When people think of custom brand design, they often are only thinking about logo and color palette. Maybe typography. And while those are certainly the foundational elements of a stable, reliable, flexible brand – there are quite a few pieces that often get neglected during the process.
When LovelyPixels works with clients on custom brand packages, we’re always on the lookout for ways that we can deliver a full-service package that makes sense for your business and organization. And that means digging deep on what makes your business unique, what will serve to bring awareness to your brand and how to impact customers at every stage of the customer journey.
Here are 5 recommended pieces that are crucial to a well-rounded approach to branding.
Branded Templates Your Team Can Use On the Fly
The worst thing that can happen to a new brand is a slow deterioration of the brands principles. If you’re a dynamic team that needs to be able to curate content on the go and not be dependent on a professional support team – see what you can work into your custom brand package to help save time and keep a consistent look. From custom built email templates and corporate presentations to email signatures – the pieces of media that you use to touch base with prospects and clients alike will make a broader impact when they are in complete alignment and consistently presented.
• If you’re working with a design agency, be sure to go over what systems your team uses to communicate and what kind of custom resources they can provide you
• Think about the wishlist resources that your sales team are always asking for and see how you can bundle them into your brand package
• Don’t forget about print media templates as well!
Photography that Supports Your New Vibe
Easily the single most looked-over piece when it comes to branding and marketing is photography. Which is kind of silly when you think about how heavily digital marketing leans on good photography to be successful!
If you’re doing a rebrand and don’t have the funds to invest in a complete website redesign, an easy way to give your digital presence a facelift is with good photography that backs your new mood.
In addition to being a great way to do a light remodel on the site, it will also give you a gallery to pull from whenever you’re crafting your next social media post!
• Dig around on Pinterest to look for inspiration of photography styles that match your new brand, and take note of what styles speak to you.
• Each photographer has their own style and editing finesse, so make sure you put a little research time into a photographer that matches the style you’re going after!
• Bring those inspiration pieces into a meeting with your brand expert and photographer just to make sure they align with your aesthetics and budget.
Define Your Brand Tone
Just like Mom says – it’s not what you say, but how you say it that matters!
Finding the right voice for your brand goes back to figuring out who and what you are. Are you a bright, bubbly and friendly brand that can get a little carried away with word-play sometimes? Or are you more passionate, honorable and humble? Finding a body of vocabulary that feels like home, is reliable and consistent (are we seeing a pattern with being consistent yet?) is the bow that pulls your brand messaging full circle with your audience.
And while brand tone may seem like something that is hard to maintain, the secret is really in defining it first, then ensuring you have a small team of people who monitor and maintain that the shoe always fits.
• Identify your perfect client. Where do they work? What do they do in their spare time? What kinds of messaging appeals to them?
• Make a massive list of words that you feel correlate your company to your audience. Think in terms of adjectives like adventurous, artistic, casual, busy, bright, earthy, daring, informal, professional, quaint, wistful, innovative, urban, etc…
• Now, narrow it down to five words only.
• Do they feel like a cohesive family that can work together through anything, or are they fighting with one another as often as opposing sides of the political spectrum do? Finding harmony and balance is the key to perfect tone!
Client Communications – Both Automated and Manual!
Now that you have a brand tone, what to do with it? Broadly speaking, think about all the ways your company interacts with people and put some guidelines in place.
• Rewrite content for Custom Thank You pages that people will see and interact with when they fill out your website form for the first time. This is a great space to make a lasting impression with someone who has just potentially, bought into your brand for the first time!
• How do you answer the phone and greet people when they walk in the door? This timeless first impression should be carefully curated as often as possible.
• Don’t forget about reputation management online! Planning out how to respond to different types of scenarios – like negative reviews online, disappointed customers and difficult vendors can make or break a brand! Don’t get caught off guard, or in a bad mood!
• Re-engagement emails are another key piece to reigniting stagnant conversations or accounts, so putting time into figuring out how to spark and renew interest is a great exercise.
Landing Pages and Lead Magnets!
As we venture down the branding rabbit hole, you will find that branding is all about marketing. And marketing means you need to understand that a brand suite isn’t complete without key marketing pieces. Two of our personal favorites for cost effective digital marketing are landing pages and lead magnets!
A new brand needs to generate awareness, and during that stage it is all about impression! You want to educate customers through the problems they’re facing, while also establishing your brand as an authority on a subject. And the easiest way to do that is to provide them with value!
Using a stand-alone landing page as gateway to a problem helps you articulate a very specific message, to a very specific audience – and capture their information when it’s paired up with a piece of content that is perceived as valuable.
Let’s say you’re a custom packaging company that works with an incredibly large range of buyers. Your first group of buyers may be Package Designers who are solely focused on making sure the finished product looks phenomenal (they care about the texture of the labels used, the quality of inks, the unpacking experience of the box, etc), while a secondary set of buyers may be Purchasing Agents who only care about the cost of the packaging (what kind of bulk rate am I going to get on the next tier of volume, if we downgrade on the filler will we be able to buy 2% more, what kind of substrate options do we have, can it be done cheaper if we only produce the packaging in one color ink, etc).
Those people are tackling the same problem, but from completely different objectives. A single landing page won’t sell either of them in the same way a personalized experience would.
• Breakdown the different campaigns of buyer personas that you want to target, and ensure the answers to their unique questions are met within the content of the landing page
• Use custom branded pieces to entice them to fill out a form, attend a webinar or take some other action that will kickstart the relationship with you
• Give them something of value such as an eBook or access to a member only area of the website where they have access to top-tier resources, in trade for their contact information.
Now that we’ve gotten the branding juices going, what are some branding pieces that would impact your business in a positive way? What kind of collateral – digital or print – can help you maintain your brand in a unique way?
Need professional help with branding or logo design?
When you are ready to make a ruckus, it’s a good idea to work with a professional branding agency. With LovelyPixels, we collaborate with small businesses to find a perfectly tailored fit every time, and we’re always looking for ways to bolster your success! Contact LovelyPixels online or give us a call today at 240-347-1444.
