Why Logos Are More Important than Ever Before

Historically, logos have been more a luxury than a necessity. Businesses attracted customers because they were the only game in town, so to speak. No longer. Today's highly competitive industries, global markets and visually oriented consumers have catapulted the logo to prominence. Now your logo is one of the most critical components of your brand. So how can something so little make such a big difference?

1. Your branding efforts not only start with your logo, they are dictated by it. Your logo appears on all of your sales tools, from your business cards to your website. As a result, your logo design influences the design of all your sales tools, for better or worse. A professional-looking logo can be leveraged to create professional-looking materials. A poorly designed logo cannot. In other words, you need a "brandable" logo one that you can make use of when designing other materials to brand your company.

   "Brandable" logos are scalable, memorable and meaningful. If people can't remember what your logo looks like, they won't remember your brand. Think of the logos of some popular brands today. Perhaps M-shaped arches, a shell, and a swoosh come to mind. All are simple concepts, effectively employed by McDonalds, Shell and Nike. If you can't look at a logo for less than 10 seconds and re-draw it with decent accuracy, it's probably too complex to be easily remembered. (Besides being difficult to remember, most complex logos cannot be effectively reduced in size or rendered in black and white, as required for materials like fax cover sheets and other business forms.)

2. Your logo is a quick visual cue that conveys the essence of your brand in an age when image is everything and time is short. Perhaps you've heard the writer's lament that "nobody reads anymore." In today's markets, not only do you face ever-increasing competition, you also face an audience accustomed to visually stimulating media, convenience and instant gratification. Sure, a few people may read all of your ad, more may read some of it but everyone will SEE it. The overwhelming amount of choices faced by time-crunched consumers forces them to identify shortcuts. Your logo is such a shortcut: it instantly conveys your brand message and emotional appeal.

3. Awareness and familiarity are keys to growing your business, and your logo is instrumental in both areas. Your logo is your brand's most basic graphic element. It ties together all of your sales materials - in fact, your logo may be the only visual element that your materials have in common. The right logo helps solidify customer loyalty while differentiating you from the competition.

4. Your logo may be the only thing by which a potential customer can judge your business. Think of small newspaper or Yellow Pages ads. Often all that fits is your contact information and logo. If your logo projects the right image, it may be the sole reason someone decides to try your company. Conversely, if it looks unprofessional or unclear, it alone may be the reason they choose your competition.

5. Finally, your logo affords a unique opportunity for you to look like a bigger (i.e., more established) business than you are. With the right logo, you can look like a large conglomerate even if you have only one employee. People will associate the positive attributes of big companies like security and financial stability with your company.

Building a solid brand identity is pivotal to success in business today. Lay the right foundation with a professional, brandable logo.

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Tell a story and your prospects will buy.

Quick tips on effective story telling.

When a prospect has a need, they want to know you will be able to fill that need. A great way to show what you can do is by telling a story.

Stories give us context and help us understand. They can also be translated quickly into something visual and emotional. Because of these characteristics, stories are very powerful marketing tools.

All good stories have a hero (in this case, your prospect). In these stories, the hero faces a challenge and learns something in the process. When you look at the story from your prospect's point of view, you will gain a different perspective on what is important to them.

Good stories also have good leads that pull us in and gain our attention. The first sentence is most important. It should give readers a compelling reason to read on without giving away the ending.

Once you open with a strong lead, provide detail that keeps the reader interested. A great example of this," They hoped to increase their gross revenues by 15%. They ended up with 300%. The story of how they did this is very interesting..."

And always, end your story with a bang!

Re-thinking your marketing message and customer case studies in the context of your prospect's point of view will be fun and rewarding.

Are your internal home page links consistent?

This is a very simple tip that will make sure your home page ranks higher in search engines. This involves making sure your internal web links are consistent and is an easy fix if they are not.

When you type in the home page of your site, you type the URL where it's located (eg. http://www.example.com) instead of the actual page filename (eg. http://www.example.com/index.html).

Even though the index.html page is your site's home page, search engines and visitors consider the "real" home page as http://www.example.com. This being the case, why would your internal navigation link to the index.html file instead?

Wherever you link to your "home" page within your site, you should link to your "real" home page (http://www.example.com). If you aren't being consistent when you link internally on your site, you're losing out on better search engine rankings.

The home page is the most important page on your site. It's important to fix the internal links to your home page, and consistently link to what we call your "real" home page.