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Coordinating Your Online Marketing Materials

So, what comes first – the website design or the stationery? How about the blog banner or the e-zine layout? If you are just starting a new business, or maybe just doing some new branding, it can seem like a lot of stuff to get designed. The key is to keep it all coordinated with your brand image.

The purpose of brand development in the first place is to create a unified visual message for your business that appeals to your target market and authentically conveys what your company has to offer.

Brand Strategy

The first step is to determine your brand strategy. This involves zeroing in on who your target market is and what their “style” is – what appeals to them in relation to shopping for your service/product. You want to brainstorm keywords that describe the market and what they are looking for – fun, up-scale, professional, serious, luxury, prestige, friendliness, etc.

You also need to decide how your business will be positioned in the market – especially in relation to your unique selling proposition (how you are different from similar businesses) and how you choose to do business. Perhaps you want to be known as a friendly financial planner, who makes it easy for clients to understand mutual funds. Maybe you are a super-tough drill-sergeant-style fitness trainer who works with people who are serious about their work-outs. Whatever your angle is, you need to become very clear about what it looks like and feels like.

The next step is to move from those feelings, moods, keywords, etc into the visual realm. What colors fit with that image? Colors frequently convey both conscious and subconscious symbolic meaning. For example, “natural” products tend to use earth tones (greens, browns, blues) to connect to that message. When choosing colors, keep in mind which colors specifically will appeal to your prospects and convey the feelings you want them to have about your business.

Consider also whether there is an iconic image that you would associate with your business. If you are a providing pet services, perhaps an image of a cat or dog makes sense. If you are a personal chef, perhaps a chef hat, kitchen tool (such as a whisk or wooden spoon), or food image would be appropriate. If you provide a somewhat more abstract service, you might still want to have an image which symbolizes your focus, or represents the results your clients would get (a sales-trainer might use an image of a line graph going way up).

Logo Development

Once you have a clear idea about your brand image and some color and image options, it’s time to hire a logo designer. A good logo designer will take the information you have compiled and present some graphical options that should be in-line with what you visualize for your business. The best logo will really pull you in and evoke exactly the feeling you want your customers to have when working with you. Most likely you will need to go through a few rounds of revisions before you have the perfect design.

Website / Stationery / Blog / E-zine / Packaging / Etc.

It’s very important you nail down the basic elements of your visual brand before designing anything else for your business materials. In fact, you might want to compile a “style guide” like some of the larger national and international companies have. A style guide defines the elements of your brand including the exact colors, the logo, the fonts, and anything about how those elements can and cannot be used in graphic design. Having this on hand will make it a snap to work with any graphic designer.

The key to having a consistent brand image isn’t necessarily that everything you produce looks exactly the same – in fact this wouldn’t work very well considering the different formats of different materials. What you want is for those various elements to look like they go together, if viewed side-by-side.

Your logo should obviously be on all those materials, but you might also have certain other graphical elements which would add to the cohesiveness. This might be a certain shape, color of line, gradient, etc. which you use across your materials.

When you have a clear style and brand definition, your various materials can be designed in any order, even by different designers, and will look like they fit together.

Web Action Steps

  • Complete your own Brand Strategy. Get feedback from current clients and members of your target market.
  • Have your logo professionally developed. Make sure it resonates with you and your customers.
  • Create a style guide outlining your colors and fonts. Include an image of your logo and any graphical elements you plan to use across your brand. As you develop marketing designs, include copies of those finished designs as well for reference.
  • Test all your marketing material designs against your style guide to ensure consistency.

Having all your marketing materials coordinated reinforces your branding image and presents a polished, professional image to your customers. If you have a new business, or just a new brand, and need help getting your online marketing materials gussied-up, coordinated, and reflecting your business, contact me today.