Brand Development and Management

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Brand Development

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Beginners Guide to Brand Development

Brand development is a marketing function that aims to distinguish your company’s image, products, and services from your competitors. However, its long-term goal is to increase the perceived value of your brand and products, which is the foundation of a loyal customer base.

At LOJO, we can help you develop and manage your brand through digital marketing strategies.

This is what our brand development experts and visual artists can do for you:

Help you develop a stunning visual identity through logo, graphics, etc.
Develop and implement brand management and marketing strategies to reach your target audience through multiple channels such as paid ads, search engine, social media, emails, etc.
Identify branding opportunities to further enhance your marketing campaigns.
Research about your competitors to determine what they have done, where they have succeeded, and where they have failed from the perspective of branding. With this information, you can replicate their success, avoid their costly mistakes, and fill in the gaps to give your company a competitive edge.

Jump to a sector!

Here’s a quick look at the brand development services by LOJO:

Seth Godin once defined branding as a set of expectations, memories, stories, and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.

In fact, when you think of any big company, it’s likely that that company’s brand is the first thing to come to mind.

Just about every successful corporation with top-of-mind recall– Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Nike, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola– all these businesses have invested significantly in their brand development image and created an identity centered on their respective brands.

“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”

— Jeff Bezos

Here’s what we noticed at LOJO. In our years of experience working alongside clients of all kinds, we can tell you that as far as small- to medium-sized businesses go, many have made significant investments in marketing, but not so much with their brand development.

Perhaps it’s just a lack of understanding of how branding actually works, or probably they just don’t know how important branding really is.

If you’re looking to win the hearts and minds of your target audience, we can tell you that branding will a big part in achieving that end.

Which is why we’ve now prepared this handy guide to brand development for business owners and brand managers.

Why is Branding Important?

Visually speaking, a brand is a name, design, symbol, or any other representation that identifies you from your competitors. But if you go deeper into the meaning of branding, you’ll realize that it is not just about creating catchy logos and quirky tag-lines.

In its truest form, a brand is the perceived experience of your customers when they see, hear, and buy your product or service.

“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time.”

— Elon Musk

Your logo, design, or any other visual representations of your company or product can evoke feelings, impressions, and expectations from your customers. This is why your brand should be unified and consistent in all your digital marketing strategies and online platforms.

At LOJO, we believe that a brand is not just a simple visual or aesthetic identity, but a perception and reputation that can propel your business to success.

What Are The Elements of a Great Branding Effort?

The visual elements or graphic designs send a message to your customer about your company, product, and service. They basically act as your communication tool that uses aesthetic components.

At LOJO, we have a roster of seasoned graphic designers who have created hundreds of stunning visual identities for companies from different industries.

The mission statement

Before we start the process of brand development, our graphic designers will ask your company’s mission statement, which is basically the core value of your business—i.e., why it exists and what purpose it serves.

Since the mission statement is the foundation of your company, it must be reflected by all your visual identities and representations. This is why we want you to sit with us to make sure that everything is unified and consistent.

“It’s our goal to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything online.”

Amazon

“To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”

Starbucks

“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Google

The Company Logo

Your company logo is the face of your brand.

But what constitutes a beautiful face?

First and foremost, a logo must convey the essence of your brand. Meanwhile, it comes in four different style choices such as wordmarks, brand marks, combination marks, and emblems.

Wordmarks. They are logos made entirely of text, usually the business name. For startups, this is particularly ideal to improve their name recognition and awareness.
Brand Marks. They depict the brand using an image or symbol. Brands that have become household names can drop their name or text (wordmark) without any effect on their recognition and awareness.
Combination marks. The logos spell out the company name and at the same time incorporate a symbol or image.
Emblem. Almost similar to combination marks, they also incorporate both text and symbol although the business name is placed inside an icon so they appear like a badge.

Your Company Colors

Color psychology has shown that hues can influence perceptions and provoke certain emotions in people. In marketing, studies have shown that colors have a measurable impact on consumers, particularly on their impressions of a brand. This is why fast food brands almost always use red in their visual branding because it rouses appetite, while tech companies often include blue in their logos to denote authority, professionalism, and trust.

Our graphic designers and brand developers are well-versed in color psychology. We make sure that your logos and other visual representations bear the colors that reflect your products, services, and above all, the core values of your company.

To identify the most ideal color or color combinations for your logo, ask yourself these questions: Which hue can best represent the products I’m selling? What kind of brand personality do I need to convey to my customers?

Your Official Fonts

Just like colors, fonts should also reflect your brand personality and should be used consistently across your content, packaging, online presence, etc.

A surefire way to determine your ideal font is to identify your brand personality. Is it informal or professional? Creative or traditional? Cutting edge or classic? Cheerful or serious?

If you can describe your brand personality using three to four adjectives, it’s easy to identify the best company fonts.

Associated imagery and design elements

They include the supporting graphics, icons, design assets, and photographs that further highlight your brand identity. They must all look consistent and unified so the customer will recognize the brand no matter what online platforms he is using.

To put this in perspective, Google has always been consistent with their design elements and assets: A strong preference for geometric shapes, linear shadows, clean background colors, and crisp images (thanks to icons aligned to the pixel grid).

Brand Style Guide

This is a rulebook that lets everyone know how to present your brand to the world with the use of visual representations ranging from logos, imagery, fonts, and colors, to associated imagery and other design elements.

With a brand style guide, your branding is presented in a consistent and unified manner, which is particularly important in digital marketing strategies.

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What Branding Services LOJO Offers

We are a team of brand development experts, digital marketing specialists, and graphic designers who can help you create a visual identity that resonates with your business’s core value.

Our visual artists can create stunning logos that reflect your company.
We can design graphics and other design elements for your websites, social media accounts, and other platforms you use to reach your customers.
Our graphic designers can help you with your corporate branding requirements such as business cards, letterheads, brochures, etc.
Should you decide to sign up to any of our digital marketing plans (i.e., PPC campaign, social media management, paid ads, etc.), we make sure that your brand is consistently and accurately presented in all digital platforms.

Logo Design

We want to hear your story and your business’s core values. We want to know the people behind your company. And more importantly, we want to know how you want to be perceived by the public, especially your target customers.

Our graphic designers are story-tellers, but instead of text we use logos and other design elements. Let us tell your stories to your customers.

LOJO's Design Process

We’ll walk you through our design process to create a suitable logo for your brand.

We are committed to your satisfaction in terms of creative design. We don’t like to settle, and you shouldn’t have to either. We don’t stop working on your logo until it is everything you want it to be.

We’re happy to say that our systematic approach to working with you yields some pretty top-notch results when it comes to creating a logo. A gallery of some of our more recent logo creations follows this overview of our trademark design process.

Our trademark design process

Discovery Phase

We conduct interviews to get to know your company, industry, competition, and target market.

Thinking Phase

We conceptualize your goals and ideas.

Experiment Phase

Brainstorming stage in which we create different design variations.

Visualization Phase

Client interview, an examination of the givens, industry, and target audience.

Execution Phase

The actual creation of visual designs that will be presented to you.

Response Phase

We listen to your feedback and make the necessary changes based on your request.

Completion Phase

Once you are 100% satisfied, we render the final versions into compatible file formats and sizes.

Our Recent Logo Projects

Take a look at some of our clients’ logo designs and redesigns.

Graphics

Our seasoned graphic artists have already created hundreds of brand-oriented visuals such as iconography, infographics and pictographs, large-format imagery, geo-targeted graphics, and seasonal visuals.

The use of these supporting graphics and visuals gives your brand a professional look, especially in the online platforms and digital marketing strategies.

Types of Graphic Design Projects

Iconography

Iconography is a symbol that relate to your brand or even different subjects or ideas. For an example look no further than the tabs in your browser and you will see our’s and other companies Favicon’s.

The use of icons is almost a necessity in digital marketing and ecommerce that rely on imagery to convey quick messages. Oftentimes, they are used to represent shopping carts, documents, “contact us” button, volume, and email.

At LOJO, we make sure that our icons are simple, understandable, and attractive.

Infographics and Pictographs

Marketing infographics is a great way to engage with your target audience by providing them valuable, visually-oriented information.

You can also use infographics to list resource materials and tips, demonstrate your business goals and strategies, and explain important or complex concepts.

Large-Format Visuals

You might want large-format images for your website homepage, a magazine ad, or a roadside billboard. At LOJO, we make sure that they come with high-resolution, high-dpi requirements to avoid blurriness and pixelation once they are enlarged.

“If your campaign happens to be a new product of luxurious types of furniture made from eco-friendly and renewable resources, one possible concept could be a beautiful picturesque nature scene with the tagline “Interiors that Mother Nature can Settle Into,” which would market directly to environmentally-conscious folks.”

Geo-Targeted Graphics

Another specific way to engage your brand with different areas.

For local businesses like restaurants, food trucks, auto repair shops, real estate brokers, etc. geo-targeted graphics can complement their branding and marketing campaign.

“Let’s say you’re holding an event in the Sacramento downtown area, and you want to put up signs or hand out flyers in the broader surrounding areas like Roseville, Folsom, Elk Grove, or Davis. (These are areas that we service often.) LOJO can create simplified map graphics, event signage, programs, and email campaigns using your brand visuals to help illustrate what areas you care most about.”

Seasonal Graphics

Examples: Flyers, sticker design or seasonal landing pages.

From in-store signage, holiday schedule, unique cards, and brochures, brands have always used holiday graphics into their seasonal marketing campaigns.

Corporate Branding

Corporate branding goes beyond picking a logo. If you delve into its real purpose, you’ll realize that it is a way of telling a story, influencing emotion, and above all, making a human connection.

To help you create a powerful corporate brand, sit with us and explain the core values of your business such as:

By answering these questions, LOJO can help you build a strong brand message, design a logo that reflects your business, make your brand visible online, and create data-driven marketing strategies.

“If your logo is the face of your company, then your corporate brand is what you’re wearing to the interview. Your customers are going to judge you on how professional you seem and if they can trust you, so why not look as sharp as you can? This is the essence of corporate branding, and as you can see, it is essential to how you are perceived by your clients!”

Social Media

Social media is a great platform for brand awareness, with more than 3.8 billion active users worldwide, according to a 2020 report. Aside from its wide reach, take note that 80% of consumers use social channels to find solutions from the brands they follow.

At LOJO, our visual artists ensure that your logo and other graphic representations demonstrate your brand philosophy, whereas our social media managers and digital marketers establish consistency in the content and the tone of voice across social platforms.

Brand Continuity

The most important aspect of any online business is brand continuity.

If you already have a logo and other branding elements, they should be displayed or creatively incorporated across all of your social media accounts in your profile image area.

This will help you to look more professional and current. If your social media accounts only have the default imagery still up, you’re not representing your brand well.

Some might think to be a menial task, many companies neglect the opportunity to display their brand visuals. LOJO can help you maintain an up-to-date and proper brand presence in the social media scene. We can create custom graphics or format existing graphics to fit the social account requirements and help your brand shine.

Account Maintenance

If your brand is not represented properly socially, then you are behind in the times. True, different industries and companies have a time and a place within certain social platforms. LOJO can help you define your place in the social arena.

So if you need help with keeping your social accounts regularly updated, LOJO is here to help.

We do the research to find out what your customers want and expect to see on your accounts and keep them engaged. We’re talking beyond just making a presence. We also consider how you present your brand and interact with the social environment.

Let us take on your unwanted social media responsibilities to focus on your business and your brand.

“It’s funny how people view the world today to be less personal because everyone is always on their mobile devices and not engaging each other face to face, and yet when they are on their devices they are engaging socially online!

But, that is the reality of today’s market, and if our goal is to maximize your presence wherever your market is, then having an active social media presence is the first step to engaging with your customers online.”

The Importance of Print Materials for Brand Development

While it is true that consumers and businesses have shifted to online platforms—a trend that is further fast-tracked by the global pandemic—occasional print marketing remains valuable in branding, provided that you have a well-defined target audience.

At LOJO, our graphic designers and content creators can make your promotional and print materials appealing to your consumer. This is important as print marketing is processed differently by our brain compared to digital media and other platforms.

Print Collaterals

Does LOJO offer print services?

Yup, we print that.

Print collaterals, also referred to as leave-behind marketing materials, are used to promote products, services, and events. Common examples include:

If you have a unique project in mind, sit with us and let our experts guide you on how to create “killer” print marketing materials.

Promotional Items

While you can use promotional materials at any time of the year, they are particularly valuable during the holiday season when consumers are more receptive to the “offers” from catalogs and brochures.

Also, you’ll need print materials for your event promotions and clearance sales. Take note that brochures and catalogs not just add visual interest to your brand but also give you more “opportunity” to convince consumers to make a purchase.

Holiday Promotions

Holiday promotions are one of the more popular and apparent ways to run campaigns, and there are holidays just about every month of the year.

If you’re looking for someone to run a monthly campaign for you, we have more options than you can shake a stick at because we custom tailor our marketing plans to fit what works best for your company.

If you just need advice, we are experienced at providing expert analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing efforts. We can run tandem campaigns during overlapping seasonal and holiday schedules and across multiple digital and print platforms.

The sky is the limit when it comes to how many different ways or how often you can be promoting your brand.

Branded Merchandise

People love free stuff, even though it comes with a blatant promotional message such as your company’s logo, name, motto, products, services, etc. This is why giving out branded merchandise is like sharing your business card, but in a more memorable and fun way.

Your promotional items can range from inexpensive items like coffee mugs, pens, t-shirts, and water bottles, to VIP gifts such as luxury necktie sets, French press coffee maker, and box of gourmet food.

As a full-service vendor of brand marketing materials, we can help you with the designing, development, and printing. We also offer different packages to meet your budget and unique business needs.

How Can LOJO Help With Your Brand Development Needs?

We are a team of marketing and branding experts, content creators, and visual artists who can help you build your brand from the ground up.

With years of serving local clients in the greater Sacramento area—i.e., Auburn, Colfax, Lincoln, Loomis, and Roseville—we have become the go-to expert in branding and digital marketing. You may visit our main office in Rocklin if you want to know more about how we can help you.

We also extend our invitation to clients from Granite Bay, Penryn, Citrus Heights, Antelope, Orangevale, West Sacramento, Carmichael, Davis, Rosemont, Rancho Cordova, Fair Oaks, Elk Grove, or anywhere else in California or even out of state.

While a good number of our clients are from the local communities, our seasoned marketing and branding experts have helped them reach their global audience with the use of customer-focused strategies and a consistent, unified branding.

Your Success is Our Success

Brand development is a meticulous process that involves creativity and communication between you and our team. Our core value is to design a brand and its visual representations that truly reflect your company.

To further help our clients boost their brand awareness and ultimately drive their sales, we also offer digital marketing packages that include social media management, PPC campaigns, SEO, and email and other paid adverts.

Company Logo
Branding Standards Document
Business Card Design
Company Letterhead (Digital and Print)
Email Signature Composition
Company Flyer Design
Thank You Card Design
Envelope Design

A Final Word on Branding Essentials

Why is branding important for any business?

Your brand will serve as the backbone of your marketing by giving a memorable impression on your target audience. Furthermore, branding allows your customers to know what to expect from your product and service, and what makes you different from your competitors.

In marketing, both in digital and print marketing, it is crucial that your brand is presented in a way that is consistent and clear. This means that your company logo, color scheme, font, tag line, and “overall feel” should be the same in all platforms and media.

Get Your Corporate Brand Established

Whether you want the whole corporate branding package or just a few of its elements, let us know and we will take your business to the next level.