Photo by Adam Crowe

Guest post by Jade Evans

It’s all about the brand. When you buy the premium product, the sleek design – say of the King of branding – Apple, you’re buying the projection of the brand and all the marketing that goes along with it. It’s like when you buy Nike shoes or those designer jeans – built into the price is their perception of you after you have ownership of that new, shiny, designer whatever.

What do you associate with Target? Most could come up with an answer on a dime. Who do you think of when you think of Patagonia? Pepsi?

These associations – I can tell you – they are not the byproduct of the environment of the company, or at least not solely. Companies work hard and put millions, hundreds of millions of dollars into creating that emotional and subtle immediate response when customers think of a brand. Emotional buying means impulse purchases. (Which is something that any heartbroken girl can tell you when all of those new shoes arrive at their door).

To use an example that has already been mentioned, Apple, in the late 1980′s, when things were just kicking off, pushed their marketing budget from $15 million to $100 million – in part (if not mostly) to establish that brand recognition, association and loyalty. That trend continues to this day, and permeates everything that Apple touches.

When you buy soda – do you buy Coke, or do you buy Pepsi? What do you think of someone who buys Coke if you’re a Pepsi drinker? Those kind of visceral, Yankees vs. Red Sox brand recognition and territoriality is what every company strives for, that kind of rabid loyalty of their base of customers. At that point, it isn’t about the products. It’s the fact that your brand made them that matters.

People get tied up in brands and the actions of brands, they are no longer a corporate entity but a friend. For example, when it was revealed that Nike was making their products in sweatshops, there was an uproar. Of course, part of that was because of larger human rights issues, but a great deal of it was also because of the strength of the brand identity and the fact that people came to trust that brand, and identify with it – they felt betrayed. (Much like the ways we see businesses abusing social media – clients get annoyed and feel personally betrayed when companies try to pull the wool over their eyes)

So remember – the next time you buy that designer watch, or slip that new iPhone into your purse – you’re (intentionally or not) going to be joining the echelons of the followers of that brand and will be, one way or another, affected by the mindset that comes along with it.

About the author
Jade Evans is a writer who is fascinated by how companies spend money – from Apple to a Wilton NY bank, from Target, credit union Albany NY, and Patagonia to your local bodega. Talk to her about finances all day and she’ll be fascinated.

A few days ago, I was walking with my mom on the streets of my home town, Ploiesti. Out of nowhere, it poped in front of my eyes: QUICK! The name of a very particular shop that used to make all my money disappear since I was in 8th grade. They soled notebooks, pens, pencils, anything someone with a passion for writing would definitely be into. They retailed foreign brands that I was addicted to: Schneider, Parker, Staedtler, Rotring with their very suscessful Tikky pencils. I used to save everything I got from my parents and grandparents, along with the money I got from school for being such a good student, and spend it all to enlarge my pen, pencil, marker and notebook collection.

When I rediscovered it, I couldn’t help smiling and being extremely happy it was still in the market. They had changed locations a few times and I thought they had closed down years before. I did not love Quick just beacause of what they sold. I loved the shop’s smell, how the items were displayed, the fact that most of the staff was nice and probably the fact that I had to work hard for every little treasure I got from there. 

I haven’t been so happy at seeing a brand I know in a long time. I had a similar smile when I saw a Booking.com office in Amsterdam, but it wasn’t quite the same joy. I outgrew Quick, but I still remember it fondly, and the next time I need a pen or pencil or notebook in Ploiesti, I will buy it from there, just to show my appreciation.

It then hit me that that’s how we should define brand success. Our clients or customers should smile with pleasure when they see our logo. They should want to drop by, just to say hello, and remember the fun times they had. Or at least they should feel satisfaction when thinking of the products or services they bought from us.

It might be a lot to ask to yield genuine happiness when they see or hear of our brand, but a goal set to only triggering positive feelings in no way means aiming to high!

What do you hope your customers think when  they suddenly see your logo?

Guest post by Carol Wilson

One of the most important aspects of your company is its image in the public eye. Branding has become an integral part of marketing and public relations. Today, companies create brands through their social media and internet presence. Developing a brand that is both memorable and unique could become the key to your success as a small business or company. Any successful brand has a notable image associated with it. This image must be clear and simple, but also engaging and remarkable. Building a brand and image is a difficult process to master, particularly in a society completely driven by branding. Oftentimes, a brand will outgrow its image. In this case, an unsuccessful, misleading, or outdated brand image with bog down a company’s marketing strategy. While branding is all about consistency, the time may come that you’ll need to reinvent your brand image. Follow these three tips to creating a new and exciting image for your company or product that is fitting, current, and potentially profitable. Your image is your greatest asset. Use it right.

Evaluate Your Audience

This is one of the most basic and most difficult steps involved in creating a brand for your company. Your brand should speak directly to the audience you seek. If you do not know exactly who your audience or customer base is, there is no way that you can create a brand, image, product, or service that they will be interested in. Being able to read your customer base is one of the most valuable skills to master. Explore your various clients or customers to get a feel for who they are and what interests them. Once you have identified your customers and various stakeholders decide what kind of image would appeal to them. Use questionnaires and interviews to have your audience evaluate your image. You can then design or edit your image to better fit your audiences’ interests.

Find Your Strengths and Weaknesses

Sit down and carefully evaluate your brand image. What does the image say to you? How does the image make you feel? What kind of an impression does the image evoke about your company? It is impossible to remedy something if you don’t have a clear understanding of what is wrong with it. Even if your audience or customer base is communicating to you that your image is bad, if you do not believe them there is little hope. Sprucing up a tired image does not mean that you have to completely scrap everything you have. Find the aspects of your image that work and the aspects of it that do not. Because so much of branding relies on the publics’ ability to recognize your image, it is wise to keep as much of your original image as possible. Remove and redesign the parts of your image that do not work and keep everything else that you can. Sometimes even the slightest changes can make a huge improvement.

Get Professional Help

Thankfully, there are several professionals who specialize in designing brand images. Seeking help from one of these professionals may be one of the best investments your business makes. Let this expert help you create an image that communicates the exact things you would like about your company and services. These experts can determine which aspects of your image are successful and can remedy the aspects that are not. After your image is redesigned to your liking, follow up on it. How are sales doing? Are you attracting more customers? Are the customers you are attracting ones that are in your customer base?

About the author
This is a guest post from Carol Wilson who writes for business insurance. She contributes articles about a variety of marketing, business, stock market, small business topics. She can be contacted at: wilson.carol24@gmail.com.

Guest post by Annie Wallace

One of the most important things that you can do in the computer age to promote your business, whether it’s an online company or a brick and mortar store, is getting into social networking and social media. These sites have made setting up your profile relatively straightforward, but knowing exactly what to do with that profile can be an entirely different matter. Here are some important things to keep in mind when building your brand through social media.

Avatars: Tiny Pictures with Powerful Impact

Your avatar, a small picture that is no more than about sixty by sixty pixels, is the place where you’re going to make your first impression on potential contacts. As such, it’s important that you have a professional and recognizable picture. This same picture should also be used on all the sites that you frequent to increase your branding opportunities.

Making this picture look professional means following a few basic rules. It’s a good idea to start by putting the picture on a background that is white or neutral. Avoid busy backgrounds. What exactly should you put on this background? Well, surprisingly, your logo isn’t recommended. Using a personal picture on these sites tends to make your networking go more smoothly.

The picture of you should be taken with a higher quality camera so that it’s not blurry. You should get proper lighting, and you should absolutely have someone else take the picture for you. The focus should be on your face, so resist the urge to include gimmicks like a fake mustache, giant glasses, or a snazzy hat. That doesn’t mean that you can’t be creative. Using basic photo editing effects, including color washes or cut-out shapes, can make your avatar stand out, so long as you use them in moderation.

Now that you have a professional looking picture, it’s a good idea to use tools like “gravatar” that allow this same avatar to be used at a number of social networking and blogging locations.

There Are Multiple Networks for a Reason

While you should take time to get established on any given network, it’s also a great idea to spread into multiple locations. Do you need some help knowing where to go? A little bit of web stalking can go a long way to discover other sites that your potential customers are frequenting.

Just look at the other profiles for people who have already networked with you to get an idea of other locations that may work well. Once you’ve done so, don’t be afraid to cross promote yourself, mentioning your posts, tweets, notes, or pages on other networks.

Blogs, Videos, and Other Media Magnets

Beyond using social networks, it’s a very good idea to have some other locations for written and media content. A blog is essentially mandatory these days, and other pages like a YouTube account are great ideas. Promoting yourself by creating and uploading videos with viral potential, such as “how to” or “best of” videos can really push your networking forward.

What’s more, social media marketing is the only affordable method to put your brand in front of the targeted audience. It requires much time, but it can save you a lot of money which makes it possible even for start-ups and non-profits to brand themselves effectively while avoiding huge investments.

About the author
Annie is a social media enthusiast and blogger teaching brands to market themselves effectively though social media. She blogs for Home Loan Finder, the large free home loan comparison tool. You can follow Annie on Twitter as @ViralMomTweets

Does any of you know the Rotring Tikky mechanical pencils? They are awesome! The best in the world if you asked me! And you would have a terribly hard time changing my mind! I fell in love with them back in secondary school. We first started seeing them when our teachers used them. Then some of the kids saw them in the specialized writing utensils stores and wanted to try them. They came back the next day to school, telling us how great they were, how much they loved them.

Soon after that, we all wanted a Rotring Tikky! It was a must to all of us and no other pencil could compare to it. We got them and when we lost or broke them (it took a lot of effort to break them, but kids manage to succeed in such dire conditions ), we wanted a new Tikky, not another one. The greatest part of my story is not the hype around our discovering Tikky, it’s the fact that our preference lasted through high-school and college. Even now, when I bought a new pencil, years after my last Tikky, I still went for the same brand.

Why such devotion when it comes to a simple pen? Simply because, other than the word of mouth recommendation that helped us decide what to buy, the product itself never disappointed. It was cool, it was amazing and everybody wanted one, although it was two or three times more expensive than the other pencils in the stores, but it also worked perfectly. It was enough to also convince our parents that it’s better to pay extra for the quality than buy us other 5 or more pencils for the same amount of time.

These days, Rotring Tikky looks a lot like the original pencil I fell in love with back in secondary school. The design and materials have been updated a bit to make it look slicker, more modern. But the original product is easily recognizable, otherwise brand enthusiasts would be unable to spot it in the see of pens and pencils usually sold together…

Guest post by Ben Johnson

Have you created a logo design for your business? If not, then you have got to get one. Why? Well, because your logo design gives your business a face. If you create a good looking logo, then your business will look really good. If you create a low quality design, then you will mess up the image of your company. So, it’s your logo design that can either mess up your business image completely or give it a dazzling identity.

To give a good-looking face to your business, you need to create an attractive logo. Once you create a dazzling identity, you will be able to win the trust of your market. How? Remember, your market won’t be able to meet you personally or see you physically – They will only see your logo and try to determine how reliable you are.

So, if your business has a pretty face (logo), you will create a pretty good impression.

Now…To give your business a dazzling identity with a top quality logo design, there are several elements you need to take into consideration to make it a success. Let’s discuss them:

Make Sure the Color Scheme is Relevant to Your Business

What does it mean? Your logo represents your business, so it must have the right colors to represent your business properly. For example, if you are creating a logo for a hospital, then its color scheme will be light and sober as compared to the color scheme of the logo of an entertainment company. So, you need to keep in view your business and audience before you finalize the color scheme.

Make Sure Your Logo Clearly Depicts the Mood of Your Business

Just like color schemes, this is also a very important element of your business logo. If you are designing a logo for charity, then you must consider the mood of such organizations and contributors. It will be wrong to have a clown in such a logo. So, you need to do some research and analyze your competitors first and then determine the layout of your logo design.

Make Sure it’s Simple and Memorable

Do you think that a complicated logo will make you look more professional? This is a totally wrong perception. Complexity has nothing to do with being professional. Simplicity always rocks and simple logos are always memorable. Do you think that Nike, Toyota, Honda and Target logos are complicated? No, they are not. They are simple and attractive logos and you need something similar too.

Make Sure Your Logo is Visually Appealing

Just as flowers attract bees, your logo should attract your target market. If it doesn’t look good, will anyone take notice of it? No, everyone will ignore it. So, to grab the attention of your market, you must work hard to create a visually appealing logo.

The bottom line is that you have got to seriously consider the elements mentioned above to create an attractive and top quality logo design and give your business a dazzling identity.

About the author

Ben Johnson is the Alliance Manager at Logoinn, a custom logo design company. He writes about the effect of design on marketing and brand identity and helps small businesses find design solutions for effective marketing.

I have always been intrigued by the relationship Romanians have had with their car brand, Dacia. It is the only brand that still exists and that did not disappear after the Revolution that put an end to communism. But the way we’ve seen the brand, the way we’ve related to it or chosen to ignore it, makes for a very interesting story.

Dacias were not the best of cars during the communist period.  But they were one of the few types of cars you could actually get. Long lists and long waits came before any car purchase. And when I say long wait, I mean years. But then again, that gave you time to raise the money for it. The design was outdated, there weren’t that many options to choose from, and some relatives told me some now funny stories about how they prayed for their car to arrive with most of the parts on it.

After the Revolution, we finally had choices. And we went for them. Foreign cars, used at first, brought from nearby countries, Germany being the leading supplier. I grew up with high-school friends that made a business out of driving to Germany in one car and returning in three. They would work on them for a while, then resell them for some extra cash.

Old school Dacia, Sandero and Duster

Everyone thought of new Dacias (which came with a slightly updated design and a few more features) as cheap, but ultimately bad cars and they bought them only because they found nothing better. Then came Renault, which bought Dacia in 1999. Soon came the Logan brand and things started to change in how Romanians perceived the cars.

Yet there still were plenty saying they’d buy anything else. With rather strong competition on the market, the number of choices was still extremely large and with a negligible price difference. But of course, the Renault brand standing behind Dacia meant something.

In recent years, the Logan and the Sandero brands have changed perception even more. They are top selling cars and Dacia is one of the most profitable companies in the Renault group. We had to see that Brazil, Germany and other European countries love our cars for us to start loving and consider them as a strong alternative. I have to admit that I am now making plans around a new 4×4 announced by Dacia and Renault, Duster, and I would love to have one!

Was there another way to get us to support Dacia sooner? Was there something more than the price that they could have shown us? Definitely! We grew up seeing Dacia as crappy. Maybe all the reactions from other countries should have been brought to our attention sooner, more often, until we were no longer trapped in what we thought we knew and we could have given Dacia a chance.

No matter how we got here, I am happy to hear Romanians are proud of their car brand. They smile when they hear how well Sandero is doing on the international market and they are looking forward to see what’s next. I for one heard of a very cheap car running on electricity. Rumor has it it will cost about 5000 Euros.

People are lazy. And laziness, when kept under control, fuels a lot of their drive to do things faster and better. Let’s be honest, we’d all want to work less and smarter, generate more income and have tons of time to enjoy those we love, our passions and our hobbies. Given the opportunity, we’d all prefer to work for 3 months and travel around the world for the rest of the year (or insert other pleasant pastime here).

We need to stay mobile and render parts of what we do automatic, so that we gain time. And when it comes to social media, well, we have taken automatic to another level. Auto replies, retweets, direct messages, scheduled posts, automatic posting of content to social media websites. It’s all working out great for us.

But when we go fully automatic, we also fail to monitor what’s happening. We know things are taken care of, so we can’t we bothered with those aspects anymore, we have other, more pressing matters on our hands. The danger? Automatic processes don’t stop to think. And that’s how a few days ago a quite famous blogger managed to retweet their about page. Now one really tweets their blog’s about page and I caught some quite negative reactions. I immediately thought it was an automatic tweet plugin gone wrong.

So go automatic when it suits you. We all need the helping hand. Or about a dozen of them. But remember no piece of software can really be installed and then forgotten, no matter what their marketers tell you. Try to keep track of what you’re running and prevent minor mishaps that can make you look bad.

Those two concepts put together, not likely to win the “couple of the year” award, are they? And they shouldn’t, simply because guilt trips should never be part of business emails, especially when it’s the first email you send out!

Imagine this! You want to introduce your recently launched business. You mention your website, then jump to saying you have a kid who’s just turned two and add a link to cute photos of that kid. Then mention an obscure site you used to have but no longer exist. And finally, in paragraph 4 actually mention one of the services you provide. Nothing on your expertise, no reference to satisfied customers, no detailed skill set of your team. Just throw the baby in, that’s bound to work!

No matter how I twist and turn it, other than guilt trip, no other reason comes to mind for mentioning offsprings and showing photos to potential customers. Maybe, just maybe, if you were a photographer specializing in newborns and toddlers, there might be a reason for the photos. But saying your main quality as a business professional is having a child? It’s crazy! And the image of yourself you put out there has little to no chance to generating leads or sealing the deal.

Remember, you’re trying to build a business relationship! Yes, if you’ve had a client for years, a personal bond develops, you might even become friends and show eachother family photos. But if it’s a new client you’re targeting, keep it professional and tell them how you can help them grow their business. Honestly, they couldn’t care less about you as a dad!

What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

Happy Monday everyone! A new week has just started and I bring you a fresh reading list. Hope you find these articles useful and that you add your own findings in the comment box.

Motivation is paramount no matter what you do or where you do it (home or in the office). Jean Murray of Home Biz Notes has put up a list of 7 ways to stay motivated.

We all tend to distort the truth: when we clean up because parents come to visit (I do this extremely often), when we’re asked to say the first thing that comes to our mind, yet we stop to think. We have our reasons for it, but we all do it. This leads to Nami Dunfords simple conclusion: all customers are liars.

What should you do to build your brand? Apparently, it only takes 3 steps to knit it. That’s Drew McLellan’s recipe.

Mig of eWritings takes os back to traditional SEO. And she’s teaching us a little more about the Meta description tag. You know, those few lines that appear under your link on Google search result pages!

Do you think some people are difficult? They might think the very same about you! Barbara Rozgonyi shows us how to deal with such people by being one of them.

Brad Shorr uses silly wordplays to explain sales. More specifically the difference between spending and investing.

That’s all for today! Ejoy the new week and see you next Monday!