Category — Marketing

You probably spent a long time marketing and branding to make your logo a face of your company. People now instantly recognize your logo whenever they see it on your marketing collateral. Therefore, you never want to change or redesign it. However what you may not be considering is the fact that with changing time, logo design preferences change too.

Think why big organizations update their logos over time.  The reason is that they know the importance of portraying the more contemporary feel. This however does not mean that you change your logo altogether.

In this writing we are going to discuss the reasons why improving small bits of elements in your logo are necessary to maintain your legacy and brand image.

Does your logo really needs a change?

If you think you should change your logo, ask yourself few questions first, if your answers is no to all or most of the questions below, than the effective logo redesign is the answer.

1. Take a close look at your logo not being as an owner rather being as a customer. What do you feel? Does the design appeal to you?

2. Can the color, font, style and other elements are recognized easily?

3. Is your logo look fresh and modern with contemporary logo design trends?

4. Is your logo successful in portraying a business image to your target audience?

5. Is your logo compatible with all the advertising and marketing mediums?

6. Is you logo unique and doesn’t match with your competitor’s logo?

Reasons for a facelift

It is sometime become crucial to improve the look of your logo. There are several reasons which can justify the above mentioned comments:

1. Updating your logo look more eye-catching to viewers. The graphics, images, colors, fonts used in the logo must all reveal the aesthetic element of the design. If the logo you have does not meet the above standard, a logo redesign is highly recommended to earn benefit out of the logo.

2. Colors, fonts, and all the other elements should be located in your logo in such a way that they are easily visible to the viewers. If the fonts are hard to read, or logo is over-crowded with too many colors, it tends to irritate the customer and he won’t be able to recognize your logo when he sees it next time. Whereas, simple and easy to recognized logo will provide the viewer to memorize it at a glance. If your current logo has necessary message buried and irritates the viewer in finding the purpose of your business, then a logo redesign is a turnkey solution to draw attention of the viewers.

3. The style of your logo is another very important factor. There may be many things you wish to put in your logo, but at the same time you must keep in mind that the style should be similar to the characteristic like the type of your business or the kind of your target audience. If the logo you own does not suitably portray your business purpose to the old customers, logo redesign is necessary in order to carry targeted message accurately and efficiently.

4. The logo design trends are constantly changing. New trends like Web 2.0, Waves, and Organic 3D are in the market that make logos look fresher and eye-catching and portray the company’s image as an innovative and modern. Thus, if your logo is not according to the current logo design trends, and doesn’t look fresh and modern, you will not be able to battle with competition. When such things happen, giving your logo a face lift can prove to be enormously successful.

5. Determine how you are going to use your logo on different marketing and advertising mediums like billboards, brochures, letterheads, pens, buttons etc., therefore, logo is meant to be versatile, and its design should bestowed to any use imaginable. But, if your logo is not compatible with all the available mediums, it’s better to consider redesign.

Keep in mind

You company’s logo is a vital element to its potential success. Hence, getting a logo redesign with slight changes, not only looks appealing to the customers, but also helps in increasing the profits.

This is guest post from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in UK.

Darren Rowse, from Problogger, did an informative interview with Entrecard founder, Graham Langdon back in January, and while I appreciate Langdon’s ideas to make Entrecard a place where bloggers are offered a myriad of ways to promote, monetize, and advertise their blogs, I can’t help but think some of the “advertising” services being offered in the Entrecard Shop are taking on the form of black hat marketing strategies. Here are some examples from the page:

“I will stumble your site for only 50 EC’s. 50EC’s will buy you a stumble on one page of your website.”

“Do you need to increase your comments, raise your RSS count and raise
your campaign value all in one shot? Buy two and I’ll sign up to your
RSS via both email and reader and leave three quality comments.”

“I will subscribe to your blog through e-mail for 10 credits. Increase
your subscribers now! Just buy item and specify your URL…I will also
drop my card!”

“Have your post dugg or stumbled by me. Do you want your blog favored on Technorati?”

“Tell me which one of these you would like and send me the link to the post in question.
You are paying for only one type of action - tell me which one (Technorati/Digg/Stumbleupon) in a mail here after purchase.”

Interestingly enough, back when Langdon did his interview with Darren, the advertising page looked like this:

These ads, to me, look more like legitimate advertising opportunities as opposed to fake votes and paid subscriptions. (Am I the only one that wants “real” subscribers, real votes and real comments on my blog?) Kind of reminds me of the “Subvert and Profit” issue that came up last year regarding Gaming Digg and how this is in total violation of their terms and conditions.

I have to agree with what Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal says about social media projects and pieces:

“Smart organic newsworthy content should be shared with our peers among
social media and social news channels, and pinging a handful of friends
and colleagues to give such material a bit of a headstart is acceptable.”

So what, then, will happen to the pay-per-community, when gaming the system becomes quite obvious? Loren sums it up this way…….

“In time, the pay per ‘action’ campaigns will find themselves in the
same dusty and questionable shelves as snake oiled spam, unfortunately
casting a negative shadow against the practice, which parallels the
early days of questionable SEO; something the industry has yet to shake
from its credible reputation.”

What do you think? Are selling votes for social media a dishonest way to market a campaign? What do you see the risks as when selling subscriptions and Diggs for traffic? And most importantly, is honesty always the best policy when it comes to social media? Penny for your thoughts.