This is true not only in popular culture but also when it comes to business, marketing, and branding. 

Symbols offer a powerful and effective way for companies to communicate their brand identity. As we emphasized in our guide on how to start a business,

A strong brand identity is the most effective way your new business can gain a competitive edge in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Symbols are a visual shorthand that businesses can use to imbue their brand identity with a deeper meaning. 

While great business names can create a deep meaning too, symbols can be more powerful. You know the saying … a picture is worth 1,000 words.

The effective use of a symbol in your brand identity, including your business logo, can have a subtle or powerful effect (or both!).

Symbol examples

Not sure which symbol to use for your business? Here are the more common ones (and their meanings).

Rose

Besides love and romance, roses also can represent appreciation, friendship, passion, and much more. The color of the rose is just as important as the flower itself. Roses have experienced a resurgence in popularity; the symbol has emerged at the forefront of many modern designs.

Fire

Fire conjures up thoughts of anger, passion, and destruction. It can also signify rebirth (as in the myth of the Phoenix). Fire can also convey a blaze – of energy, speed, and bright, burning passion. Look no further than the iconic Firefox, the Mozilla logo that communicates a brand dedicated to speed and durability.

Lion

The “King of the Jungle” carries with it authority, strength, royalty, and steadfastness. The power and force that a lion communicates makes it a go-to choice for any business looking to demonstrate a respectable, strong standing in their marketplace.

Wolf

The wolf is often used to show independence, freedom, the wild, strength, and guardianship. Logos that use a wolf in their design demonstrate a ferocity, agility, and clever edge that work especially well for sports-related logos.

Triangle

The triangle is connected to ideas like stability, power, harmony, women’s health, and illumination. A dynamic shape, the triangle conveys focus, balance, and innovation. When shown oriented base-down, stability and strength become clear. However, when shown at an angle, relays an energized, spontaneous feeling instead.

Circle 

Circles can evoke the concepts of wholeness, completion, infinity, cycles, and also represent the self. The cyclical, inclusive feeling a circle lends a business is an effective symbol for many businesses – Google Chrome notably uses it to great effect.

Dragon

Dragons are especially revered in Asian culture and are often used to represent strength, wisdom, good luck, and potency. Dragons are commonly used in businesses looking to convey a nearly mystical power, unearthly wisdom and a fierceness that is intuitively understood by every viewer.

Tree

Trees are a common symbol for life and the outdoors. They can also signify fertility, good health, and calm. It’s a popular design symbol for a reason and can be found in many businesses seeking to emphasize their nature-oriented products and services.

Arrows

Arrows can mean direction, speed, progress. They can also point out that something is important. They reinforce the idea of movement and are great for conveying expedient service – like FedEx’s iconic negative space logo (notice the white arrow between the E and x).

Sun

The sun is a potent symbol of life, power, glory, and energy. The heat and intensity the image of a sun communicate to a viewer creates a lasting impression of warmth, endurance, and limitless power. Businesses with a focus on stamina, eternity, and prosperity are quick to incorporate the sun in their logo designs.

Moon

The moon represents the rhythm of time, peacefulness, femininity eternity, and enlightenment. The moon can be used by a company seeking to demonstrate an ongoing relationship with their customers. 

Flag

Flags can have many different meanings depending on the context and what color they are. White flags can mean surrender or peace, red can mean warning, attention, or caution, and blue often symbolizes freedom. Using a flag in a design can, therefore, represent a number of meanings – be careful that your color choice doesn’t send a potentially conflicting message about your brand.

Owl

Owls are synonymous with wisdom, insight, the night, grace, mystery, and learning. Education and literacy institutions are quick to adopt the owl into their organizations. 

Water

Water can represent life, cleaning, creation, and purity. The cleanliness and health water conveys is powerful, and can be used in a variety of forms: water droplets, waves, and rain showers are commonly used in businesses seeking to demonstrate environmental, calming, or cleansing brand values. 

Clouds

Clouds are commonly used by climate/weather businesses, but recently, have also become a major symbol of online storage. Any business that uses cloud imagery should consider their specific marketplace. Using a less literal representation is effective with technologically oriented businesses. 

Heart

Hearts are a straightforward way to demonstrate love, romance, and enthusiasm – the retail industry, in particular, uses hearts to great effect (especially on Valentines Day). Other businesses focused on health, vitality, and emotional welfare also use the symbol to great effect. 

Tips on using symbols in your brand identity

There are some important considerations if you want to incorporate symbols into your brand identity. Here are some things to keep in mind.

1. Tell a story. Do your research to ensure whatever symbols you choose are clear and concise, and add to your brand’s story.

2. Think internationally. Symbols can mean different things in different cultures and countries. For example, the bald eagle may be a symbol of the United States of America to most, but to Native Americans, it is a symbol of nature and a messenger from the Creator.

3. Avoid conflict. Symbols can be combined in very powerful ways, but be careful. You want your brand to have a unified message, and whatever symbols you choose should help and not hinder this.

4. Be intentional. Choose a symbol that forms a strong connection to your brand’s values, mission, and personality. If you aren’t careful, you risk sending confusing, mixed, or even negative messages to your customers.

If you’re looking for ways to connect your brand message on a deeper level with your consumers, symbols may be just what you’ve been looking for.

The post How Symbols Can Strengthen Your Company’s Brand Identity appeared first on SiteProNews.

Businesses that survive and thrive have an unfair advantage. They’re started and run by people who are prepared for what’s ahead of them.

If you want an unfair advantage, we’re here to share 5 of the 12 steps you’ll need to know to get started. And if you like what you read here, be sure to read the complete 12 step guide on how to start a business. 

Develop and refine your idea

Think about how you can integrate your natural skillset into your business so that you can stand apart from your competition. Ask yourself:

• What skills set me apart?
• What is the purpose of my business?
• Who am I providing a service or product to?
• What is the maximum figure I can safely spend on this business?
• Do I need outside capital? How much?
• What kind of work/life balance am I looking to achieve?
• What are my expectations of being an entrepreneur?

You’ll also want to consider what specific niche is right for your business. Here are some niches to consider:

• Restaurants – Narrow your focus with specific patrons in mind.
• Clothing brand – If you’re interested in the apparel industry, here’s a terrific guide on how to start a clothing brand.
• Real Estate – Are you a brokerage catering to retirees? Are you selling vacation homes? Are you an expert in short sales? 
• Retail – Are you selling novelty toys? Rare automobiles? All natural candles? Vintage candy? 
• Legal – With so many areas of law to practice, it’s helpful to position yourself as an expert in a specific field. 
• Landscaping – Are you more of a mow and go company, or are you catering toward elaborate garden design? Maybe you work extensively with patio building. Pick an area and play it up.
• Consulting – Do you have a ton of expertise in an area and want to help others? Here’s a terrific guide on how to start a successful consulting business.

Whatever niche you choose, make sure you’re passionate about it. 

Write a business plan

A business plan can help you to crystallize your ideas. It outlines the financial and operational goals of your business and provides a specific strategy that shows how your company will reach those goals.

Your business plan doesn’t need to be 100 pages long. Keep it short and concise and focus on the key details.

Studies show that entrepreneurs who take the time to write a business plan are 2.5 times more likely to follow through and get their business off the ground. 

Don’t get obsessed about getting every detail right in your business plan. Barry Moltz, a small business expert, speaker, and author, tells us that:

The business never turns out exactly as it seems when you get started. There are always unexpected hurdles. The biggest ones are typically a sales pipeline, people, cash and productivity.

For more information about how to create a business plan, the Small Business Administration has you covered. 

Decide your legal business structure

Here are some of the typical business structures you should consider:

• Sole proprietorship – this is the most basic business entity. A sole proprietorship means that one person is solely responsible for a business’ profits and debts.
• Partnership – A partnership is a shared responsibility between two or more people who both hold personal liability for a business.
• Limited Liability Company (LLC) – a structure that permits owners, partners or shareholders to limit personal liability, but still includes tax and flexibility benefits associated with a partnership.
• Corporation – this is an entity legally considered separate from its owners. That means that corporations are permitted to own property, can be held liable, must pay taxes, and may enter contracts.

Be sure to look at which entity will work best for your current needs while still considering any future business goals. The SBA is a great resource if you need more information.

Once you decide on your legal business structure, be sure to register with the government (typically your state and sometimes, your municipality) and the IRS:

• You can find a full list of the forms for each type of entity on the SBA website. You can also find state-specific tax obligations on the same site.
• Remember to contact your municipality to see if there are any local licensing or registration requirements.
• You may also need to get an employer identification number (EIN) from the IRS. If you’re a sole owner and don’t have employees, this is not required. But you might want to get an EIN anyway to keep your personal and business taxes separate and to be sure that you can quickly hire when the time comes to expand your business. The IRS has a useful checklist to help you decide whether you will need an EIN to run your business. If you do need an EIN, you can register online for free.

Create a strong brand identity

A strong brand identity is the most effective way your new business can gain a competitive edge in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Ask yourself these important questions:

• What identity/personality do I want my business brand to project?
• Who will want or need my products or services?
• What can customers get from my products or services that they can’t get anywhere else?
• What can customers get from working with me that they can’t get anywhere else?
• What are my brand values?
• What is the most important part of my customers’ experience?

Your answers to these questions (and others like them) will build the core of your brand. All of your future branding decisions should expand on these ideas. Your company name, your company logo, and your website design should all grow from the concepts you laid out here.

Build your team

For your business to scale and grow, you’ll need help.

Start by hiring for positions that provide the most immediate benefit to your business.

You may want your first hire to be a part-time assistant. Look for someone who is a jack-of-all-trades, eager to learn new skills, with a strong work ethic. 

If you’re new to marketing, a marketer can help you strategize your business.

If you’re not confident with the manufacturing process, hire a manufacturing liaison. 

If you’re finding it a challenge to keep up with orders, a fulfillment manager might be just what you need.

If you need help with employment or contractor agreements or agreements with your vendors, take a look at Quickly Legal, which offers entrepreneurs, small businesses and startups an easy and inexpensive way to create, sign and manage legal contracts and agreements, with many agreements that you can start using right away.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to think about when you’re starting your own small business. These steps will give you an unfair advantage and will help get you started on the road to owning a successful business of your own.

The post How to Start a Successful Business appeared first on SiteProNews.

That’s exactly what happened with Uber when it rebranded for the second time in three years.

The Uber brand became associated with negative attention rather than a positive brand experience, and its existing branding was undermining Uber’s marketing efforts.

Let’s take a look at why Uber rebranded, the lessons you can learn from their rebrand, and how smart businesses can do the same to protect their brand’s health and success.

The basics of branding for businesses

A great brand starts with a good, memorable company name and professionally designed logo.

A company’s name and logo should spark immediate recognition whenever and wherever they appear.

But there’s more to creating a great brand experience than a flashy new logo as explained here:

A brand is the sum total of the experience your prospects and customers have with your company. A strong brand communicates what your company does, how it does it, and at the same time, establishes trust and credibility with your prospects and customers. Your company’s brand is, in many ways, its personality. Your brand lives in everyday interactions your company has with its prospects and customers, including the images you share, the messages you post on your website, the content of your marketing materials, your presentations and booths at conferences, and your posts on social networks.

Successful businesses know that checking on brand health is critical if they want to stay profitable.

Ride-sharing juggernaut Uber is all too familiar with checking on brand health. They updated their logo and branding just two years ago.

Why did Uber rebrand once again in 2018?

Uber’s lackluster brand experience

Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick built a hugely successful business, but an increasingly toxic culture had become a poison and tarnished the brand.

The old Uber logo emphasized the public’s perception of this hostility, imposing itself on customers with an all-caps, hyper-masculine aesthetic.

Fast Company’s Mark Wilson described the harsh impression the old logo left on customers:

The word UBER was a visual manspread, evoking the members-only corporate club from Uber’s roots as an on-demand black car service for Silicon Valley’s elite.

The need to rebrand was clear: without a complete brand overhaul, Uber risked totaling its business.

Uber’s brand strategy for a redesign

Uber understood it faced a critical mission: it had to persuade customers that its lousy reputation left the building when its former CEO was replaced.

Uber opted for a complete redesign to overhaul the brand from the ground up.

New CEO Dara Khosrowshahi introduced himself to customers with a reassurance that he would bring the company a fresh start:

I’m so excited to write Uber’s next chapter with you. It starts with new leaders, a better company culture, and improvements to our app…

To reinforce their newfound dedication to a better customer experience, Uber’s brand strategy started with its most important visual element: their logo.

Uber’s new logo is the foundation of a substantial rebranding effort – one that incorporates a sense of mobility, accessibility, and friendliness not found in previous iterations. And in keeping with logo design trends, Uber’s promotional materials showcased how Uber was using its new logo in the real world.

Creating an effective brand strategy for your business means you must consider how your brand connects you with your customers:

A brand is a living document of not only what your company represents it also acts as a vital connection between your customers and your business.

Uber’s new logo seeks to do just that.

Uber’s goals for its new branding

Uber’s goal with this project was to create a cohesive brand system described as “instantly recognizable, works around the world, and is efficient to execute.”

Uber wanted to create a full brand experience, and they considered a broad spectrum of elements to craft it.

Uber’s redesign includes a custom typeface, photography, illustration, and composition system for layout of advertising and promotional materials.

Design studio Wolff-Olins collaborated with Uber’s internal design team to create a brand that would easily adapt to the 660+ cities worldwide where Uber operates.

Wolff-Olins summed up the project goals on their case study site:

The brand needed to work around the world. Its highest growth areas are in regions outside of the US, such as Latin America and India, where Wolff Olins has a considerable depth of experience. Instead of pursuing a complex identity system, localized through color and pattern, we moved towards a universal ‘beyond-simple’ global brand. Teams in diverse markets can make it relevant to their audiences with culturally specific content.

Uber had two key goals when they created their new brand: simplicity and global usage.

The result is a clean, fresh look that translates well in any medium or locale.

The clean visual break from Uber’s previous brand identity broke ties with their former CEO and toxic culture, pushing the company forward into a new era.

The reaction to Uber’s rebrand has been generally positive. Respected design sites like UnderConsideration note the brand’s success at distancing itself from what came before:

This new design is the most clear-cut example in recent memory of a company introducing a new logo to signal change and move away from very recent, very scandalous press. Most redesigns we have seen in recent years are part of positive momentum and while Uber surely has some of that going in its favor, this logo’s primary job is try to get as many people as possible to put as much of Uber’s past in the past.

Tips to effectively rebrand your business

Uber’s rebrand is a powerful example of how design can influence consumer opinion.

It’s important to equip your business with equally powerful strategies when it’s time for your own rebrand.

We’ve written in detail about effective rebranding strategies. Here are a few key branding tips that you should consider:

1. Make sure your new branding is used consistently anywhere your customers engage with your business.
2. Take advantage of every branding opportunity. Incorporate your new logo or a related brand message everywhere you can.
3. Use a style guide. Give your employees easy-to-use tools and resources to make it easy to follow your new branding guidelines to the letter.
4. Listen to your customers. Use valuable customer feedback to keep your brand relevant and reflective of their wants and needs.
5. Introduce your rebranding efforts thoughtfully and methodically. Make sure you keep your customers engaged and informed while you roll out your new brand experience.

Your business may not have to distance itself from the negative legacy Uber faced.

But if you feel that your brand isn’t keeping up with the times or you’re not able to grow your business as fast as you want, consider a rebrand.

A smart and carefully considered design strategy will drive your rebrand straight to success.

The post Uber’s Powerful Rebrand and What Your Business Can Learn from It appeared first on SiteProNews.

According to a study examining the effect of color on sales, 92.6% of people surveyed by the CCI: Institute for Color Research said that color was the most important factor when purchasing products.

How you use color in your business can affect the success or failure of your business.

Let’s take a closer look.

Color: Truly in the Eye of the Beholder

We can thank Newton for discovering that color is the sensation of light bouncing off something and entering our eyes. Newton found that light is made up of many different wavelengths, each one perceived as a different color.

For example, the color red isn’t actually in the strawberry itself. The surface of the strawberry absorbs all of the light except for the wavelengths we perceive as red. These bounce off of the fruit and into our eyes.

We have millions of light-sensitive cells, or receptors, at the back of our eyes.

The brain takes those signals and interprets them as color: in this case, red.

Because the brain is interpreting the color, that means that color is, by nature, a sensation.

Sensations are personal.

It’s this fact that makes our choice and use of color so critical to the success of our businesses.

The Qualities of Color

While our perception of colors and what they mean is subjective, there are some basic qualities that we can apply generally.

• Red. Often considered exciting, attention-grabbing, warm, and connected to love, anger, life, and comfort.
• Yellow. Seen as adventurous, evoking happiness, enthusiasm, youth, and travel.
• Green. Of course, this color is connected to money, but it’s also known for its connection to balance, health, sustainability, and knowledge.
• Blue. The color of honesty, high quality, competence, trust, reliability, and integrity.
• Pink. This color evokes love, compassion, romance, gentleness, and sophistication.
• Purple. Creativity, royalty, mystery, respect, and playfulness are often connected to purple (and violet).
• Brown. Brown is the color of the outdoors and can be seen as friendly, organic, natural, friendly, and rugged.
• Black. This color is all about sophistication, intelligence, seriousness, and expense.
• White. The antithesis of black is known for its order, innocence, purity, cleanliness, neutrality, and space.
• Grey. When you need to communicate timelessness, neutrality, refinement, of the moment, or practicality, you might want to use grey.

Picking The Right Colors

A powerful brand starts with a professionally designed logo. Color plays an important role in logo design, as we discussed recently in our look at current logo trends.

Research shows that anticipating your consumer’s reaction to a color and its relationship to your brand is more important than the actual color itself.

Customers want to see that a color “fits.”

For example, the color pink probably doesn’t fit with a brand like Ford or Harley Davidson, and black would be perceived as wrong for Fisher-Price or an organic health food store.

It’s not that the company name Fisher-Price by itself evokes a specific reaction from its customers. But the overall composition of the brand, including its logo, marketing, products, etc. evokes a reaction that responds differently to different brand colors.

The key takeaway here is that it’s less important what color you choose, and more that you choose colors that highlight or accentuate the personality you want your brand and product to reflect.

For example, research on the use of color in retail fashion stores shows that customers are more likely to return and make purchases in a store that uses a blue color scheme versus orange.

Researchers found that viewing the color pink actually causes people’s endocrine system (also known as the body’s chemical messaging system) to slow down, and our muscles to relax.

So if you’ve ever wondered why so many products connected to soothing problems (such as pain-killers, stomach aids, and female hygiene products) include pink in their packaging, now you know: the color itself makes us think of relaxation and relief.

Another study found that patients given placebo pills in warmer colors like pink reported them to be more effective than pills with cooler colors.

Case Studies

Here are several real-world case studies that illustrate how changes in color impact customer behavior.

Case Study 1: Performable red vs. green study

As we said in our look at how 21 companies use color:

Interested in using the power of red to improve conversions, marketing automation company Performable A/B tested the difference in performance of a red call-to-action button versus a green one. The red button showed a 21% increase in conversion.

These results are impressive, but they don’t mean you should run out and change all of your buttons to red. Conduct your own tests to see what works for your business and your specific audience.

Case Study 2: Apple

Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy when Steve Jobs came back and turned it into a business school case study success.

As Jeff Goldblum so eccentrically pointed out in commercials for Apple’s brand new “Bondi Blue”-colored computer, the iMac, color was a huge reason for this.

Referring to the existing IBM PC beige box status quo, Goldblum summed up Apple’s attitude: “It’s beige, it’s boring, it’s bland.”

You can see this trend continue in the products Apple created after the iMac (iPhone, iPad, the Apple watch, and more), and how Apple has used color in those products.

You don’t need Apple’s vast resources to take advantage of existing color research and development, and all businesses can take a page out of their color strategy.

Be more intentional with how you choose colors for your business.

Don’t be boring.

The post Small Business Branding: What Color Says About Your Business appeared first on SiteProNews.