What you can do is focus your brand so that you have a better opportunity to deliver a brand experience that customers will love and potential customers will be intrigued by.

Let’s take a look at some…

Branding 101 Basics:

WHO ARE YOU?

Take a close look at your company and why it exists in your market. What is your story? Sometimes the product or service that we are selling has a positive benefit within our local communities. If this sounds like you, then part of your brand experience is how you benefit the community. You are now selling something with a by-product involving a social benefit. A recycler would fit into this model nicely. This would make an outstanding brand story.

YOUR BRAND NAME…

In my daily reading of my favorite blogs from around the planet, one I especially enjoy is David Airey from Scotland. The discussion there centered on company naming and the use of mongrams. If you’d like to use initials as your name be sure that, that is how you answer your telephone and it is how you are known. Many times I seen companies use a monogram as their logo but answer the phone as a full or partial name. This is absolutely confusing to your customers. Personally I frown on monograms because they say nothing about what your company does. It doesn’t inspire. Over time after a brand has matured can monograms take on a meaningful life of their own. Examples could be IBM, A&P and BMW. None of these companies started out this way.

As a fall back, you could adopt a monogram as an icon that works with the main name. I did this with a firm named Commerceworx and it’s monogram CWX.

YOUR BRAND IMAGE

What can you do to strengthen your brand image?

One excellent way is to choose a color icon. ING Direct does it with orange. UPS with brown. Use a color palette that uniquely identifies your company within it’s market environment. Take a look at all the competition and choose a color that all the rest are not using and then incorporate that color in everything that you do. Another thing to remember is to make sure that all your marketing materials portray a professional brand image. Every item should be consistent. There is nothing more important than this when you want your audience to take you seriously as a professional. An inconsistent brand image not only confuses the viewer but does nothing to help build your brand story. You want to build a culture of familiarity. Over time the viewer builds a comfort level and trust with your brand image.

YOUR BRAND LOGO

As with your brand image your brand logo identifies who you are. If it has been professionally developed it will be consistent with your color icons and total brand image. Your brand logo should position your company from an emotional vantage point. In the hands of a professional, your logo can make your company look bigger if you wish. It can position you as a progressive or a traditional company. How old a company do you want to appear? Your brand logo communicates on an emotional level. Your brand logo is the introduction to your over all brand experience. Be sure it tells the story you want told. Amateurs design logos as art. Brand professionals design communications solutions – there is a huge and costly difference. The cost is price of communicating an effective brand message.

YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

Your personal brand is every bit as important to your overall corporate brand in that it too must be consistent with what you brand stands for. If you have taken the time to discover and analyze your corporate brand, the brand values you possess should be a part of your personal brand as well. In your day-to-day operation of your company, how you are perceived also impacts your overall brand experience for your customers. Whether they trust you, enjoy your company or look to you for advice speaks to how successfully you’ve grown your brand. Since you are your brand, it benefits you stay on top of every touch point of brand.

These are just some of the Brand Basics you should adopt to increase sales with a successful brand.

Now that we are entering into a recession, potentially the worst economic crisis since the great depression (!!), web designers are probably wondering if their jobs are safe?

… This all comes down to whether or not companies will be spending money on web design? The answer:

- Short term: they will spend less.

- Medium term: they will spend more.

My reasoning is based on my 18 years experience as a business owner and on my observations of the current market.

The Short Term

People are nervous now. They hear all the negative news and so they pullback on spending and wait to see what will happen. The REALLY nervous people out there load up on gold, guns and dried fruit … while most of us just rent a movie at Blockbuster and cut back on trips to Vegas.

So what does this have to do with Web Design? Well, for the first several months of the recession, you will see a slowing down in the web design game. Companies are nervous too.

So what can a freelance web designer do?

Go cheap!

Instead of offering from-scratch $2000-$3000 web design jobs, offer more affordable $1000 packages.

You can easily provide this by using a blog as your base (Wordpress for example) and then leverage a pre-made theme that you would modify. With this type of package, you can offer clients the functionality found in a blog/CMS along with a great layout/theme for a fraction of the cost. You can do this because it will take you a lot less time to put out the web site to begin with.

Go for quantity and not quality!!

Now is the time to go for volume, rather than trying to be a snooty web designer. With many smaller clients calling on you to update their modest websites over time, you will find that this approach is not only profitable but also liberating: It is always better to have 20 small clients than 5 big clients!!

The Medium Term

I think that once the initial shock of the recession wears off, companies will start to look at inexpensive ways to get new clients and to cut cost. The Web is perfect for this and so the money will flow that way.

I think that for branding sites, web designers will need to be able to provide some Web Marketing skills so that the business will be able to more effectively leverage their web sites to help build business. Understanding how Google Adwords can be used with a well built website, is something worth looking into.

If instead, the company is using their website to cut cost (for example: to provide support for their clients) you will need to have a better handle on dynamic Web technology like PHP and AJAX.

Conclusion

The current recession does not spell disaster for the web design profession. What it does mean though, is that you will have to adapt to the current reality. And for those who do, this can be a very profitable time!

Remember what biologist say: ‘The most adaptable species are the most successful.’

A microsite is a mini website that can be used for local businesses or larger businesses that wish to target specific keywords on search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing.

Local Business Websites

Although EVERY business needs an online presence some businesses really don’t need a multi-page website to achieve their online marketing objectives.

For example; a local plumber who provides regular plumbing services and installations within a 20 km radius can easily achieve a very prominent position on Google with a properly constructed 2 page website at a total cost of just under $800.

This type of website targets internet users searching specific goods or services in a specific area. It is NOT intended for say a business which sells sporting goods online to anywhere in the country. However it is perfect for a local sports shop which relies on customers within a 5 suburb radius. As well as prominently displaying on say Google, the shop owner can also use a microsite to advertise weekly or monthly specials online and thus attract customers from further afield.

What other costs are involved? Well there are 2 other costs you must consider. Firstly there is website hosting which starts at $15 per month. You will also have to renew your website url registration which is approx. $35 per year (depending on the address). So, for the GRAND total of $800 upfront and $200ish per year you OWN the website, you can add different products at will, you allow your customers to browse online and, most importantly, you have now established an online presence for your business which is available 24/7 to your customers. (Total cost over 4 years around $1,600 or less than $7.70 per week, Tax Deductable!).

Microsites are ideal for local businesses including; hairdressers, restaurants, plumbers, electricians, handymen, doctors, beauty salons and a range of other businesses.

Microsites are also a great way to target individual keywords and search terms on Google, Yahoo & Bing

Say for instance your business already has a website and that website already comes up on search engines for many of the products or services that you sell.

Chances are that there are some terms which it is not indexing (displaying) for and consequently you are either not selling as much of that product or service as you would like to. Perhaps you have had to buy an adwords (pay per click) campaign to maintain an online presence for a term(s) which your website is not being found for.

A Microsite can be designed to index for these terms and thus save you the cost of an adwords campaign.

Inno-Tech are involved in many online communities exploring and developing these search effective strategies.

Inno-Tech Web Services can provide you with a search engine friendly, easy to use and update website from as little as $1,100.

We will also arrange hosting of your website as well as a domain name (your URL or web address) and email accounts.

Other inclusions / options:

• Graphics
• Copywriting
• Logos
• Optimisation
• Shopping Cart

There are an infinite number of combinations for websites so as an added service Inno-Tech Web Services will configure and quote you on a website which will serve all your requirements, look good AND be able to be found on Google, with ease!

• Word Press Themes
• Automatic digital delivery
• Web sites built to order or DIY using our proven systems
• Web Hosting and Domain name registration

With our global partnerships and top-tier data centers around the world, we can now provide our customers with servers when and where they are needed the most.

• Email marketing
• and much, much more…

Automated delivery – INNO-TECH’s latest project is almost ready to launch

After many years we have finally got around to building our new webite.. stay tuned!