The biggest trends in branding for 2023

Branding trends provide a window into how we react to the present. People are pleading with brands for authenticity, transparency, and honesty after a few turbulent years and growing dissatisfaction with the actions and inactions of brands. While there are numerous factors that could affect branding trends, one is that in the future, it will be important to demonstrate how your brand upholds its core principles.

Making a brand that transports consumers to a different era of history is the goal of Embracing an Era. It might be as current as the 2000s or as distant as the glitzy 1920s. Making a vision of a different period might be a way for people to escape from the chaotic and stressful present.

Visual imagination and eye-catching colour were used in overstimulated branding to grab attention and attract the senses. This style frequently makes use of vibrant colours, strong, distorted fonts, and overt iconography.

Design Tips for Small Businesses

Design is more crucial than ever in our age of images and visual platforms, especially for small firms striving to compete with household names. The advice in this article will be useful if you are unable to afford a professional designer.

Be aware of your design goal. a method for organising your project and determining its success. Are you trying to build brand awareness or improve sales?

Use your brand’s colours in your design if you have them. Finding colours that correspond to or convey your brand message is important if you don’t already have brand colours.

Fonts are as vital to design as colours are. Be consistent in the fonts you use. Make sure the fonts are readable and convey the essence of your brand.

Draw ideas from thriving businesses. Consider some of the well-known brands; they enjoy success for a reason. Examine their logos, designs, colours, and fonts. Everything communicates the history, values, and products of the company.

 

Actionable Email Marketing Tips

Email marketing may seem scary if you are new to marketing and can seem quite complex and challenging to keep up with if you are busy. 

The first thing you must never forget is that your email marketing follows your branding so that it is instantly recognisable as your business.

A strong subject line starts your success. Reports suggest that 30-40% of emails are opened based on the subject line alone. Using powerful words that inspire the recipient to take the action of opening the email or clicking a link. 

Getting an email from an actual person rather than a brand feels more friendly. Also, addressing the recipient by name makes them feel like more than a number on your mailing list. 

Preview text appears in most email clients after the subject line. It offers the chance to give more context to your subject line. Leaving it blank is a missed opportunity.  

 

 

What is Digital Design?

Digital design is a general term that is more relevant now than ever before. Any design that appears in a digital format rather than print is considered digital design. This includes websites, logos and print documents.

The best way to make sure your brand is consistent is to create a style guide. A style guide is a detailed outline of how your brand’s visual elements should look. It includes everything from fonts to colours.

The digital design process has become more streamlined over the years, with technology making it easier to create works in a shorter period. Designers have more tools than ever before, which means that they have more freedom to express themselves. The growing community of designers on the Internet has also made it easier for designers to share information and learn from one another.

Digital Design Trends for 2022

With the first month of 2022 nearly over, we thought it was a good time to look at some of the design trends set to hit our computer screens this year.

This year, San Serif font is stepping into the forefront after its reprise in 2021. This classic font has gained popularity by its looks on digital displays, whether small or large.

Memes are always popular, but in 2022 branded memes are set to become a big digital business. You need to be quick, though, as memes quickly fall in and out of favour, and it’s hard to predict what will likely go viral and which will flop.

Quotes have always been popular, with people sharing them all the time on social media, but in 2022 they are set to become huge again. Some companies, like Asana, already use quotes in their digital marketing regularly.

What is a logo?

Businesses owners are always asking, “Do I need a logo for my business?” Business owners often wonder if they have to invest in a logo or not.

What Is A Logo?
A logo is a visual representation of your business and is a powerful marketing tool. A logo can be a graphic mark, stylised name, an image or anything that your imagination decides as long as it represents your company.

What Do I Need A Logo For?
A logo makes a great first impression to a potential new customer, and it is a representation of your product or service.  It also helps returning customers find you and distinguishes you from your competitors.

How Long Will My Logo Last?
Your logo lasts for however long your company continues to provide the original product or service.  If your business evolves or changes its product/service base, then you would update your logo to fit that brand.

How to Create Your Brand Voice

Before you start creating content for your brand, one important thing to consider is your brand’s ‘voice’. You need to consider how you will say things so that they are consistent with your brand and entice your audience to engage.

Tips to Creating Your Brand Voice

1. Take the time to construct and document the tone you wish your audience to perceive. Do you want to come off as comical, professional, knowledgeable etc?

2. Put words to the tone and get opinions from other on how those words and tones are perceived, to see if it matches what you are trying to achieve.

3. Ensure that you remain consistent with all of your content to build trust.

4. Be sure your chosen brand voice is transparent, genuine and honest to your brand.

5. Be sure your voice is being used on platforms that suit your brand.

6. Do not be afraid to adjust your brand voice overtime, as necessary.

Using these tips to create a brand voice will ensure you create content that is reliable, consistent and trustworthy to your users.

Online Content Creation Tips to Help Build Your Brand

Getting your brand seen, recognised and trusted online or on social media, by the right people, can trickier than you might expect. Before users interact with your brand it can take them seeing it mentioned or advertised up to 13 times! So, it is important to ensure you are using these top tips:

Research your Audience
This is the number one key to content creation. If you do not know the who, how or when of your target audience, then you are wasting your time. Do your research and create 1-3 buyer personas.
• Who- who will want to see your content?
• How- what devices will they be using to look at your content?
• When- when will they be looking at your content?

Be consistent
Keep your visuals, language and tone consistent across your content and across platforms, to build trust in your brand. Create an online marketing plan that lists what this should look like.

Be dependable
Create a content creation and posting plan that is manageable for you and ensure that you stick to it, to build trust with your audience.

Listen
Utilise social listening to know what your potential customers need and want. Think about what problem you can solve for them with your product.

Engage
Always respond, in some way, to people who comment or interact with your content, even if it is just with a like. Encourage conversations and engagement with your brand.

How to Choose the Colours for Your Brand

Choosing the colours that will help represent your brand, business and products can be a very tricky thing and is more important than you may realise. Studies have shown that an incredible 84.7 percent of people buy a product based primarily off of colour. A judgement on whether or not to use a product or business based on colours can even happen subconsciously. Here are a few tips to help you in your choice.

• Choose colours through the perspective of your customer and how that colour reflects the tone you wish to portray.

• Use good colour combinations to enhance their impact.

• Be aware of how those colours may be interpreted in different cultures.

• You should not choose colours based on your own preferences. Your favourite colour may not set the appropriate tone.

• To ensure you stand out, try to avoid colours that are similar to your competitors.

To aid your decision, one additional thing to look into is colour psychology.

How Important is Consistency?

Consumers are progressively becoming more concerned in creating a trusting relationship with the brands they support. The biggest way to generate that much-needed trust is consistency. Consistency in all of the marketing content that you produce will help to establish that link between you and your customer. Four ways in which you can be consistent are…

1. Having a consistent ‘voice’. The way in which your content and responses to users are written should always be in the same tone. You need to decide what that tone is and keep it unchanging.

2. Any visual content you produce needs to be branded with your logo. You want people to easily identify that this content belongs to your brand.

3. Keep your visuals, colours and fonts consistent. Choose what type of visuals you wish to represent your brand and do not mix. Use colours that are associated with your brand and logo.

4. If you are sharing content created by others, ensure that it is relevant to your brand, service or products. If people are looking at your content, they do not want to be seeing things that are completely off-topic from what you represent.

Just remember consistency builds trust, trust is what keeps customers coming back.