Branding Archives

We’ve all seen videos being shared on social media to promote certain businesses. In fact, it’s almost more common to see videos on social media than any other form of post these days. But it doesn’t end there; many websites also feature videos on their landing pages to give visitors a better idea of who they are. This trend is referred to as visualization, and it isn’t unintentional. Businesses are learning that people respond well to and are more engaged by videos.

Visualization in the marketing world refers to a trend in which videos help a consumer “visualize” their lives if they were to buy your product or utilize your services. Videos tell a story to your customers, heightening the likelihood that they will take action. This action could be a purchase, or it could be something simpler such as “liking” or sharing the video with their peers. If your website doesn’t include many videos or if your social media efforts don’t include elements of visualization, here is why you should take steps to change this:

Tell Your Story

Watching a video captivates an audience in a way that images and content don’t. Whether it’s be a movie, a television show, or even a short clip, people identify with videos and form a connection with the characters and events. Creating a story for your business encourages this connection for consumers. After all, what better way to show a potential customer your value to them than by creating a visual story outlining your business model or demonstrating relatability to their needs. By including video in your website, you are telling a story that encourages viewers to form a positive impression of who you are as a business, visualize how their life would/could be better if they were to utilize your business, and tell their friends about you.

Build Your Social Media Presence

When done right, a successful story encourages the viewer to share the video with their friends, which in turn promotes your brand. Brand awareness through social media is an invaluable thing to have these days. Most consumers will choose to purchase a service or product from a familiar source as opposed to an unknown one. Social media works as a great medium for sharing videos because of its casual nature. A video being shared by a friend is far more welcoming than an obtrusive commercial, therefore the chances of connecting with users and building familiarity with them are better. Social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram have been increasingly incorporating video elements into their platforms because they know that users form a deeper attachment to engaging videos.

Experience a Higher Click-Through-Rate

As stated before, visualization encourages customers to form an immersive connection with your business, even if just for a brief moment. When a person envisions what their life could be like with your product or service, they are no longer arbitrarily comparing numbers and slogans, they can see first hand what will happen if they choose your business. Once a customer has this connection, it is far more likely that they will click on your call to action to learn more. A more enticing visual element encourages a higher CTR (or click-through-rate), and a higher CTR can increase lead generation.

Visualization in marketing is becoming more and more important each year. Social media sites and apps have been catching on to this trend and are supporting more visual elements into their platforms. If you feel that your business could benefit from a better visualization strategy, then contact Linda Fanaras, President/Strategist of Millennium Agency www.mill.agency.

About Millennium Agency

Millennium Agency is a nationally recognized, top woman led B2B branding, positioning, and digital marketing firm who knows how to create value that emotionally influences your customer’s buying decision, giving you the competitive advantage. As your trusted partner in B2B software technology and manufacturing, we provide the branding and positioning framework that make an impact – so you can focus on what you do best – run your business successfully. With offices in Boston and New Hampshire, and a worldwide presence, the professionals at Millennium Agency would like to learn more about your business.  Visit www.mill.agency or book time here.

Positioning is all about establishing the identity of your business. Positioning of service refers to the impression a customer forms when they come in contact with your business. Put simply, positioning of service poses the question: “Who do people think you are as a business?” The days of simply providing a service or product and then ‘calling it a day’ are over. With so many different businesses out there and such easy access to goods and services via the internet, customers need to know that their values are being upheld by whomever they’re buying from. So how do you improve your positioning of service in order to maintain a competitive edge? Here are a few ways in which your business can improve its positioning of service.

Develop a mission statement

A mission statement clearly conveys what it is you stand for as a business. It is important to know what your values are before you try to position your business. Even more important than this is knowing your customers’ values. Your business values and mission statement should stem from the wants and needs of your customers and what you can help them with. The market is determined by what the consumer believes the producer stands for, and no one wants to do business with a company whose identity they conflict with. Once you have a solid idea of the values you want to uphold for your positioning of service, you should put them in a clear and concise statement that outlines them for your customers and employees to see.

Know what is already out there

Be sure to study your competitors’ positioning of service. It is important that your positioning is different from the competition. Generic or copycat businesses usually go unnoticed or ignored. Make sure your positioning shows that you are unique and that you stand out from the crowd. Another reason to study the competition is to find out what works and what doesn’t. While you want to be unique when it comes to the details of your business, it is important to know what hits home with consumers to ensure they resonate with your brand.

Ensure that your positioning of service is uniform throughout your business

Consistency in a customer’s experience encourages repeat business. It is crucial that you maintain the same standards throughout all facets of your service. You want to ensure that your customers take away the same engaging experience from your website, your emails, and in-person encounters. If your positioning of service is inconsistent, your customers may not recognize the identity you are trying to convey and are less likely to do business with you in the future.

Test before implementing, then listen

A trial-run may be necessary before you roll out anything new. Many successful businesses often host consumer think tanks to test new ideas. This process of testing before implementing will help you determine if your message is achieving your positioning goals with your customers. It is important to note that even when new positioning strategies are implemented, they can always be revised to increase your competitive edge. Listening to your customers is a crucial step that many successful businesses take to measure customer satisfaction and ensure that their new positioning strategies are working to achieve the best results.

Remember, consumers these days are becoming more and more aware of who they are buying from and what their values are. Your positioning of service tells your customer exactly who you are and why they should do business with you. If you don’t feel that your service is conveying the right values to your customer base, contact Linda Fanaras, President/Strategist of Millennium Agency www.mill.agency.

About Millennium Agency

Logos. They are the first point of contact between your business and a prospective customer. Some logos are stylish and extravagant while others are simple and subtle, but they all serve the same basic functions. A successful logo will catch the eye of a consumer, inform them in the most basic way about who you are, and instill recognition and familiarity in their memory so as to encourage repeat business. If your business is in need of a logo, or your current logo needs a refresh, here are five principles to help you design your logo:

Color and Shape

Certain colors can incite certain human emotional reactions: red is considered an inciteful color while blue is often considered soothing. Knowing your colors and the psychological effects they may have on consumers is a great starting point for logo construction. Shape also has an effect on human emotions as well. Did you know that the strongest shape found in nature is the triangle? For this reason, many people subconsciously associate this shape with strength and sturdiness. Small details like this can lead to the creation of an effective logo. Make sure you study the effects of colors and shapes on consumers before you roll out your logo.

Know What’s Already Out There

When designing your logo, be cautious of copying an existing one. Try to avoid similar traits to other logos. You don’t want customers to mistake you for, or associate you with, a completely different business, especially if they’ve had a negative experience with that business.

Don’t Limit Yourself

Many businesses utilize acronyms or a full spelling of their business name and then call it a day, but it doesn’t have to stop there. It’s important to be creative and think about things from a different angle than the competition when designing your logo. For example, the arrow under the Amazon logo not only forms a smile but it also points from A to Z, reflecting the nature of their business. These small features differentiate Amazon’s logo from the logos of their competitors and offer a creative way of connecting with their customer base.

Keep it Simple

An overly extravagant or eccentric logo can be a lot to take in for today’s society. People think fast, talk fast, and most importantly look fast. You don’t want your logo to be overlooked because it was too much for a passing glance to take in. Many people are bombarded by symbols and signs on a daily basis. You want to make sure that your logo stands out but is also easy to understand. It is this philosophy that drove Millennium Agency to shorten its title with our Short is Sexy campaign.

Know Your Customers

The jagged bright green letter M tearing through a black Monster can is quite reflective of the energetic nature of the product and its customer base. On the other hand, Teavana’s logo features a zen pose that reflects the calm nature of their product as well as tea culture in general. Make sure you know who your customer base is and what their values are, then try to align your logo’s design with these values.

Remember, a well-designed logo can increase lead generation to your business while a poorly designed one may actually drive away customers who are in need of your products or services. If a new and exciting logo is something you are interested in for your business, contact Linda Fanaras, President/Strategist of Millennium Agency www.mill.agency.

About Millennium Agency

It’s probably accurate to say that most business owners think of their brand as the graphical representation or logo that symbolizes their company. In truth though, the logo is just one element of branding, with brand strategy and architecture also contributing heavily to the overall company projection. Your brand should be a promise to your audience, a promise of value, trust and loyalty, and a whole lot of other qualities that are represented by that logo. Do you really need to establish architecture and brand strategy as part of your overall company branding? Absolutely – and here’s why.

A strong brand strategy includes:

Who You Are

Your brand goes far beyond being a flashy logo or a powerful image that projects strength and confidence. Your brand should convey to an audience exactly who you are and what you are all about as a business entity. There needs to be a strong correlation between that logo and the qualities which legitimately define your company to the world, otherwise it lacks meaning and legitimacy. It’s not enough to have a charismatic image of your company – you have to actually BE that image, or the logo itself means nothing. A good brand strategy will make sure that you are that image.

First Impressions

The saying goes that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. That may be true, but in the business world, your company will get a second, third, and many more chances to make a good impression on your audience of followers. If you have a solid marketing strategy, along with the branding architecture to support it, your company will have multiple opportunities to impress your target audience with favorable points. You need to make those chances count in order to have a meaningful impact.

Influencing Perception

You certainly can’t control how the public perceives your company – but you can definitely influence it. And that’s where strategy and marketing come into play. Every point of contact, every touch that occurs between users and the visible components of your strategy is a chance for you to give them a positive impression of your company. That means it is a chance to earn trust, deliver value, establish relationships and solidify loyalty.

Sharing Your Story

If there’s one thing that moves followers more than any other, it is hearing your company story, especially if it is presented in an engaging and powerful manner. Storytelling has the power to motivate people to take action because it connects with them emotionally, forges a bond between listener and storyteller, and, for at least a moment, transcends the business relationship and reaches a personal level. Your brand should be a representation of a compelling story about your company, because the story is something that will stick with the listener, and it will be the first thing they think of every time your logo reappears. In fact, it may even be the one thing a potential customer remembers most vividly about your company, so make sure to get it right.

If you are ready to focus on establishing a powerful brand using the best methods, then contact Linda Fanaras, President/Strategist of Millennium Integrated Marketing www.mill-im.com.

This article was originally published on Prime Women. To view it, click here.

About Millennium Agency

Marketing: Right Place, Right Time

Strawberry Pop-Tarts^®. If you live in Florida, you know there is a strong likelihood that you will at some point have to contend with a hurricane. Several went through Florida in 2004 and Wal-Mart decided to study its product sales during those periods. What the data revealed was interesting. According to a QualityDigest article, Wal-Mart expected to see a significant jump in the sales of water, diapers, flashlights, batteries, plywood, generators and the like. Instead what they found was strawberry Pop-Tarts^® were purchased 700 times the rate of any other product during the hurricane season that year.

As David Steinberg points out in Entrepreneur, our job as marketers is to “get out the right message, in front of the right audience, at the right time, to drive the right (desired) consumer behavior.” Now more than ever, in today’s technology driven, digital realm we need data to do that. And with just seven seconds to connect and convert, data insights are important on the creative side as well. Hurricane season begins June 1. Pop-Tarts^® anyone?

While data can tell us much about what, when, where and how often consumers buy based on past purchases, you still have to sell the product or service you are offering. This is where the creative side of marketing comes in, and connects the dots to why they purchase. Here are a few points to ponder as you look to efficiently and effectively marry data and creative in your digital and content marketing.

Mining Your Data

The biggest driver of data digital marketing according to an article and infographic in AdWeek is to be more customer-centric, targeting messages and offerings for a more personalized customer experience. Customers have grown to expect that you know more about them, whether online or off, and they want brand consistency throughout their journey. That’s why customer service and satisfaction data have become paramount from hospitality to healthcare. In addition to wanting to know when, where and why you chose a particular product or service, marketers want to know how you felt about it. Much of this consumer engagement information is culled from websites, mobile apps, social media and call centers, and serves as the foundation for future campaigns.

Creative That Connects

However, numbers don’t tell the whole story. You still have to play into peoples’ emotions, what’s trending and rise to the surface among a sea of competing messages. Packaging still matters, and as mentioned previously, you have mere seconds to have impact. As Robert Glazer talks about in his post on Convince & Convert, good marketing ideas take risks and more than half of any campaign’s sales impact comes from the creative, not data. This is not to say anyone should design in a vacuum. Testing messages before rolling out a campaign is by no means a new idea, and that feedback data helps hone the right message to be delivered to the right customer.

Visual Storytelling

Now that you have key customer data in-step with killer creative, traffic is your next goal. From a B2C perspective you want to drive sales and growth. In the B2B world you want to demonstrate your expertise and be the go-to authority on key trends and issues. This is where data can be cultivated to exemplify your experience and marketing acumen based on success.

At the end of the day you are working to create affinity and top-of-mind awareness with your brand. One of the best ways to achieve this is through show and tell. You show that you have what consumers want and need based on supporting data that is visually appealing, easily consumable and actionable (strawberry Pop-tarts^®are coated with frosting and have multicolored sprinkles). Then engage consumers and encourage them tell you how your product(s) made a difference in their everyday—or in the case of hurricane season, no so everyday—lives.

Need a Partner?

Are you ready to improve your performance on the digital dance floor? Millennium can partner with you to mine your data, gain insight on your customers’ preferences and engagement and develop a creative campaign that connects. Email me at [email protected] or call 877-873-7445.

Google recently announced a major reorganization that promises to achieve a long list of desired outcomes, from increasing accountability and agility, to pursuing new opportunities and expanding market share. Meet Alphabet – created by Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They are calling this new company a “collection of companies,” with Google being the largest.

Google Masters its ABCs

In practical terms, the change means a shake-up in management and trading. Page will now serve as Alphabet CEO and Brin as president, and Google will be led by new CEO Sundar Pichai (former senior vice president of Android, Chrome, and Apps at Google). Shareholders will also be interested to learn that Google is being replaced with Alphabet for trading purposes. While the stock market will still use the GOOG and GOOGL symbols, all Google shares will equally become Alphabet stock.

What does this mean for Google? It will continue to focus on its core business of search and advertising, supported by YouTube, Android, maps, and apps. According to Page, it is also “making all sorts of new products,” and has recently introduced Google Photos and Google Now, “an intelligent personal assistant.”

In addition to Google, Alphabet will serve as holding company for a host of other initiatives that have been part of Google until now. These include:

Calico – a research and development company focused on increasing lifespan;
Fiber – a high-speed internet solution available in certain select cities like Atlanta and San Antonio;
Google Ventures – venture capital funding for “bold new companies”;
Google Capital – a growth equity investment fund;
Google X – a secret lab (seriously!) where Google is innovating advanced technology like auto-driving cars and Google Glass
Life Sciences – formerly part of the Google X lab and developer of smart contact lenses that can monitor glucose levels in diabetics; and
Nest – an innovator in home products like smart thermostats and smoke alarms.

These companies will be led by their own CEOs and leadership teams to provide more autonomy and flexibility.

Branding from Z to A

From a brand architecture perspective, this major corporate restructuring poses a challenge. Google is a highly established, world-renowned brand – but it will now be one of at least eight sub-brands under the umbrella of a parent brand.

While Google’s brand will certainly remain strongly recognized despite its acquisition by Alphabet, its marketing team must dually brand it under Alphabet. This presents a unique and most unusual (although not unheard-of) situation where a sub-brand is the preeminent brand – and the parent brand must be created and established in the marketplace. In addition, the other sub-brands must be launched in concert with the parent brand.

This Alphabet brand hierarchy is akin to reciting the alphabet from Z to A, or going backwards. The proven brand leader in the family (Google) is a sub-brand. It has removed the extra baggage of projects not related to its core functions, which have become fellow sub-brands (see bulleted list above). While this provides focus and a “slim down” (as Page referenced in his announcement), it must be communicated via its own sub-brand, prompting the need for a brand refresh.

On top of this, the Alphabet brand must become one that is both recognized and understood. This is vital to the success of all sub-brands and the parent brand itself. While stocks of Google will convert to Alphabet, the fact that the stock symbols will remain Google-related will be a point of confusion for the Alphabet brand. This presents a hurdle that will be difficult to overcome from a marketing perspective: getting Alphabet to be the go-to, tip-of-the-tongue brand name while its stocks are trading as GOOG and GOOGL.

One thing is for certain: the Alphabet brand evolution will prove interesting to watch. As a certified Google AdWords partner, Millennium Integrated Marketing will be observing the subtle –and not-so-subtle changes – that result from Alphabet’s brand formation.

If you’re looking to launch a new brand or explore the impact rebranding may have for your company, contact Millennium today at (877) 873-7445 or give me shout at [email protected] and connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Some of you Millennials might not remember, but, once upon a time, Old Spice was regarded as your grandfather’s deodorant. It was a dated brand with aging customers and, with body sprays like Axe cornering their target demographic, their appeal was fading fast. In order to regain their hold on the market and change the way people viewed their product, a rebranding was in order. By the end of 2010, Old Spice was cool again and synonymous with one of the best advertising campaigns in years, a perfect example of how to rebrand your business the right way.

A good rebranding can do a lot for a business, and Old Spice is just one of many examples. If your image and message are preventing you from reaching the right customers, it may be time to rebrand your business. Ask yourself these questions:

What Do You Stand For?

The first step when deciding whether it makes sense to rebrand your business is to consider your company goals.

Who are the customers you’re trying to connect with?
What about your brand is preventing you from reaching them?
Is your brand still meaningful?

Put yourself in your audience’s shoes and take a good, hard, objective look at your overall strengths and weaknesses. After all, every brand has something that makes them unique. If you want to stand out, you need to focus on the things that make you different. You need to give customers a reason to care.

Whether it’s your image, your message, your product, or your services, understanding your company’s strengths and values will only make it easier to convey them to customers.

What’s Changed?

As times change, so does the competition, the market, and your customers. If you want to keep your brand from getting left behind and start connecting with new generations of consumers, you need to take stock of your surroundings and change accordingly.

Is your website keeping up with the latest design trends?
Is your logo showing its age?
What kind of messages are people connecting with and are those the stories you’re telling?

The rapidly evolving nature of digital marketing has not only changed the game, but has made it faster than ever. If you’re having trouble keeping up, it could be time to redouble your efforts.

Is a Rebrand Worth It?

Good brands cater to the here and now. Great brands stand the test of time. If it’s the latter you’re after, be ready to invest. To completely rebrand your business takes time, money, and effort, so make sure you consider the risks and rewards before committing your brand to an overhaul.

Is this the answer to all your problems?
Have you considered all your options?
Do you have the necessary resources?

The most important thing is that you continue to ask questions. From there, it’ll be that much clearer to see your brand for what it is and pinpoint the ways in which you can start improving it.

Making the decision to rebrand your business can give you an edge over the competition, stimulate growth, and increase profits by attracting new customers. If your marketing methods aren’t working like they used to and your message isn’t resonating like it once did, it might be time consider a new direction. If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of brand development, feel free to contact us today.

About Millennium Agency

With just hours to go before we ring in the New Year, what better time than the present to take a look back on the campaigns that gave us good reason to quit changing the channel. So, without further ado and in no particular order, here are your Top Five Ads of 2014.

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Brand loyalty is more than creating a product, it’s about creating a relationship with your customers. Think about the products that you continually purchase, what makes you keep coming back to that specific brand? You need to develop a marketing strategy that helps you create an emotional connection and trust with your customers. Consider these five tips to help your business build brand loyalty.

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Creating shareable infographics is an excellent way to provide statistics and data in a simple, easy, and engaging format. If done correctly, infographics hold the potential to go viral and continuously be spread across the internet for increased exposure. This makes for incredible brand awareness and promotion opportunities, as well as the ability to further position your business as knowledgeable in your industry. (more…)