Branding Your Technology

Branding is all about the process of defining how you want your brand to be perceived. For example, a brand message which has “This restaurant has the biggest portions” clearly shows quantity over quality. While on the other hand,  “This restaurant has the best tasting food but didn’t quite fill me up” - Showing quality over quantity This concept of perception is where you should form your business. Ideally, you would convert the idea of quantity over quality into a statement such as “My restaurant is known as the best bang for `````1the buck”, and the concept of quality over quantity into a branding statement such as “My business is known as a high-end restaurant.” It is extremely important to communicate your specific brand promise - that means consistency in your brand promise through all of your marketing channels, including social media, advertisements, and all PR communications. Remember, consistency is key - If you are a restaurant known for high-end steaks, don’t sell burgers at a low price. With that being said, let's talk about the overview for the blog.

First, we shall begin by picking a business idea to build upon, because we believe in show not tell as an important principle. Then, we will find a specific name for this business idea, validated against its domain availability. Finally, we will be designing a logo for our business and talk about company slogan.

After that, we will touch on consumer psychology and give you some tips about branding that you can implement ASAP!

Going into this blog, we weren’t sure about which business idea to tackle, so we used a random word generator - it spat out the word “airplane”

We first started thinking about creating a brand around aviation, but none of us knew much about aviation, so we started brainstorming what airplanes do:

• Airplanes fly
• Airplanes carry people
• Airplanes land - and that's when something clicked. We can create a landing page builder.

Here is what a landing page is, for those of you who aren’t familiar with marketing

• Landing pages are single page sites that leads land on, giving them an opportunity to make a purchasing decision, whether it be a product from an ecommerce seller, or a local service that a salon is offering
• The landing page provides information on a specific product and/or service, incentivizing the customers to purchase right on the page.
• Landing pages present your CTA, or ask.

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First - Let’s start building on this idea, first, we must find a name. But in order to find a good name, we must first define our company values, because the name must reflect the values we want to present to the consumer.

In defining the company value, we must think about the features of a great landing page. Here is a great exercise into differentiating between good marketing and great marketing. A good B2B marketer defines company values based on what their customers want in a software, but a great B2b marketer defines company values based on the customer journey and experience of the end consumer. We must ask ourselves, what does our customer’s customer want in a landing page.

• Action - Landing pages are all about calling on a customer to take action on a particular objective, whether it’d be booking an appointment or buying a product.
• Brevity - We want the landing page visitor to have a smooth and brief experience, that impulse purchase instinct is very important to capture.
• Speed  - we know that for every half a second that a customer waits for a web page to load, 15% of them exit out of the page. The landing page builder must be fast.

We want to center our brand around a number of values, but it’s important to realize the principle of show not tell. In this context, it means that our brand must exemplify these attributes. What we tell our customers about a product only takes us so far, their experience and feelings in every step of the purchase process is much more important.

Here, we listed out all of the feelings we want to invoke in our customers

1. We want the customer to feel that the landing page builder will bring them results
2. We want the customer to feel that the landing page builder will load with speed when it comes to their leads
3. We want the customer to feel a sense of brevity in every step of the process, from onboarding, to designing the landing page, but also invoke the feeling that their leads will have a brief purchasing experience.
4. We want the customer to feel that the landing pages are places of action
5. We want the landing page themes to feel modern
6. And last but not least, we want to capture customers who think that this platform is easy to build with/navigate with.

Now, let’s look at the second area we want to focus on in the agenda - Domain

Here are the six most important qualities you should look for in your search for an effective domain

1. Easy - and by easy, we don't mean dumbed down. We simply mean that the domain must be easy to recognized and remember, enough so that it leaves a lasting impression.
2. Notable - The domain must be notable for your consumers, who will greatly appreciate a company that they can note in their heads without much effort
3. Search Algorithm - This is where the .com domain comes in, you should ideally be looking for a domain with the .com ending, making it easier for Google's search algorithm to rank you higher. Simultaneously, you should be considering your organic SEO competitions when deciding on your domain. Perhaps, it's a bad idea to compete against Apple's spot on the front page of Google organically.
4. Memorability - This goes hand in hadn't with notability, the domain must be memorable for your consumers, who will greatly appreciate a company that they can note in their heads without much effort
5. Brandable - Having a domain that is brandable is very important, it must be a short and concise domain that you can visualize a brand being centered around.
6. Short - Again, the shorter the domain, the less chance there is for your customers to mess it up when typing it into the search bar. The longer the domain, the larger room for error.

Contrary to the last image, here are six bad qualities of a domain that you should absolutely avoid at all costs.

1. Lengthy - Remember, the longer your domain, the larger the room for error there is for your customers to make when typing it into the search bar. Keep it short and concise so that it is brand able and more important, memorable.
2. Double Letters - Double Letters are difficult for the human brain to cognitively recall, as they are unusual in typical verbal interactions. Avoid double letters.
3. Hyphens - Your customers don't want to type a hyphen, and they will most likely forget that a hyphen even exists in your brand. Remember, the more complicated you make your domain, the harder it is for your customer to be erroneous.
4. Too focused - Your domain should be your business name and nothing else, it should not be a description of what your business does - leave that for the site itself. Avoid making your domain too focused on a specific quality of your business.
5. Spelling errors - This one is self-explanatory.
6. Play on words - Avoid play on words, seriously. It's not cute, it's not funny. Play on words are difficult for the human brain to consciously process, remember, and recall during the mindless process of web browsing. Avoid these at all costs.

Now, we will shift our focus into logo design.

Logos can typically be classified into two classes - they are either sharp or dull. . We would recommend a logo that mixes the two styles, try creating a logo that has sharp accents but a dull shape - this gives your brand an easy-going and approachable feeling, but still represented with the ideals of cutting-edge innovation with the sharp accents.

Sharp logos are powerful in delivering sense of tradition or futurism, innovation is well expressed with sharpness. Dull logos, on the other hand, are effective at manifesting modernity, as well as give off an easy, approachable tone

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It is very important to keep the demographic of your target customer into account when designing a logo. The majority of your branding inspiration should be based on metrics as to what your target demographic prefers in branding. For example - it might be a really terrible idea to design a website with times new romans 12 and black and white images if your target demographic are young people.

Taking a break from the specific aspects of branding - we must quickly teach you a few tips and tricks about color theory so we may advance into our graphics design section.

Different colors have different meanings. Blue represents calmness and security, while red represents anger and reliance. Different color palettes give your brand the different personalities - a neon palette is harsh but represents futurism and modernity - giving a cyberpunk feel to your website. On the other hand, pastel palettes, typically found within children's books and tv programs, may give your brand a sense of dullness and innocence.

Clashing colors are colors which are opposing each other within the color wheel. We would recommend steering away from combing clashing colors when designing your branding, unless you are using the contrast between clashing colors to highlight/contrast a certain element of your design. Some classic combos of clashing colors are red and purple, orange and green, brown and black, and finally, purple and yellow.

Analogous colors are colors which are in proximity with each other on the color wheel. Analogous colors are best combined to create a brand personality. For example, McDonalds famously uses the analogous colors of red, orange, and yellow to create a sense of happiness and joy in their brand personality. Every time I see the big yellow M at McDonalds, I am immediately taken by the nostalgic joy that the restaurant has brought me over the years. Some analogous color combos you should experiment with include green & blue, purple & blue, and red, orange, and yellow.

Implementing our information on color theory, we have created two logos in canvas for our landing page business, swift pages. The key idea when designing is just trial and error, Canva has made graphics design easy to approach and efficient to complete, so take as much time as you'd like and design multiple iterations, and choose your favorite one.

Finally, let's talk company slogan. We have four tips for coming up with your company slogan.

1. Keep it simple - Don't overcomplicate things, but this again, doesn't mean dumbing it down. It doesn't, however, mean making your slogan memorable. Simple slogans are more memorable because they are easier to remember - correlation without causation.
2. Use humor & honesty, because these are the two values that consumers care about in a brand. In the age of data, consumer trust is at an all time low, so it's important that your slogan centers around an idea or promise that can be honestly upheld.
3. Rhythm and rhyme are important tools in your arsenal when creating a company slogan - a slogan that rolls off the tongue easily is a slogan that is more memorable.
4. Finally, please consider your target market when creating this slogan. This means analyzing your target market's vocabulary, humor, interest, diction, so that you can create the slogan around your brand narrator's persona and tone. Drawing back from the beginning of this blog, consistency is key.

Here are some examples of company slogans that we love.

Finally, let's utilize consumer psychology to create the brand that suits your target consumers.

Typography is really important, it is the accent and sound of your brand narrator. Reference the slide above for the emotional responses evoked by some common fonts.

There are a few things to consider when deciding the images and animations to include in your graphics.

1. human component - Let's be honest, technology can be off putting sometimes for the average tech-illeterate consumer. People are scared of automation and the effects that it will have on their lives, so including a human component such as people working in a collaborative setting might really help with your customer perception of your software/brand.
2. brand message - topicality is key here. your specific images must be concise enough to encapsulate your brand message, any deviation from the message is a waste of space and your most precious resource - time.
3. define your solution - your image should illustrate a setting, whether it'd be a problem that your solution fixes, or people in the process of fixing a problem using the solutions you provide - the point is, it must be solution-based, your customers are coming to you for problem solving, so prime them by showing them that you have and will solve their problems.
4. interactive and eye-catching - this is pretty self-explanatory.

Here are some tips on linguistics in creating your branding and marketing

1. Your brand persona is everything. Make sure the narrator, or the "person" who is delivering all of the texts and paragraphs on your website has a consistent tone and diction which suits your business.
2. Keep it simple - it doesn't mean dumbing it down, but it means concise language that doesn't beat around the bush. Keep it simple, your customers will thank you.
3. Present tense - you should be writing in the present tense, this is the easiest tense to read in, which means that your customers will absorb information easier
4. social proofing - we care about social validation and support, and we don't care for being pioneers in softwares/services if it means spending money. Show your customers that they aren't alone, and they will be glad to join the camp.
5. nudgey numbers - our brain is better at remembering nudgey numbers, because we don't associate arbitrary and nudgey numbers with other things. Using "52.3% increase in performance" may be more impactful than "50% increase" or even "55% increase"

Conclusion

Finally, we will end on this statistics which we find profound and powerful. 86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience but only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations. Through the power of branding, you are improving your customer's experience in the buying process.

Stiddle – aims to bring you inspiration from leading respected marketing experts.

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