Trust means your future customers believe you’re likely to be honest and competent, and will deliver a good experience. Sometimes trust comes from friends telling friends they had a great experience. But most of your future customers wont have word-of-mouth to rely on. They have to decide on their own whom to trust. Thats the mission of your logo, website or brochure, to create your business dress and body language–your visual branding.

Here are a few basics to help your business look credible:

1. Go for simplicity and lack of clutter. (Think Apple, the master of simplicity in branding.)
2. Create or demand a clean, well-balanced graphic design.
3. Use one or two basic colors that go well together, not a hodgepodge.
4. Choose one font and stick with it. You can express almost anything by using variations within a single font family: size, weight (boldness), italics, etc. If you really must, choose a second font for major headlines. But first try it with one font.
5. Coordinate a single look – design, colors, etc. – across everything you do, including your logo, website, brochures, ads and signage.

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Marketing a Strong Nonprofit Brand

Laura Ries has run a list of 7 important things to consider when building a brand for the non-profit organizations:

1. The name
2. The spokesperson
3. The position
4. The enemy
5. PR, PR, PR
6. A signature event
7. Color and logo

What is your (personal) brand worth?

David Sandusky has an interesting list of questions people should ask themselves when they’re evaluating their own personal brands. What about you? What is your personal brand worth? How do people feel when dealing with you? Do they think of you when looking for an expert in your space? Do people hear from you only when you need something like a job; or are you making networking deposits regularly.

More, he has a 4 steps strategy to define and maintain a personal brand:

1. Define yourself
2. Understand your environment
3. Formulate a career and brand strategy
4. Execution

Branding to further boost economy

China plans to further boost its world economic status through branding.

“Branding is a decisive factor in the world’s economic development, and in some cases, an established world brand’s overall value is even bigger than that of a middle-sized country,” said Sun Bo, director of the quality management department of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, yesterday.

China now has seven products with six brands that are famous worldwide – Haier refrigerators and washing machines, Huawei programmed control switchboards, Zhongxing programmed control switchboards, Zhenhua container cranes, Gree air-conditioners and Sunshine worsted woollens.

The sales volume of the products ranks among the top five in their world markets.

“We will still have to make them even more recognized worldwide,” Sun said. He said the bureau would help enterprises upgrade quality insurance, measuring and testing systems, and encourage them to apply international rules and standards.

More here.

Seven Steps to Building a Strong Brand

1. Develop your benchmark.
2. Compare your organization to the various competitive choices available to your target market.
3. Analyze your SWOT.
4. Focus on the Opportunities.
5. Identify your message.
6. Time & Money. Layout the timetable. Identify your budget components.
7. Implement the branding tactics.

via

How to Write a Marketing Plan

Most businesspeople agree that good planning is essential for success. Even so, it’s surprising how many companies don’t create a thorough plan to generate and manage their customers.

1. Start with your annual goals
2. Highlight your competitive position, value proposition and brand strategy
3. Outline any plans for your products & services
4. Outline your major marketing campaigns
5. Develop your tactical sales plan
6. Develop a budget
7. Revisit your plan regularly

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Color is may be an important brand asset. It may help clients and prospects recognize your company or product. But color can be used to support goals way beyond just recognition. It can be used to evoke emotion and build that all-important connection with the people who surround your brand.

You can use color to further differentiate your organization from your competitors, revitalize an aging product and engage and unite your employees, partners and customers. When you go beyond the traditional use of color, you can make incredible strides in achieving your goals.

Some colors are associated with certain emotions that the brand wants to convey (e.g. Loud colors, such as red, that are meant to attract the attention of drivers on freeways are appropriate for companies that require such attention. Red, white, and blue are often used in logos for companies that want to project patriotic feelings. Green is often associated with health foods.)

For other brands, more subdued tones and lower saturation can communicate dependability, quality, relaxation, etc.

Color is also useful for linking certain types of products with a brand. Warm colors (red, orange, yellow) are linked to hot food and thus can be seen integrated into many fast food logos. Conversely, cool colors (blue, purple) are associated with lightness and weightlessness, thus many diet products have a light blue integrated into the logo.

William Arruda at MarketingProfs.com has a list of 10 ways to make the most of color:

To make the most of your color, ensure that it…

1. Supports your brand attributes
2. Is relevant to your target audience
3. Is always the same shade and hue
4. Is visible to all members of your brand community, inside and outside the company
5. Is understood and appropriately used by all employees
6. Is featured on all your communications materials and sales tools
7. Is different from your competitors’ colors
8. Works in all parts of the world where you plan to do business
9. Is applied to more than just your logo
10. Comes with guidelines on its use for partners and affiliates

More than that, in case you missed it, Martin Jelsema on BuzzworthyBranding has an interesting color guidelines for brands:

• Red – evokes aggressiveness, passion, strength, vitality. In business, it is great for accents and boldness, stimulates appetites, is associated with debt.
• Pink – evokes femininity, innocence, softness, health. In business, be sure you’re aware of its feminine implications and associations.
• Orange – evokes fun, cheeriness, warm exuberance. In business, it’s great to highlight information in graphs and on charts evokes positivity, sunshine and cowardice. In business, it appeals to intellectuals and is excellent for accenting things. Too much is unnerving.
• Green – evokes tranquility, health, freshness. In business, its deep tones convey status and wealth; its pale tones are soothing.
• Blue – evokes authority, dignity, security, faithfulness. In business, it implies fiscal responsibility and security. Plus it is universally popular.
• Yellow – is an optimistic color that almost always evokes a positive response. Yellow gets you motivated; it stimulates creative and intellectual energy; it’s cheerful and easygoing.
• Purple – evokes sophistication, spirituality, costliness, royalty and mystery. In business, it’s right for upscale and artistic audiences.
• Brown – evokes utility, earthiness, woodsiness and subtle richness. In business, it signifies less important items in documents.
• White – evokes purity, truthfulness, being contemporary and refined. In business, it enlivens dark colors and can be refreshing or sterile.
• Gray – evokes somberness, authority, practicality and a corporate mentality. In business, it is always right for conservative audiences.
• Black – evokes seriousness, distinctiveness, boldness and being classic. In business, it creates drama and is often a fine background color.

Further readings on this:
Martin Lindstron’s Brand Sense : Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound
Designer’s Guide to Color series: Designer’s Guide to Color, Designer’s Guide to Color 2 (Designer’s Guide to Color), Designers Guide to Color 3

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