INDUSTRY TRENDS
What’s Your Brand? – Do You Know? Do They?
February 22, 2023 | WRITTEN BY: Environmental Design Group
Whether you’re selling potato chips or promoting city initiatives, a clearly defined brand is essential. Establishing your brand and knowing how to promote it can make all the difference in finding success or being another forgotten great idea. Brands are no longer just the logo you see on a roadside sign or letterhead. A fully developed brand showcases how you want to be perceived in your market and the community and results in engagement and feedback that can take your project or product to the next level. So, how do you get there?
As with all things, you need a plan and in this age of technology and social media that plan has many more steps than ever before. We can help with that. Let’s get started.
Strategic Planning: Pulling together your ideas and desired outcomes is a critical first step in creating (or updating) your brand. It is often best to engage the services of an experienced marketing team to ask the important questions and get to the root of why you are considering a brand or rebrand in the first place.
Community Outreach: Discovering what your client or end-user really needs or is looking for is an important step in allocating your resources, time and energy. Doing the research and incorporating surveys or interviews with your target audience will assist in choosing the right projects that deliver the most benefit. Collecting this information requires thought and planning as well as deciding the best channel for data collection. An experienced, third-party provider can help determine the answers to these questions to drive response and create the type of conversation and “buzz” you need.
Website: In the age of cell phones and smart watches, your website is often where first impressions are made about your brand or product. To ensure the right messaging, your site should be user-friendly and easy to navigate while conveying your brand’s look and feel consistently across all pages and links. The average user spends 55 seconds or less on a website so fine-tuning your page is an essential step in gaining their attention and keeping them engaged.
Print Design: Even within the parameters of a digital world there is still a need for printed materials to promote your brand or objective. Brochures, flyers, billboards and signage can be useful in different scenarios in which you are promoting your brand to both new users and existing clients. Whether it’s a sponsorship sign at a community event, brochures or postcards for a mail campaign or on-site signage at your venue, you want to be sure the pieces are clean, easy to read and professional.
Social Media: Social media platforms rise and fall in popularity and if you choose to engage on all or some of them you need to be fastidious in your content creation and frequency of posts. A carefully crafted social post calendar and a second set of eyes to review content will assist in avoiding those “Oh no!” moments that may need to be mitigated later.
Photography/Videography: Showcasing the essence of your project or product will be elevated by using professional photos and videos. If still photos, video, aerial drone photography or all of the above are required, the investment made in proper images will be useful in all mediums for years to come.
Graphic Design: Creating the look and feel of your brand starts with graphic design. A skilled designer will assess the messaging of your brand to pull together colors, fonts and imagery that will truly reflect what you are bringing to market. Once these designs are approved and a brand guide is established it will make the creation of additional and new materials a simpler process.
Now that you have your road map, consider the right team to partner with to do the work. The experienced professionals at EDG Creative are available to discuss your needs whether it is starting from scratch, adding more services or a brand refresh. We have worked on projects of all scope and size and are eager to assist you.
Contact EDG Creative to learn more about how we can become a partner on your next project. We offer services in marketing, communications and outreach including website design, public relations, social media management, strategic communications planning, videography and graphic design.
The team is led by Tammi Nagucki, CPSM, Principal of Marketing, Client Experience and Carmen DeVeau, Associate Project Manager. Call 330-375-1390 or email [email protected] or [email protected]. To learn more, visit our website: Marketing, Communication, Engagement, Creative Design | EDG Creative (envdesigngroup.com)
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