clients to immediately know your Instagram photo before they process the account name. Great branding should be featured in everything your business does, but it doesn’t have to be difficult! It just needs to be consistent.
Consistency Is Key
Your whole brand needs to be cohesive, and stay that way! Even though we’ve had a major website overhaul, our branding has stayed the same. We have the same logo, the same voice, the same mission statement and the same colors. It all just got a visual upgrade.
One of the things that really helps to keep our branding on point is our brand colors. Our main color is teal, with pops of light blue and navy blue. We return to these colors again and again to keep our aesthetic consistent. And it’s not just online! We have teal folders we use at events, even our waiting room chairs are teal. This helps to establish our brand in client’s minds when we meet them at events, or they come in for a meeting.
Let’s say you own a boutique clothing shop. You likely have a type of style most of your clothing falls into. If all of your clothing is very clean cut, chic, and structured, you wouldn’t likely start including loose boho-style layers. Your brand works in the same way! Make sure everything has the same running theme and you’ve got business branding consistency.
Consumer Recall
It makes sense that people are more likely to remember your brand if every time they see it, it’s presented in the same way. But even if you do, the marketing channel you pick is going to have a varying amount of consumer recall.
Quality Logo Products CEO Bret Bonnet told Forbes why promotional products are so effective. “Consumers have learned to ignore most forms of advertising. The recall rate for promotional product is a record 85% for some products.” He explains that the very nature of having a physical product outweighs the impact of passively viewing a paid ad.
But if you only sell digital products, how does that work? By using promotional products!
Promotional Products
We love promotional products as part of our marketing and business branding strategy.
They tend to be affordable, they’re useful in many different situations, and people love them! Promotional products also tend to have a long shelf life, both before and after you give them away. You could invest $200 in t-shirts, and they’ll never “go bad”. You can hold onto those tees for a year or more if you wanted to. Then, after you give it away, that person is going to hold onto it for a few months too.
This 2016 study by the Advertising Speciality Institute (ASI) found that, on average, people tend to keep promo products for eight months. That’s your brand in front of their eyes for eight months! The cost per impression goes down remarkably compared to other forms of advertising.
Picking Promo Products
But you can’t just slap a logo sticker on anything and call it a day. Your promotional products need to make sense in your whole business branding strategy. People are more likely to keep a promo product that is useful for them.
That study by ASI found that people kept hats for only seven months, but umbrellas lasted 14 months. Although it’s likely a branded umbrella will cost you more than a hat, it’s working it’s marketing mojo for twice as long.
It’s also important to keep your business in mind when choosing your promotional products. Going back to the boutique example from before, choosing a cheap mesh drawstring bag is unlikely to be loved by your clientele. Instead, a well-made canvas tote bag with your logo would likely be used for months. It’s the same type of product but chosen with a better understanding of your clientele.
Gifting and Giveaways
Promotional products can be given away in many different circumstances depending on your business. Industry events, local festivals, popping in a gift with purchase, all are great ways to get your promo gear in peoples hands.
Plus, never forget that people love free stuff! You can easily run an Instagram giveaway with some of your promo gear mixed in. Utilizing a giveaway is another great way to get people excited about your brand and talking about it online. Just keep in mind, unless the promo product is really, really cool and distinctive on its own you’ll probably want more in the giveaway. Use it as a way to introduce people to your brand and products too!
At Get Online NOLA, following business branding is part of our day to day process with our clients. Want to learn more about creating a cohesive brand?