Sometimes the Oldest Ideas Are the Best Ones

CampbellIf your business has been around for a while, you probably already have been through dozens — if not hundreds — of marketing promotions. Some of them probably worked while others likely fell flat.

It can be challenging to come up with new ideas to promote your small business’s products and services, to say the least. So why not simply repurpose some of the most successful marketing campaigns from your business’s past? It’s often a fast and simple solution: Attract new customers with old, tried-and-true marketing ideas.

Look to the Past

People love nostalgia because it reminds them of past times in which their lives were simpler, younger, and more carefree. Recreating marketing promotions from the past can often inject new excitement into your old, established business.

It’s nothing new. Major corporations like Ford, Coca-Cola, and The Walt Disney Company have been going into the vault and bringing out old marketing campaigns, brushing them off, refurbishing them, and using them to attract an entirely new generation of customers.

Established campaigns can also help solidify loyalty bonds with long-term customers by reinforcing the trust relationship your business has shared with them for years or even decades.

Dig Into the Archives

Finding your old ideas offers a lot of fun and entertainment itself. Digging into your past marketing campaigns can bring up enjoyable memories and while sparking new ideas for turning the old into the new. Set some time aside to dig through your archives and look at the promotions your business used 10, 20, or even 50 years ago.

Over the course of your small business’s life, you’ve come up with a lot of fun, entertaining ways to attract and retain customers. You don’t have to let these ideas simply be part of your history, Instead, dig them up, brush them off, and put them toe work building your business.

For Effective Branding, Consistency Is Key

GerberThe brand you create for your business today could still be around decades from now, or even a century or more into the future. People may encounter your brand in print or broadcast media, online, social media, or even on platforms that haven’t been invented yet.

So the most important element to keep in mind when creating your brand is to keep it consistent. Using the same slogans, trademarks, images, messaging, and even fonts and colors will help people connect with your business wherever and whenever they encounter it.

Branding Consistency

Think about some of the most ubiquitous brands in the world today, those that have been around for many decades like Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Company, Nike, and IBM. While they all offer diverse products and services, the one thing they all have in common is branding consistency.

For example, you can walk into any McDonald’s restaurant anywhere in the world and see the same familiar colors, fonts, images, trademarks, and branding. While the menu may vary from country to country, the restaurant chain has done a terrific job of keeping its branding consistent across many platforms — both physical and virtual — for many, many years.

By setting the tone now with your company’s branding, you can hope to achieve some of the same kind of success as this multinational fast food chain, and other successful brands.

Lytron Strategic

.The decisions you make about your branding now can have important implications for decades to come. Who knows how or where your company will be in the future? The important thing is to create effective branding that can be sustained over time to make genuine connections with customers wherever and whenever they encounter it.

Lytron Strategic can help. Our team of experienced, professional branding experts can collaborate with you to create memorable, consistent branding that can build and grow your business for years to come.

 

In Business, Perception Really Is Reality

serrano square

Serrano Square

Have you ever heard the expression, “Perception is reality?” It refers to the idea that what people see is what they believe. In business, it means your business’s reputation is defined by the way customers perceive you, not necessarily how you want your business to be perceived.

That’s why managing your business’s online reputation is so important. Lytron Strategic has the digital tools, experience, and know-how to successfully manage your business’s online reputation so that prospective customers think about your business exactly the way you want.

Bad Reviews

For example, let’s say your small business gets a bad review on a popular social media platform. A single bad review can do more harm to your reputation than a hundred positive reviews because people tend to believe the worst. It’s just human nature.

But managing your online reputation involves monitoring the big social media platforms for posts about your business and then targeting negatives and other potentially harmful content. In many instances, it’s possible to reach out to the person who made the posting, address their issue, turn around their opinion of your business, then convince them to remove the harmful post. It’s a win/win for both the poster and your business.

Positive Reinforcement

One of the best ways to build goodwill among your customers is to continually remind them of all the positive things you do for your community. You also can personalize your business by being open about your family life, your interests and hobbies, and favorites that have nothing to do with your business, such as TV shows and movies.

Making personal connections with people helps instill positive feelings about your business. When people feel like they know you personally, they are more likely to perceive your business in a positive light and choose you ahead of your competitors.

 

 

Why Is Your Business Special?

lytron consulting agency 3

Lytron Consulting Agency 3

Every business has something about it that is unique. If you can identify what your distinctive selling point is, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors in your branding and in the marketplace.

You probably know what makes your business special. After all, you are the author of your own story. But to communicate that exceptional quality in exceptional and meaningful ways, businesses often need to rely on professionals — like the marketing and branding experts at Lytron Web Design.

Giving that Extra Push

In digital marketing, most of the time people visiting your website landed there because they already were actively looking for products or services like the ones offered by your business. So by getting them to click on your web pages, you’ve already completed three-quarters of the task. All they need is a little “extra push” to commit to your Call to Action (CTA) — whether that’s buying something, giving you their contact information, or whatever other action you page visitors to take.

Lytron Web Design can help by highlighting and featuring your business’s unique selling point, whatever it is that sets you apart from direct competitors in your market. Plus, we can do that in ways that reach people on an emotional level, whether it’s through the written word, images, website design, or all of the above.

Lytron Web Design

Nobody knows better than you why people should choose your business. Lytron design knows how to use that selling point to connect with online customers who already want what you are offering but simply need that extra push.

Together, we can achieve great things for your business. Contact our web design experts today to get started collaborating on websites, branding, and other strategies that showcase your business’s unique qualities and put you at the top of your market.

Pick a Color Scheme and Stick with It

archetypes site 1

Archetypes Site 1

There are a lot of things that go into making a successful website, including unique design, well-written content, and engaging images. But one of the most important is also one of the most basic: The main color scheme.

Choosing the right colors for your website depends on a lot of different factor such as emotional response, previous branding, and the image you are trying to project with your business web pages. So picking a color scheme is a big decision. But once you do, it’s critically important that you keep mostly the same colors throughout all of your web pages and even real-world marketing materials.

Colors and Branding

Your unique color scheme is as much a part of your business branding as your logo, your catchphrase, or even your corporate mascot if you have one. People will become accustomed to your color scheme and even comfortable with it. Over time, when they see your specific colors, they will instantly think of your business — either consciously or subconsciously.

That’s why it’s so important to be consistent with the use of your colors once you choose them. When people see the same colors on your website as they do on your packaging, print advertising, and even on your broadcast commercials, it continually reinforces your brand in their minds, building permanent familiarity with your brand.

Colors Matter

So, picking the colors that best represent your branding message is very important. At Lytron Web Design, our experienced web builders can recommend colors that best reflect the messaging you are striving to communicate with your customers or clients.

We have helped dozens of businesses create memorable, inviting, and successful brands by choosing the best colors, using them consistently throughout their branding, and genuinely engaging people with a positive projected message that promotes their products or services.

 

‘Embracing an Era’ Offers Helpful Branding Strategy

Human Expressions E1574719171410One of the most popular branding strategies today is known as “embracing an era”. This is when companies try to associate their products or services with a particular point in time.

What era you embrace depends on the branding message you are trying to project. The era could be as recent as the early 2000s or as distant as the Roaring ’20s. The idea is to take your prospective customers back to a simpler time that is associated with happier memories and events, offering a temporary escape for people through the products or services your business offers.

Top to Bottom Branding

When you choose to embrace a particular era, nearly every aspect of your business can reinforce this decision, from advertising to decor, even to the fonts you use on your signage or marketing materials. For example, an ice cream store may choose to commemorate the Victorian Era with employees wearing costumes from that era.

Or a business seeking to link its branding with the 1970s might use thick and curvy fonts and neon colors in its signage and advertising. Larger companies might license music from a particular era or use celebrities famous during a particular decade to be their spokespersons.

Nostalgic and Fun

Associating a particular era with your business injects a bit of nostalgia into your branding while making it fun for people to interact with your products or services. By including references to a particular era in your branding, you can create instant connections with people that serve as a sort of shorthand for your specific message — whether it’s the buttoned-down “Mad Men” era of the early 1960s or the patriotic preppiness of the 1980s.

With today’s world becoming increasing complicated, associating your branding with a past era lets customers escape into a time that was simpler and more familiar.

Be the Face of Your Business

Logo Icon Graphic 01 1 1One of the most powerful marketing tools is the power of personality. When customers can put a face with a business, it instantly creates a loyalty bond that can result in increased trust, more familiarity, and repeat visits to your business website.

Who better to represent your business online than you? Nobody knows better about what your customers want, what solutions your business has to offer, and how you can connect the two through your products and services. So why not make you the face of your business in your online branding?

Person to Person

Some of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time were centered on a single person. Dave Matthews single-handedly put his fast food franchise, Wendy’s, in the public consciousness by personally appearing in his own restaurant chain’s commercials. Frank Perdue did essentially the same thing with his family’s chicken business.

When you put yourself out there as the face of your business, it instantly gives prospective clients somebody with whom they can make meaningful connections. People are much more likely to trust a real person than they are a logo, a mascot, or a trademark.

Lytron Strategic

Lytron Strategic can craft an online campaign that puts you front and center. Your image can be featured on your web pages, in your marketing materials, and even in your direct messaging to customers old and new.

People want to put a face with a business. When they feel as if they know you, they are much more likely to trust you and buy the products and services you are offering. By making yourself the face of your business, you can attract new customers while reinforcing trust bonds with existing ones.

Let Lytron Strategic share your story to inspire people, create genuine trust connections with customers, and take your online marketing to the next level.

Branding Is More than a Logo

expert analysis 2

Expert Analysis 2

To people outside of marketing, a company’s “branding” simply means its logo or possibly its mascot. When you think of Frosted Flakes, you envision Tony the Tiger, right? So that must be the cereal’s branding.

In reality, a lot more goes into developing a branding strategy than simply a company mascot or a logo, such as Coca-Cola’s distinctive script. A branding strategy is actually as a holistic approach that determines how a business builds identification and favorability with existing and potential customers. The logo or mascot is the “face” of that strategy but there’s usually a lot more going on below the surface.

Branding Elements

So successful brands have a number of different things going on at the same time. These can include things like voice, storytelling, brand identity, brand values, and offering a new and original “vibe”. Marketing professionals spend a lot of time thinking “inside the box” when it comes to keeping their branding consistent, but also “outside the box” in order to offer new and creative takes on familiar feelings related to that brand.

Consistency is the key when developing a brand. For example, Starbucks has done an excellent job creating a linear vibe when it comes to developing its branding for its gourmet coffee chain. From the cups to the people making drinks to the in-store decor to the advertising, the Starbucks brand is familiar, comfortable, and inviting — and it keeps people coming back again and again.

Your Brand

At Lytron Strategic, our goal is to collaborate with you to define and develop your business’s specific brand and then come up with new and creative ways to reinforce it with your current and future customers so you can build your physical business and online reputation.

There’s so much more to the story than just your logo or company mascot. Let’s figure it out together.

Learn from Other People’s Mistakes …

20 years lytron 3

20 Years Lytron 3

Developing effective web traffic or online campaigns for your small business can be a case of trial and error: Other people’s trials and other business websites’ errors!

You likely are going to make plenty of as you go along. But you can minimize your blunders and maximize your success by learning from other people’s mistakes rather than tripping over your own feet all the time.

Look and Learn

Spending time developing and improving your business’s digital presence is an important element of your development. But you also should spend time looking at what your competitors are doing and learning from what they do poorly. It’s also fair game to see what they do well and take it for your own.

Every time you go online, it’s an opportunity to learn something that can improve your business’s website or campaigns. Keep a notebook nearby so you can keep track of what you learn. There’s always something you can find that can make your sites better — whether it’s poor choices your competitors made or something smart that you can steal and implement for your business.

Lytron Web Design

At Lytron Web  Design, we spend a lot of time and energy looking at other people’s websites. In fact, that’s where we get some of our best ideas for improving your business’s online campaigns and digital reputation. Constantly being aware of what other people are doing is the best way to learn new things, find exciting new ways to promote your products and services, and get to understand what customers truly want from your business.

Although it’s been around for a while, the web is still in its infancy. So every day holds new discoveries that business owners can use to improve their performance and reputation. Life is a learning experience and the closer you pay attention, the better you can make your website.

In Branding, Consistency Is King!

imihhd

Imihhd

To be memorable and effective, brands need to be consistent across all platforms: Print, broadcast, digital, and even signage and face-to-face messaging. Consistency is critical because it inspires familiarity in customers, making them feel comfortable with your and open to your marketing, making it more successful.

Elements like color schemes, fonts, and logo design should be consistent whether they are part of print advertising, websites, brochures, TV commercials, and even packaging. When your branding is always the same, your customers know what to expect from your business. But when it differs from platform to platform, it can be confusing and off-putting.

Amazon Marketing

One example of effective marketing is Amazon. The world’s largest online retailer has done a great job of keeping its branding consistent during every stage of the customer interaction. When you log onto their app or website, it always features the same familiar logo, the same color scheme that is anchored by package brown, and even the same simple, “regular folks” scripting style.

Then, when your package arrives, it comes in a box that features the same “Amazon smile” logo in a box that is the same color as the package brown featured on the website, digital ads, and elsewhere. Even the truck the package arrives in and the uniform worn by the delivery person is consistent in its branding.

Top to Bottom Branding

A lot of thought went into Amazon’s branding. But the results speak for themselves. In less than two decades, Amazon has gone from a niche online bookstore to one of the biggest companies on the planet. And much of that is due to its smart branding decisions.

Consistent branding continually reminds your customers of what your company is all about. Smart branding keeps everything the same on every platform and with every customer interaction.