Eli Logan Dallas Entrepreneur Center

Branding is a marketing technique that has the potential to elevate your business to the top. It involves helping your customers to form a recognizable association with you.
Link your business with a design, logo, slogan, and/or color and observe the positive results.

Brands create a feeling of familiarity. If customers have seen your logo, insignia, or company name, they are more likely to continue to select your product or service. Also, they are more apt to suggest them to others. Referrals through word of mouth can be an extremely powerful form of advertising.

A brand helps possible customers remember your business. People may know little about your philosophy or reputation. However, if they can recognize your brand, the chances are greater that they will do business with you. Branding creates memory in the mind of the public.

When the public remembers your brand and familiarizes themselves and others with it, they will come back. Customers are more likely to remain devoted to your business and are apt to buy further products or services from you based on the brand of the initial product with which they had success.

People are willing to pay more for products or services that they highly regard. This means that customers are likely to pass up cheaper prices with competitors if your brand has made a positive impression on them. If clients believe in your product, they will pay for it.

When you have distinguished your business through branding, the marketing has the capability of becoming so profound, that little else is necessary. Developing your brand takes time and effort, but after it has been solidified, and after customers have had the chance to identify with it, your sales can increase naturally. You won't have to spend as much time planning marketing strategies to attract the public.

There should be a consistent look and feel to every page of your website. You want your visitors to know they haven't actually left your site when they go to another page.
Icons for going back or to the next page, for printing the page or even the icons that line your menu should all follow the same theme as your site as part of your marketing effort. Every aspect of your website should be about your brand. Standing out from the rest is not nearly as important as having others recognize your site. If a visitor travels to other pages and they look different, they may believe they accidentally left your site and then leave it all together.

A simple concept for internet market branding is your logo as an icon. You can then use this as buttons and every time a person has to click, your logo makes an imprint. Obviously it will need to be much smaller than the main logo on your page or other areas to be used as a menu icon, perhaps as small as 16 x 16 pixels, but the reduced image will continue your branding throughout your pages and offer a benefit to your internet marketing effort.

Additionally, with this level of branding throughout your site there will be no doubt in your visitor's mind where they are. You can even make it so a visitor bookmarking your site will see the icon in his or her favorites, further imprinting the image. Remember, returning visitors often buy more than first time visitors and keeping your image in their minds will aid your internet marketing efforts
With a bit of creativity, you can make it so prospective customers automatically think of you when they see your logo. This is one of the simplest yet most effective branding methods.

Society is flooded with so much advertising that we face the danger of not being noticed by our prospective customers. Will your customers know who you are without an ad staring them in the face to remind them?

In other words are you trying to rely completely on direct response to your ads, or are you creating a broad and lasting awareness in the minds of your target audience? Without a strong attempt to brand yourself you will need to constantly advertise.

By branding, I'm referring to the act of exposing prospects to your name, logo, tagline, etc. on a frequent basis, and to the extent that people are already aware of you when they are ready to purchase a product or service that you offer.

For best results a business needs to expose each prospect to the same ad impression three times within a week. By running a very strong campaign over the course of a month you can easily create a very lasting effect on the people you would like to have as your customers.

It is important to maintain continuity through use of the same logo, business name, or tagline in all your promotions so your targets are receiving the same impression with each exposure, regardless of the exact mode of delivery.

Radio and television are by far the most effective means of brand creation available. These formats can be reinforced with yellow page ads, flyers, or even the aggressive distribution of simple business cards.

You want people to be aware of your name, logo, or tagline and associate this awareness with your products and services well before they even need what you have to offer.

What can you start doing right now to see that your prospective customers are exposed to the same message at least three times over a seven-day period?

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What exactly is a brand? It's a question that has confounded the academics for decades and eluded the most erudite of scholars. So, coming from the trenches of the real world of branding, we've defined the term and given it a comprehensive meaning..

A brand consists of eight basic building blocks:

- The Name
- The Logo (brand icon)
- The Brand's Colors
- The Slogan and Brand Messaging
- The Sound of the Brand
- The Overall Look and Feel = The Brand's Position
- Packaging the Brand
- The Brand Experience

A Brand is the greater sum of its parts. It is always more than just the nuts and bolts, the pieces; great brands are always the result of the whole equaling more than the sum of its parts.

Branding is about making me, the consumer or buyer, more hip, more in the "know," more cool than anybody else. We are a generation and a nation wanting to be special. We want to be richer, more beautiful, better dressed and more effortlessly gorgeous than any other generation that we know.

We want everything to mean more. We want everything to have meaning. That's why we flock to the reality shows. Why we love "The Apprentice" and "American Idol" and other top realistic shows. We crave authenticity in this age of fabrication and falsehood. We "just want to be real."

We want to be able to trust what we buy and whom we buy from. That's why Coke is still the number one brand in the world. The more we know about a brand, the more we trust it. The more we trust it, the more we buy it and continue to experience it. The more we experience it, the more loyal we become.

Loyalty is the currency that cannot be traded for dollars.

Have you ever considered the importance of color in branding? Color plays a huge role in memory recall. It stimulates all the senses, instantly conveying a message like no other communication method.

Choosing the right dominant color for your brand is crucial. This color should appear on all your promotional material. Following is the most common impression each color conveys:

Blue: Cool blue is perceived as trustworthy, dependable, fiscally responsible and secure. Blue is an especially popular color with financial institutions.

Red: Red activates your pituitary gland, increasing your heart rate and causing you to breathe more rapidly. Count on red to evoke a passionate response.

Green: In general, green connotes health, freshness and serenity. Deeper greens are associated with wealth or prestige, while light greens are calming.

Yellow: In every society, yellow is associated with the sun. It communicates optimism, light and warmth. Certain shades seem to motivate and stimulate creative thought and energy. The eye sees bright yellows before any other color, making them great for point-of-purchase displays.

Purple: Purple is a color favored by creative types. It evokes mystery, sophistication, spirituality and royalty. Lavender evokes nostalgia and sentimentality.

Pink: Hot pinks convey energy, youthfulness, fun and excitement. Dusty pinks appear sentimental. Lighter pinks are more romantic.

Orange: Cheerful orange evokes exuberance, fun and vitality. Orange is viewed as gregarious and often childlike. Lighter shades appeal to an upscale market. Peach tones work well with health care, restaurants and beauty salons.

Brown: This earthy color conveys simplicity, durability and stability. Certain shades of brown, like terracotta, can convey an upscale look.

Black: Black is serious, bold, powerful and classic. It creates drama and connotes sophistication. Black works well for expensive products, but can also make a product look heavy.

White: White connotes simplicity, cleanliness and purity. The human eye views white as a brilliant color, so it immediately catches the eye in signage. White is often used with infant and health-related products.