We all have some idea of what a brand is. A Ford, a Chevy, Apple, or Amazon.
Two questions often asked by e-commerce business newbies are:-
- How do you brand your business?
- What does branding in marketing mean?
So, what is marketing branding? Lets take a look and see why it should be part of your online business.
Brand Marketing Strategy
Care should be taken not to focus too much on the brand itself as the business. Your focus should be the business, and let the personal brand develop via social media, videos, courses, books etc.
Your business should lead back to your brand. For instance if you wanted to buy a book then your first stop would probably be Amazon. people tend to forget that it was once just a book seller.
Amazon back in the early days was known as Cadabra inc.
My favorite branding example is Ford. The reason for this is I feel it is “humanized“. “I like driving my Henry”
Colors play an important part in a brand marketing strategy as well.
Other well known brands have their branding set to being creative, or to think differently, Apple for example. Pinterest is another into doing things creatively.
Nike, you could say is for motivation. Jeep gives images of freedom.
And me, the Barefoot Affiliate? Well I write about work from home resources. I analyize the various programs doing the rounds, and look at how they may help (or not help), you.
I am affiliated with some (the better ones), and not affiliated with others.
What is Branding
I will just look at two or three here. Branding usually includes a logo as the definitive part of the brand. But it doesn’t have to be.
Colors, shapes, and typography all play a part. These days large corporations will conduct surveys and have a team of phycologists study the results to find what might work for them.
Often though simple with easy to read typography is best.
Ford for example. A white signature with a blue oval shaped background and a white border.
I am not sure if you could imagine this in any other form, different colors, or different style of signature.
A red background? I think the blue oval is so entrenched that no changes to that logo would work.
Amazon as we will see had many, before settling on the present logo.
Typography in Branding
The Ford logo seems quite simple, a signature surrounded by blue. As you delve into logo development you will see that it includes many physiological techniques.
So, how much thought should you put into designing your logo?
A good place to start is with typography. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
But you should be aware of typography’s power as a differentiation.
You can see many of the font variations here.
In the online world typography and marketing branding are just as important, as branding is for the New York times or Ford or any other big name brand established long before the web was even born.
Constantly throughout the history of print, people have developed different text styles for different purposes.
A logo is styled on its own, a headline has different font to content, content needs to be easy to read, font size, font style and color all need to work together.
All of these are considerations when designing a font.
In the New York Times pic. below, can you notice the small calligraphy twist they have added to their logo? …..Check out the “T” in the fonts Here.
In the Online world new fonts were designed and are still being designed. It may seem silly, but the reason for it is computers have different resolutions, desktops, laptops and phones all view content differently.
When I first started online I was advised to use a light blue 14px, Verdana font. It is part of the Sans type of fonts, these days it is no longer in common use, but the sans font is still the most utilized font in print and online.
Brand Marketing Examples
The current amazon logo (below), was designed in 2000- 2001. This is the 5th logo since 1994. The first depicting a large “A” with a river running through it was not versatile enough.
At every stage of this logo’s development the concept has always been to keep it simple. The Lower case Serif font on the amazon.com has under gone 3 more changes since being introduced in 1998
Symbols are the hardest element to make relevant for logos. Using just the name “amazon“, Jeff Bezos the CEO of amazon had something versatile which could be developed as the brand evolved.
Amazon began life as a book store, before becoming the worlds largest online store. I don’t always recommend doing business there, but that is another story.
As amazon expanded it changed its logo to suggest it had everything under the sun. Still using a sans font, this was the first time two colors were utilized in the logo.
The next logo utilized two different fonts and color. Officina Sans Bold for “Amazon” and Officina Sans Book for “.com.”
These are fonts available to the public and, if not already available in your writing or designing program, can be downloaded online.
Bezos has a reputation as a micro manager ( which is his prerogative), and rather than do market research and hire consultants to design a logo, then get approvals.
He sits in on the meetings and helps brainstorm the concepts.
Saving money and getting the design done quickly in the process. There is some knowledge of psychology in this though, as orange is one of the feel good colors.
The current Amazon logo retains the Officina bold sans text, but they have dropped the “. com” and the orange line is now inverted pointing from “A to Z”
So it has gone from everything under the sun to everything from “A to Z” !.
The Psychology Behind Branding.
Online business’s need branding just as much as brick and mortar business’s. The Amazon example above is one example, but there are millions of others.
Shopify, one of the giants of E-Commerce has a largely green website. It’s logo has a symbol and three colors.
A different set of colors to Amazon. A different product also. Essentially the 6 main palettes are black, green, red, blue, yellow and white
Aliexpress, another online E-Commerce giant that uses a sans serif font utilizing two palettes (orange and red).
One business to consumer shop that has worked psychology into it’s on line design is Tiffany &Co the jewelry store.
It has a green border, most of the models shown have blue in the background. Almost every product has shade of blue.
This is found on other sales sites as well, but from what I have seen it is the bigger companies that do this.
If you are setting up a website for business or even informal use then looking into good typography and engaging color palettes all helps improve the online experience for your readers or customers.
Importance of Branding in Marketing
Every business or property needs to feed back into a personal brand. We can see it above Cars – Ford. Books- Amazon.
This is the branding concept.
Your business may change but your brand won’t. You need to think of branding as a personal asset, as you invest in your business, it should feed into your personal brand.
If you can align yourself and your passions with your business, all will be good in your business world.
In the online business or making money online. Some of my favorites who have achieved this are Neil Patel. If I wanted to know about SEO then signing up to his mailing list would make sense.
There are other helpful sites online.
Wealthy Affiliate for example teaches all about affiliate marketing, plus there are other programs I have written about on this site, including MLM.
Thanks for reading I hope this has been of some help.
As always, feel free to leave any comments below, and sign up for my newsletter.
Michael.
