Strategic Consulting Agency. Fort Lauderdale Web Design, Branding, Digital Ad Marketing Agency, CRM Software

Choosing a branding company is one of the most critical decisions any company can make.

 

Branding is one of those things that most businesses don’t spend enough time focusing on. But it actually plays a huge role in the enterprise’s long-term success or failure.

 

Collaborating with a successful branding company that knows what it’s doing can have powerful, immediate impact on things like market share, sales figures, and profitability.

 

But all too often, business owners either pick a branding partner from among the affordable yet unproven random freelancers currently peddling their wares online or – worse yet – think they can do their branding themselves.

 

Before you choose a branding partner, consider the three essential elements of successful branding and how they play into your overall business strategy:

 

1. Visual Branding
2. Brand Messaging
3. Brand Positioning

 

Some branding partners are good at one of these things but aren’t experienced in the other two. Or perhaps they can be successful on two of these elements but can’t close the deal on the third.

 

But your business will only have a successful overall branding strategy if your branding partner can hit for the cycle and deliver on all three (more on that in a moment).

 

So let’s take a look at what role each of these three elements play.

 

Visual Branding

 

Visual branding is the element most people are familiar with. When you think of big, successful brands the first thing that typically comes to mind is something visual: the Ford logo, Apple’s iconic symbol of the apple with the bite taken out of it, the US Marine Corps’ symbol that features an anchor, a globe, and an eagle.

 

These are instant, immediate symbols that can call a brand to mind visually. And while they aren’t exactly easy to create, they don’t generally require as much work or effort to sustain once you land on a visual logo or branding symbol you like.

 

Yet visual branding designers are available by the boatload online. Freelance designers, artists, and branding “agents” compete ferociously with each other for the opportunity to draw your brand logo or symbol. While this can often lead to competitive pricing, it can also be a time trap.

 

You see, the symbol of your brand – while important – isn’t as critical to your overall success as the other two branding elements we are about to describe. Yet so many business owners spend so much time pouring over dozens of logo proposals or spin their wheels working with artists and freelancers when they could be doing something much more profitable – such as working on their brand messaging or positioning.

 

There are plenty of great companies with less-than-perfect visual branding elements. And there are even more businesses with knockout logos or symbols that can’t get off the ground on the more important elements of branding. Speaking of which …

 

Brand Messaging

 

The easiest way to describe brand messaging is: Words more than pictures. Brand messaging can include things like a tagline – such as the US Marines’ “Semper Fidelis” or “Semper Fi”, McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It”, or Mercedes-Benz’s “The Best or Nothing” – as well as other words, phrases, or even the overall tone they use to describe their company or products.

 

The way Pepsi talks about its products is quite a bit different than how brokerage firm Merrill Lynch describes theirs. Yet both are the product of brand messaging specialists who focus their skills and talents on communicating to prospective customers through words and phrasing rather than logos or visual images.

 

While some branding agencies are adept at integrating design with messaging, it’s a good bet that the art school graduate pitching their visual branding skills on Craigslist, Upwork, or another freelance marketplace isn’t going to have the writing experience or skills needed to succeed at brand messaging.

Finally, there’s …

 

The Three Pillars of Successful Branding – Brand Positioning

 

Today, it’s not enough to have a great logo, amazing ad copy, or print or video ads that combine the two. Your business needs to get its message TO its prospective customers first. Otherwise, all the time and money invested in developing visual branding and brand messaging will be squandered.

 

That’s where brand positioning comes into play. Its also where experienced branding agencies excel in the 21^st Century.

 

You see, all the old paradigms of business marketing were shattered about a decade ago. Traditional marketing platforms like TV, radio, print media, and direct mail don’t have the value they once had.

 

New media such as social media platforms, podcasting, streaming video, and other technologically advanced models are now the best way to reach consumers regardless of how you have positioned your brand with visual images or ad copy.

 

The successful branding agency can do all three: Create or improve existing successful visual branding, develop effective and consistent brand messaging that genuinely connects with targeted audiences, and then deliver both of those things on the platforms people actually use today.

 

The Three Pillars of Successful Branding – Lytron Design

 

As our name implies, Lytron Design originated as a design firm. But we quickly came to realize that if we were going to successfully deliver the kinds of measurables our clients demanded, we were going to have to expand our offerings to include all three branding pillars.

 

Currently, we are one of the fastest-growing branding agencies in North America, creating highly effective, hugely successful visual branding, brand messaging, AND brand positioning for small- and mid-sized businesses worldwide.

 

It’s not enough to pick a branding partner that can do only one or two of these branding pillars well. If you want to truly reach people and expand the size and scope of your offering, you need to collaborate one that can do all three. And that branding agency is Lytron Design.

 

 

Working with an effective branding agency can lead to immediate, sustained advantages — including increased brand recognition, penetrating new markets, and the “holy trinity” of more sales, bigger market share, and overall business growth.

 

Yet collaborating online, by phone, or even through video conferencing with file sharing capability can only do so much. To truly get at the core of your business, it’s sometimes necessary to go “all-in” with your branding partner.

 

And that’s known as brand immersion.

 

Full Brand Immersion

 

Brand immersion involves having your branding partner embedded within your organization for a specific period of time. It may be a few days, a week, or even longer.

 

During that time, the branding expert can assess all of your brand systems, review your brand messaging, and delve deeply into your brand positioning in order to identify what your business is doing well and what can be improved.

 

The results are often astounding. Full brand immersion is one of the best ways for you branding agency to get the true inside picture of how your business works, what its genuine struggles are, and how it can be improved. And the takeaway is often worth the investment in time, effort, and money.

 

First Phase: Brand Auditing

 

The first step is a complete brand audit. During this phase, the branding agency will conduct a deep dive into the business’s past branding efforts, digging deep into how the business is perceived by the outside world.

 

Brand auditing often requires full access to analytics, marketing reports, and internal planning documents with the objective of coordinating a complete picture of where the brand marketing has been, where it is currently, and which direction it is likely to go moving forward.

 

Typical things that are uncovered during brand auditing include:

 

• Bottlenecks that can inhibit brand growth
• Keywords, phrases, and tone that best appeal to targeted audiences
• Point of view statements that attract the best customers and filter out time thieves
• Strengths and weaknesses of current visual branding, brand messaging, and brand positioning
• Content analysis with an eye toward both consistency and effectiveness.

 

Once a full picture of where the brand stands from the brand auditing, the next step is complete and total immersion.

 

Second Phase: Brand Immersion

 

During the immersion stage, the branding agency partner physically travels to the business and becomes embedded in the operation. Generally, this lasts a week but in some cases it can be longer or shorter depending on the branding challenges to be overcome.

 

During this time, the brand agency meets with the CEO, marketing team, and even business clients to drill down into potential opportunities for improvement based on the brand auditing.

 

For a brief time, we will become an active part of your business. We listen in on how your reps talk to clients, we will interview our team members to get their candid thoughts on operations and overall culture, and we will speak directly engage with clients to get a feel for existing best practices and potential opportunities.

 

Finally, we will even spend time with leadership outside of the workplace in order to get a feel for what makes the business tick. We will eat at your favorite restaurants, meet family members, pet the dog, and see you in your true element.

 

All of these elements of full immersion are critical to determining areas for improvement, branding opportunities, and to gain an understanding of the underlying business culture that fuels its successes.

 

Third Phase: Report and Recommend

 

All of the data from the brand auditing combined with the in-person research from the full immersion will then be brought back and compiled, analyzed, and assessed by our team of brand experts.

 

The result will be threefold:

• A truthful, unbiased picture of where your brand is right now
• Recommendations on how to improve visual branding, brand messaging, and brand positioning to achieve optimal results
• And a road map on how to achieve these mutually agreed upon objectives with maximum speed and efficiency.

 

Lytron Design has achieved enormous success with this type of full brand immersion. We have worked with a wide variety of clients in a number of industries and geographic locations to deliver tangible, effective branding results that have resulted in measurable successes.

 

Success Stories

 

One of the most recent was VTEC Lasers & Sensors, a pilot project funded by the European Commision to support the digital transformation of small- and medium-sized businesses throughout the EU.

 

Here’s what VTEC founder and president Jan Mink had to say about the full immersion experience of working with Lytron Design:

 

“We at VTEC had the opportunity to work with Lytron and specifically with Mariana for 4 weeks, supported by DigitaliseSme. It was a great experience, the energy , support and knowledge she has put in makes you directly become a fan of the possibilities of digitalising your companies message. She supported strongly in creating a great website and also presenting VTEC in all the different media and news channels. Based on my experience i can advise you to first contact Lytron if you want to enhance your digital presence.”

 

Not every company needs brand immersion. But many can benefit from the getting the full, undivided attention of a branding expert embedded within their organization with the objective of creating a comprehensive, highly effective strategy for global branding success.

 

If you want to learn more about branding immersion and the other services we offer, all you need to do is contact Lytron Design. We can’t wait to partner with you to streamline your branding to achieve outstanding success together.

Traditional business measurements include profit, market share, and sales growth. But are those the true measurements of success?

 

Are numbers the primary way we should measure success (or failure)? Shouldn’t there be more meaning to what we do as entrepreneurs than dollars, cents, and charts?

 

If you are like me, the answer is an unqualified “Yes!” I believe that in the coming decade and beyond businesses will find new, better ways to measure what they do, including things like:

 

• Meaningfulness
• Motivation
• Ambitions
• Genuine Client Benefit

 

All of these new, non-traditional measurements can be summed up by the phrase “creating space for meaning”. But what does that mean, exactly? I’m glad you asked!

 

The New Industry Leaders

 

Thinking about your business in new and creative ways is always worthwhile. It can lead to breakthroughs, innovations, and triumphs.

 

Here are some entrepreneurs who changed their paradigm by thinking creatively about the way they measure their business:

 

Tara Gentile founded a traditional branding business called Quiet Power Strategy. But when her business became stagnant, she reimagined it as a community-driven membership that she named Co-Commercial. Here, in her own words, is why she decided to put her personal values ahead of traditional business measurements.

 

Scott Olford created the multi-million dollar “information” business Lead Craft. Then he closed it for good so he could launch a transformational program called the Relevancy Engine. Here’s his story.

 

Lewis Howes is a widely recognized online marketing expert. But instead of continuing to grow his business, he ditched it in order to write a book called “The Mask of Masculinity”. Why? Find out here.

 

These are all successful entrepreneurs who decided to stop embracing the normal and traditional path in favor of more rewarding and enlightening business discoveries, ones that include seeking answers to important questions like:

 

• Why am I working so hard and enjoying it so little?
• Does what I contribute to the world truly matter?
• What’s the reason for my hard work?
• What can I do to create genuine positive change in my client’s lives?

 

Like all of these people, I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of what we do as entrepreneurs. It can’t be all about the money, can it?

 

There’s got to be something more. And what I’ve discovered is that there most definitely is. And as an online entrepreneur, it’s critical to your happiness that you move beyond traditional measurement tools and embrace results that offer perspective, such as:

 

• Measure impact rather than income
• Focus on love notes rather than list size
• Count the content you create rather than the followers you attract
• Measure transformational results for your clients rather than sales

 

“Okay,” you probably are thinking. “That’s all well and good. But how can I actually do it? How can I change the way I measure my business so that it actually offers more meaning than simply more data?”

 

Again, I’m glad you asked!

 

Restructuring Your Core Offering – Meaningfulness

 

Back in the ‘90s, the big book in business philosophy was Steven R. Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. In it, Covey talked about shifting your paradigm, changing the way you looked at your business, your marketplace, your world in order to gain a new, exciting, and innovative perspective.

 

By looking at the world in a new way, it’s often easier to see the underlying reasons behind why you do what you do – in other words your unapologetic belief statements.

 

Discovering these are the key to creating the baseline foundation that can define every decision you make, every piece of content you create, and the path to every new discovery that lies just beyond the horizon.

 

Mine include these:

• There is a plethora of untapped human potential that is the key to changing everything in the world. This type of inner genius is present in everybody and is just waiting to be discovered – and it can be uncovered by effective, consistent branding.
• The choices we make effect not only our lives but also those of everybody around us. So when we strive for greatness, we not only help benefit ourselves but also our families, our co-workers, our clients, and our friends. We can be the lighthouse that uncovers the possibilities for everybody else.
• Our mission in life is to discover our own truths in order to help others discover theirs. And the path to this enlightenment lies in branding.

 

By shifting your paradigm inward, it’s possible to make genuine positive change outward.

 

Motivations

 

Guiding values provide the foundation for any business. If they are built on solid ground (truth) the business can prosper. But if they are rocky at best, it’s going to be nearly impossible to achieve the success you envision.

 

That’s why defining your inner values is so essential to your long-term strategies and overall success. Yours are going to be your own. I can’t define them for you. But I can share some of mine:

 

• Truth – You could say this is my “flagship” value. The goal of my business is to shine the light of truth by helping people discover their own truths about themselves, their brands, and their businesses.
• Intelligence – Brands and businesses alike need to use smart processes in everything they do. Otherwise, too much time will be wasted on wheel-spinning and inefficiency. As a branding entrepreneur, I focus on challenging people’s assumptions about “why” they do, not “what” they do.
• The Big Idea – Everybody has the potential to be their best and bravest version of themselves. Our goal is to help our clients discover the path to making big, dramatic changes through innovation, truth, and intelligence (see above).

 

Measuring success exclusively by dollars and cents doesn’t work in the 21^st Century. It’s not going to lead you where you want to go. Plus, it can destroy your spirit (not to mention your business) if you put ALL of your focus on tangibles.

 

Instead, shift your paradigm by expanding how you measure success by looking at “worthiness indicators” such as:

 

• Client Satisfaction/Impact
• Mentions/Positive Reviews
• Published Content
• Web Visits/Transformational Results

 

Ultimately, these are going to offer you a better picture of whether or not your business is successful. But more importantly, they can help lead you to genuine fulfilment, happiness, and the joy that comes with contributing to make the world a better place.

What does your ideal client look like? Do you even know?

 

When you are first starting out, the ideal client is anybody willing to pay you money to do practically anything (legal, that is). After all, beggars can’t be choosers.

 

But as you gain experience and your list of accomplishments grows, you can afford to be more exclusive with who you choose to collaborate with. And ideally, the amount you earn will also increase – at first incrementally and then exponentially, at least in the ideal scenario!

 

When I first started out, I couldn’t afford to be choosy. Just to get my foot in the door, I had to take whatever came my way. But eventually, with time, effort, and trial-and-error (often more error!), I was able to start to build both my business and reputation.

 

Today, I enjoy an exclusive client base that includes some of the most respected businesses in the world.

 

So today I want to share with you the tools you need to do the same with your business. And it all begins with imagining what your “perfect client” looks like!

 

Creating Your Ideal Client – Start by Looking in the Mirror

 

The better you understand what your own motivations are, the more prepared you will be to realize what your clients are looking for.

 

After all, your clients choose you for a reason. Price may be the first thing. But it’s rarely the only thing. Or even the most important thing.

 

You don’t always buy the cheapest products you can find, do you? Instead, you are drawn to products and services that tend to share your values and experience. The same holds true for your clients.

 

So begin your search for the perfect client by taking a look at what you perceive as perfection in yourself:

 

• What do you strive to be?
• What are the core foundational elements of your business?
• Why do you want people to choose you over everybody else?

 

Answer these questions honestly and you can begin to understand what type of clients you want to attract, collaborate with, and make genuine connections with.

 

Creating Your Ideal Client – Judge Your Current Clients

 

We don’t always like to pass judgments on other people. But sometimes it can be helpful to understand what qualities we value and which ones we dislike.

 

Try this exercise: Create a list of your current clients. If it’s not that big, include as many former clients as you can remember. Now, quickly and without thinking too much about it, rank them from best to worst.

 

It’s often easiest to start with the best and worst, then move towards the middle. Don’t spend more than a couple of minutes on this list and don’t overthink it … just do it!

 

Now, take a look at the top 3 and the bottom 3 and discard all the rest. Then make a short bullet-point list of the best qualities that the top 3 share and another list of the worst qualities that the bottom 3.

 

Congratulations! You now have a clear picture of what you are looking for in new clients and what to avoid.

 

Creating Your Ideal Client – How Do You Reflect These Qualities?

 

Now comes the hard part. It’s time for a little soul searching.

 

Look at your list of best qualities and answer this question with startling honesty: What to you do in your everyday life that reflects these qualities? Don’t compromise or try to shade the meaning of your answer. It’s okay if you aren’t currently doing all the things you should be doing. In fact, that’s the whole point of this exercise.

 

Now, Look at your list of the worst qualities and once again answer the question: What are you doing in your everyday life that reflects these qualities? Don’t shy away from the truth. Be brutally honest with yourself.

 

After you meditate on these two lists, you can now move forward with actually creating your description of the perfect client.

 

The Rest Is Up to You

 

Understanding what you are looking for in a client is a helpful way to make your business more successful. But it’s also path to more happiness in what you do, more genuine fulfillment, and a better contribution to the world you inhabit.

 

You are the expert on you. You know your business better than anybody else. And only you can take what you have learned about your perfect client and use it as a map to finding the genuine success that you deserve.