Building your Brand Identity
Thursday 03 Jan 2008You’ve written your business plan, bought a nice identity piece, opened your storefront, maybe even placed a few ads. How else can you place your image in front of your potential customers in order make your target audience aware of your company? This concept is known as “extending the brand,” placing your company’s colors, logos, slogans, etc. within easy reach of your target audience to help burn your business’ name into their consumer minds.
One of the easiest ways to build your organization’s brand identity is to customize your documents such as reports, emails, presentation proposals and invoices with your company’s colors, logo and contact information. Additionally, highly customized reports are more likely not to end up in your customer’s trash cans. In this article, I’ll provide some helpful options for customizing your items.
Any item you send out to your customers, whether it be an invoice, newsletter or direct mail piece, should include your color scheme, logo and contact info. No communication, no matter how small, should be sent on anything other than your company letterhead and enclosed in a matching envelope. The same applies to business related faxes as well. Your fax cover sheet should include your logo and contact info. It’s easy to whip up a generic fax cover sheet in Word or to just have your fax machine do the same for you, but neither of these options do anything to extend your brand.
If you’re on a limited budget, but want to make an impact at your next presentation, consider using a clear covered binder with a high quality cover sheet that includes your logo as the front page. This is an inexpensive option for using reports and proposals to extend your brand identity. Presentation covers with a window is another inexpensive branding option if you don’t have a budget that will allow for your own custom printed presentation folders. Make sure to pick folders that are complementary to your company’s colors and make certain that your logo and important information show through the window.
Another creative choice for extending your company’s brand is foil stamping. Foil is available in dozens of metallic colors and can be imprinted on a variety of branding items. A clean stamping is a timeless classic touch to any business product, ranging from business cards to folders and giveaway items used to promote your business. The setup charges for foil stamping can vary, but once you have a foil die stamp made for your company, you can reuse it over and over again for different products.
Promotional products are a great choice for extending your identity. The trick is however, to make sure your item is something not only creative, but useful as well. It makes no sense to brand your company on an item you give to a potential customer only to have it end up in the trash. Pens are always a popular choice for branding items, you may also consider having notepads printed to further extend your brand. The possibilities are endless.
Embroidering and screen printing your logo on soft goods is a smart option as well, especially if you have a storefront with employees. Not only will wearing clothing with your logo make your staff stand out from your customers, it also puts your brand in front of them one more time.
As you can see there are numerous options for promoting your organization and done effectively, will keep your business in front of your target audience’s eyes and in their minds.
chris | Advertising Tips, Branding
