Month: October 2019

The top brands all have a few key things in common.

They provide an exceptional customer experience at every possible customer touchpoint. They keep their employees happy and they have a memorable brand.

Whether it’s Starbucks, Nike, Apple or Google, the best brands refuse to be forgotten. But how do they achieve such a successful brand presence? What is it about the branding behind these that work, and why does it work? What do all of these successful brands have in common? The answer (at least in part) is their branding design process.

Great branding doesn’t happen by accident.

The most successful brands ensure that they make their branding integral to everything that they do. Creating great brand isn’t just a catchy slogan or a nice looking logo, it is the embodiment of everything that your business or organisation represents.

In this sense, your values must be reflected in your brand and vice versa. In other words, while it’s great to have a set of core values and beliefs that your brand stands for, you need to ensure that you live up to these values through your actions, whether this be externally with your customers, internally with your colleagues, or in any other aspect of day to day business life. 

So where does your branding design process come into this? Here’s our rundown of what makes for a successful brand design.

Understand who you were, are, and where you are going

The key to branding design process is in the term “process”. Your branding design is never something that stays still. Like your business, your branding should continuously evolve to meet new challenges and new opportunities. Your branding design process will need to have one foot in the present, and one a step or two ahead to ensure that you are never standing still. If you plan to expand in years to come, then you’ll want your brand to be able to move easily into this new identity without being held back.

Take a step back

With any branding design process, it’s important to take a step back and try and view your brand from another person’s point of view. Hold a workshop with some of your employees, or hold a focus group and ask them to tell you what they think of your brand. You may be surprised by the results when you ask others what they think. It can be very easy to be unknowingly biased when you are so close to your brand, so getting an objective perspective can help to develop and breathe new life into your brand.

Create a few different initial designs

Once you’ve come up with some conclusions about what your brand represents, where it fits in the market, and what the future holds, it’s time to start coming up with some designs to bring this brand vision to life. The colours, fonts, style and content of your design, will be determined by the conclusions you have come to about these questions. Again, as your branding design is a “process”, it helps to come up with multiple options and designs and to whittle it down from there to the designs that best fit your brand. 

Commit to your brand

This tends to be the hurdle that most businesses and organisations struggle at. Committing to your brand and your brand guidelines is easier said than done. Committing to your brand guidelines means abiding by the rules that you have decided upon no matter what business pressures or deadlines you need to meet. It means living and breathing your brand values and using your brand to compliment this by integrating it at every touchpoint possible, be it for customers or employees.

At Kaizen Brand Evolution, we have helped numerous brands with their design and branding, and in helping them to integrate this into their own internal processes. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you with your branding design requirements, then get in touch via our contact page, or by calling 02895072007.

Your brand is more than selecting a few colours and deciding upon a font that you like, your branding is the gateway to your business. It tells your audience and your customers who you are and what you stand for. Whether or not your customers decide that they want to spend their time and money on you, will always in some way be determined by the relationship that they have with your brand. In essence, your brand is all-important. 

So how do you go about growing your brand? Here’s our top tips on how to use branding to grow your business. 

Branding to be proud of

Before you can go about growing your business from your brand, you’ll want to make sure that you are not only 100% sold on the branding that you have decided on, but that it has been designed to function effectively across multiple different devices, platforms and print runs. Once you know for certain that your brand can be taken into the market without any issues then you can rest assured that you won’t have any hiccups, embarrassing mistakes, or unprofessional branding letting you down.  

Stick to the brand guidelines

Calling them “guidelines” can sometimes misconstrue the purpose your brand guidelines are intended to fulfill. They’re not really guidelines in that sense of the word at all, they are clear and unbreakable rules that can damage your brand perception if they are not kept to. As much as your brand is all important, it is also easily damaged if you are not strict about the ways in which it is used. 

Set out your objectives

Once you are both clear on your brand and how to use it, then you’ll want to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your branding. Are you running a lot of events? Do you want to get your name out in the local area? Would you like to improve your relationship with existing clients and customers? Do you want to keep front of mind with your existing clients or customers? Do you want to help your sales staff to seal the deal? How you choose to use your branding can help you in all of these areas. 

Get your name out there

With your objectives in mind and your key target audience to impress, it’s time to get your name out there (quite literally). Here’s a few examples of uses for your fantastic new branding;

Sales Collateral

Smart and professional looking branding is great for creating a good impression with your clients and customers. If you want to help your sales staff look the part when it comes to their sales pitch then branded Business Cards, branded Booklets & Brochures, and branded Presentation Folders, is a fantastic way to do this. First impressions are everything, and by ensuring that you have high quality sales collateral to offer to clients and customers you can rest assured that they are armed with everything they need to seal the deal. 

Advertising Materials

So you’ve just completed your rebrand and you want to show every man and his dog. And why wouldn’t you? Well, what better way to get that great looking brand out there than with branded posters, flyers, and plotted stickers? Investing in branded advertising materials is the perfect way to raise awareness of your new brand and to get people talking. 

Events

If you do a lot of events but never quite manage to do as well as you’d like, it might be that your branding is letting you down. Beautifully designed and professional looking events collateral can be the difference between success and failure at your next event. Branded events materials such as roll up banners and selfie frames are a great place to start. 

Branded Merchandise

Want to keep front of mind with your clients & customers? Why not try branded notepads & desk pads, or branded wall calendars. Providing your customers with high quality branded materials that they will use every day is a fantastic way to ensure they never forget about you. 

At Kaizen Print we specialise at making brands look brilliant. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you to grow your business with high quality branding and high quality branded materials you can get in touch via our contact form, or by calling us on 028 9002 2474.

How branding and marketing work together.

Branding is all important to marketing. Without a strong brand then any number of marketing activities can fail before they’ve even got off the ground. Great branding on the other hand, tells your audience that you know what you are doing and that your business is one that they can trust. Here’s our thoughts on how branding helps with your marketing efforts;

Raise Awareness

Without branded touchpoints, how is your audience supposed to know who you are? While your employees can put in all of the effort into providing the very best service possible (and making it a memorable experience for your customers in the process) ultimately you are still missing a trick if you don’t back this up with reminders at every turn of the business they are dealing with. Your audience is naturally visual and also naturally forgetful. With so many competing interests and distractions, you want to make sure that you give your business every chance of leaving an impression, in whatever form that takes. 

Remind your audience that you exist

Making your audience aware of your existence isn’t enough. It will take at least three viewings of your brand or advert for the average person to even register your existence. After that they will just as easily forget your existence if you don’t continually remind them why they shouldn’t and the value that your brand and business can bring to them. 

Tell your story through branding

You’ll want to remind your existing customers and prospective customers alike not only of your brand, but also what it stands for. Once you have gotten through to your audience, and once many of them have become customers, then is the time to use your branding to really win them over and make them lifetime customers and ambassadors of your brand. Truly great branding does a great deal of the leg-work for your support teams, to support them with your core values and remind customers why they shop with you. 

How do you remind your customers that you exist and why they should buy into you and your brand?

Make a list

In order for your brand to help in your marketing efforts, you’ll want to make a list of all the possible touchpoints your customers currently have with you and your business, and think about how you might be able to use branding within these particular touchpoints. If you regularly send mail to your customers for instance you’ll want to make sure that you brand any documentation with letterheads. For any advertising that you produce, you’ll want to make sure that it is supported with your logo and other distinguishing brand elements so that it is absolutely clear that it is your brand being advertised. Do you work with clients who invest a lot of time, money and energy with you and your brand? It may be worth spending a little extra and gifting them branded merchandise to say thank you, and to always be front of mind. 

Be high quality

When considering how branding can help with your marketing efforts, it’s also worth thinking about how poor branding can damage your marketing efforts. Your branding is your audience’s first impression of you and your brand. Your audience is time-poor and will make snap judgements based on how well you present yourself with your brand. If you do not make the grade then they won’t hang around to find out more and you will have lost your chance before you have even started. So as much as it is great to consider every touchpoint you have with your audience, and to get your brand out there in front of all of the right people, if you are doing all of this and you still feel like you are not reaping the rewards, then it may be that your branding itself needs to be looked at. 

Branding is all important to marketing. If you have a poor brand then your marketing is likely to suffer, and if you have a strong brand, then it can help in multiple ways that go beyond just bringing in leads to your business. Develop a strong brand and then get it out there for everyone to enjoy!

At Kaizen Print we are experts when it comes to your brand. We can help you with your design needs, and also with high quality cost-effective branded materials to help you really let your branding shine. To find out more you can get in touch via our contact form, or by calling us on 028 9002 2474.

Firstly, what is a pitch deck?

A pitch deck is a set of designed presentation slides used for the purposes of presenting information to an audience. Typically pitch decks are presented on platforms like Microsoft Powerpoint or Keynote by Apple. 

Who uses pitch decks?

Pitch decks can be used by all kinds of people for all kinds of purposes. If you have an important message that you need to get across to an audience then a pitch deck is where you need to start. This might be to propose a business plan or to pitch your services to a possible client.

Why is an effective Pitch Deck important?

While presenting an idea or service, it is not just the content of what you are saying that you will be judged on. Your audience will consider every part of your presentation, from how enthusiastic you are about what you are saying, to how confident you are in your pitching abilities, right through to how you are dressed and whether or not you make eye contact. Presenting the perfect pitch can be a minefield when it comes to ensuring you make the right impression, but by having a nicely designed and highly functional pitch deck to turn to, you can rest assured that you will be helped along the way. 

Pitch deck best practices

Don’t overload your slides

To win people over in a pitch you want your personality and enthusiasm to shine through. This isn’t going to happen if your audience is reading your slides rather than watching your Oscar winning performance. Your slides are there as a step-off point into the content or message that you are attempting to sell or convey. They are not there as a means of telling your audience the in’s and out’s of what you have to offer.

Don’t get bogged down in detail

Just as your pitch deck shouldn’t be overloaded with text, you should also avoid where possible too much detail. While you want to be specific and smart with what you are saying, you don’t want to be boring. Cutting out the unnecessary elements of your pitch deck will not only make it leaner and more efficient, it will save your audience from falling asleep in their notepads. Your pitch is there to be accurate, but also to inspire, the real detail can come in later. 

Be different

If there is a sure fire way to be forgotten as soon as you leave the room, it’s in not providing your audience with something different from what they have seen before. Now, you don’t have to put on a fire juggling act (although this might wake your audience up a bit), but what you should do is say something that excites your audience. Use your pitch deck to really get this difference or differential across to your audience. Use big bold visuals, take advantage of animated or video content, do something a little different with your design, surprise your audience!

Make it nice to look at 

You might have the best product or service in the world, you may be an exceptional presenter and thrive in the limelight of a presentation, but if your pitch deck looks like a dogs dinner then you’re unlikely to win over your audience. Now while, under exceptional circumstances you may be able to win over your audience in spite of your pitch deck, ultimately it is integral to your success, so ensuring that it is presented smartly is an absolute necessity. 

Now, following the first two points in this list can help a lot here. By ensuring you don’t overcrowd your pitch deck you’re already going some way to making your pitch deck design a little more pleasing on the eye. The next step is to think about how you visually present your ideas. Using well thought out images rather than words, for example, is one way you can both limit unnecessary text and make your pitch deck look great at the same time. 

Find out more

At Kaizen Print we have helped many many businesses from innovative start-ups to clients like Coca-Cola, Hellenic and Mirror Media Ireland with considered graphic design and engaging presentations. As part of our design process we seek to understand the real message you are attempting to communicate with your pitch deck, and then we go about creating beautiful looking pitch decks for you to wow your audience. If you’d like a printed version to hand out after your presentation, we can also provide an exceptionally high quality print service to support your digital presentation. To find out more you can visit our pitch deck design page, or get in touch via our contact form, or by calling 02890022474.