Welcome to our branding and marketing blog
This is the best place to learn how we think as creative and strategic communicators. You’ll find various observations and best practices about branding, design, client relations, and communications, in general. We try to keep things instructive and advisory. However, we can’t guarantee that there won’t be a rant or rave once in a while. So, please cut us some slack.
FEATURED BLOG POST
15 marketing reality checks (Don’t let #9 hurt your feelings.)
by Step2 Branding & Design
Over the years, we’ve been offering helpful tips and best practices advice through our branding blog. Here, we’ve collected a number of the more salient points and are presenting them as a marketing reality check. A good number of these apply to new or small businesses. But you’ll also find that some of the largest corporations in the world take many of the same missteps.
Branding and marketing blog posts
“Where do I begin with my new website?”
In many ways, your website is the face of our business. It’s usually your first and best opportunity to distinguish yourself, connect with your prospects and tell your story. If it’s not engaging, well-designed, easy to navigate and informative, it could undermine your marketing efforts.
Get real.
Don’t claim to be what you’re not. Embrace what you are, what makes you great and why that should be important to your audience.
I’d like to learn more about how you can help me, but …
If any of these scenarios are raising concerns about the effectiveness of your marketing communications, step 1 is up to you.
The one thing we all share and what to do with it.
Even if you’re selling widgets, there’s something more that you offer that distinguishes your business in a positive way. It’s what your customers truly gain from you that they can’t get from anyone else. It’s this frame of mind that defines your business more than anything.
Start-ups need to get branding right out of the gate.
The bankruptcy courts are full of great ideas that were undermined by ineffective branding and promotion. Build it and they will come? No, they won’t. Not unless you make them really want to. Or, better yet, need to.
WHO are you selling to, anyway?
Price, style, features and convenience will always be important factors to closing a sale. However, there’s a lot more to promoting your business than what your goods or services mean to your direct consumers. In fact, your audience is likely much broader than you realize.