Create Your Brand
A brand is not only your logo and it should be inclusive of your color palette, your font family or typography, It needs to be on everything from your business cards, advertising content, your website design, as well as any communications to your customer.
Creating your brand is where the rubber hits the road and is what your customers would recognize. The brand is not just your logo, and it also includes the color schema. The color schema is not just on your logo and advertisement such as printed material, it should also be prominent on all your online presence including and not limited to your e-commerce store, your social network, and any online ads. Lastly, the font or what is called typography needs to be consistent between offline and online advertisement and copy, or what is also called content.
PRINTED MATERIAL
Although we live in the digital world, physical material is still needed. These are not limited to business cards. It should include brochures, flyers, and other handouts to give to your customers. This is not only true if you sell on both online and offline through in person events and shows. If your business is exclusively online, then you still may need to have printed material as inserts added to the products you ship to your customers. Inserts could be in the form of a simple Thank You card or a special holiday announcement and/or greeting.
YOUR E-COMMERCE STORE
Your online store is very similar to a brick and mortar in that your landing page needs to show what your customers should expect. Again the brand would include the color palette matching your brand colors. You’ll need to ensure the online store has the same color schema across all its pages. This includes the shopping cart and checkout pages. Also don’t forget to have your Thank You pages carry the color theme.
VARIETY OF COMMUNICATION FORMS WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS
Email Marketing
Although email marketing has been around since 1978, it is still a viable and worthy function in business. Yes, that’s 46 years ago and email marketing is still a huge function in acquiring and keeping your customers. Collecting emails via your website’s subscription forms are a best way to obtain a list of potential customers. Ensure your email communication is aligned with your brand.
Marketing and Sales Funnels
Marketing or Sales Funnels are a big part of the customer communication process. You might think these funnels are only a recent tool, In fact, the concept of the marketing or sales funnel has been around since 1898. Yes! That concept has been around more than 125 year and it’s still a useful tool today. Today, marketing or sales funnels extend into the social platforms where the top of the funnel advertisement can be on all social platforms. These top of funnel ads typically send potential leads to a landing page on your website and/or a standalone informercial page. Sometimes, the top of funnel sends the potential customer to a page where they can purchase the product or service. Marketing or sales funnels are important for your business and also needs to align to your brand.
Short Message Service Marketing
Short message service marketing or SMS Marketing is relatively new and started around 2003. With a little over two decades, it’s one of the fastest growing forms of marketing and will continue to grow as the number of mobile devices continue to increase. This marketing also needs to be aligned with your brand.
SUMMARY
In short, your brand, your color schema, and your font on all your content should be aligned to ensure your customers can easily recognize your products and/or services.