Do I Need a Brand or a Visual Identity?

Sometimes when people come to us for “branding,” I quickly ascertain that what they really mean is an updated “visual identity.”

“So, you’re looking for help integrating your vision, competitive positioning, audience messaging, market perception and corporate culture,” I might ask. Just as often they respond, “I just need an update to our logo, collateral templates, PowerPoint, web design, etc.” For many, the visual manifestations of a brand are “The Brand.”

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Brand personality: who really cares?

In our data and analytics driven marketing world, why would something so touchy feely, so ethereal and hard to quantify as brand personality be something you care about?

Everyone wants to be Apple. Everyone wants to, “Think Different.”

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How to Build B2B Websites That Serve Multiple Audiences, Part I

Maybe it is the function of the multi-product, multi-tasking, multi messaged nature of businesses these days but it seems that practically all of our clients share a common problem, which is how to create B2B websites that effectively speak to two or more disparate audiences — without diluting the user experience for each of those audiences. In this two-part blog post, I will address this “multi-audience” web problem, which spans brand, design, information architecture, content creation, and SEO.

B2B Branding for Multiple Web Audiences

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Why EXPERIENCE MATTERS””

Why_Experience_MattersI write regularly about how branding impacts your website, your marketing and your business. Last week, in celebration of RainCastle’s twentieth anniversary, we launched our new website, in which we introduced our new brand theme, “EXPERIENCE MATTERS,” here’s why.

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An Effective Web Design Strategy Starts with Your Brand

We’ve talked about Market Strategy, Brand Strategy and Content Strategy, so why do we need a Web Design Strategy? Because, of all of these strategies, only your Website Design Strategy is externally facing. Let’s put Website Desgn Strategy into context to clarify how these strategies work in tandem.

Strategy_ffunnel2Using a funnel metaphor, your Market Strategy is your highest level strategic decision, in which you define the markets for your products and/or services and determine whether your market approach is industry specific, solutions or applications-focused or some combination.

Once this is determined, your Brand Strategy encompasses the way you describe what you do, for what audiences with a compettive value statement, which sets you apart from your competition. You socialize this brand internally, and externally at every customer and employee touchpoint.

The power of a relevant Content Strategy — based on sound Market and Brand Strategies — is to create a program to disseminate and exchange your valuable content across all media and over time, which leads us to your Website Design Strategy.

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Why B2B Branding Works – And Why It’s More Important Than Ever

creamypbIf you buy the wrong brand of peanut butter, you can always buy another brand when you finish the jar. The wrong trio of underwear, you might be out $14.99, but buy the wrong computer software or hardware solution for your business and you have a major problem. Brands matter in the B2B world, sometimes more than B2C. A strong brand means the perception of reduced risk and makes doing business — whatever the business — easier. As with B2C, buyers of B2B products value vendors’ reputation because it makes the purchase decision safer.

In fact, a Forbes survey found that B-to-B purchasing decision-makers consider the brand as a central rather than a marginal element of a supplier’s value proposition.  Their survey found that decision-makers say the brand is almost as important as the efforts of sales teams in encouraging them to make out a purchase order.

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Has Your Website Entered the 4th Dimension?

For much of the life of the commercial web, websites were one dimensional, essentially online brochures that over time became large and often unruly repositories of tactical content. But, in just a few short years after the recession, websites have catapulted to the 4th dimension.

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5 Reasons Why You Need a Website Content Editor

I’ve seen many clients, who with the best of intentions fall into the same rut year after year. There are certain universal truths about successful websites; one of them is that on website projects that include a quality content editor as part of the dedicated team, the process is smoother, stays on schedule and client satisfaction is high.

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Branding is Now a Google Ranking Factor

This is kind of a mini-post. I’d like to reference an important post  I saw on HubSpot’s blog indicating the rise in importance of branding to SEO, in the aftermath of Google’s Penguin 2.0 release. While we have always stressed the relevance of branding to user experience, it is good to know that Google is recognizing the validity of branding in the realm of Search. I recommend you read the post but here is what I see as the key takeaway:

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Creating Websites People Love

We create websites people love. Of course I can’t say that officially — although it’s true — as HubSpot has already created a great campaign around “love.”

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