Consistent, strong branding is essential to growing and maintaining your business.
Here are a few tips from us at PMI Pros for businesses of all sizes to keep in mind for their marketing strategies:
- Identify and understand your audience
Marketing is all about appealing to your target audience. If you don’t know who your audience is, you cannot properly brand your business. Your marketing materials and branding should be geared towards that audience. Colors, fonts, and other design elements all take careful consideration and should be based on the target audience.
- Stand out. Be memorable.
Your logo should not only be attractive, it should also have its own unique flair. There are countless minimalistic logos that look great and fit the aesthetic of that company, but are utterly forgettable in a sea of similarly-branded companies of the same industry. Above all, make sure you identify your biggest competitors and ensure that your customers are not confusing your businesses with one another.
- Keep it consistent
Your brand should remain the consistent across all marketing materials, including your website, signs, brochures, business cards, social media, and other materials. Is your font choice too casual for your brand? Is it too serious?
While some campaigns or strategies appeal to different audiences, they should never betray what your brand is about. For example, if your business card is a completely different color scheme from your website, that might make first-time website visitors second guess whether or not they are on the right website. Any deviation from your general aesthetic for a particular marketing strategy should be thoughtful and well-reasoned and should still prominently display your logo.
- Sending the right message
Is your logo sending a confusing message to customers? Does your font choice put people off? These are important questions to ask.
We have — on multiple occasions — had to explain to a client that their business needed to be rebranded. In one instance, their logo and marketing materials were a reflection of the owner’s unique aesthetic preferences, but they were not a good reflection of who the business was trying to reach. Even if you are the owner and you have the vision for your business, you still need to keep in mind that your personal taste may be off-putting to your main customer base. Your brand should appeal to your audience, not just to you as an owner. Certain color combinations and fonts may be right up your alley, but if your customer base finds it unprofessional or unappealing, it is not good branding.
- Always put your best foot forward
You should ensure your logo is always looking its best: meaning it is clear, undistorted, and proportional. It should never look squished, pixelated, or discolored. In many cases, we like to have a color version and a white version of a logo for different backgrounds so that the logo is always easy to see. You should always make sure to have a little bit of “air” around it, meaning other elements of the design are not crowding the logo.
