Ready to get motivated and become financially independent in these crazy times? Check out Adrian’s 5-part series on how to start an online business.
Continue readingHow To Start A New Online Business!!!
Why College Graphic Designers Suck!!!
Is a college education really important to graphic design? Maybe not so much. Here’s Adrian’s insight on why some college-educated graphic designers suck.
Continue readingInsights of Branding: It’s Your Reputation
Of course you want your business to be the first choice of consumers, what successful business doesn’t? Building and managing your brand will play a significant role in making that happen. Your branding goes far beyond your company logo or your company’s core values. The brand you create and maintain is your reputation and it reflects your company’s customer experience or lack thereof.
The customers and employees of your company can and often do have emotional attachments to certain brands, Apple and Samsung are great examples of that. This allows for strong loyalties and sometimes even a sense of ownership (think of professional sports and their branding). This can also be a double edged sword sometimes, it can help maintain employee motivation and increase sales, but changes without consulting these stakeholders as you grow your business can also ruin their image of your company and its products or services. Your brand is what you really sell your customers, not just products or services. The stronger your brand, the more likely you are to stand out to the consumer, especially in competitive markets.
Effective branding is promoting your strengths and what your company believes in. Think about what you are good at, what does your company do that is better or offer over the next company in your market. You must always be able to deliver on your promises using the strengths of your company; this is often referred to as your brand values. Consumers want what they want and it’s up to your company to match those requirements. You need to know what drives your customers and what makes them buy. In most cases it has little to do with price or performance. Get to know your customers, ask them why they like doing business with your company. Reach out to potential new customers and find out what it is they are looking for in a company, product or service.
Make sure your employees understand and know your company’s core values by creating standard operating procedures (SOP’s) that outline these values, also include benchmarks on how you wish to operate and seen to operate, also lay out what you want to achieve as a company. In order to build and maintain your brand, you must focus on the consumer, what do they want and how do you guarantee you deliver it. You must be consistent day in and day out in your customer service and every point of contact with them, be it emails, phone calls, letters etc.
Things to consider when building your brand are:
- Your company name
- Slogans you may use
- Your logo
- Location of your company
- Your website
- How you and your employees dress and behave
- Pricing and packaging of your products
- Name of your services or products
- Quality and style of your stationary
If you keep all these things in line with your company’s core values consistently your brand will grow and be strengthened. If you fail to do this it can seriously damage your company’s brand reputation.
Your brand should be incorporated in all areas of your company from your stationary to how you deliver your product and/or services. Set a budget for building and maintaining your brand. A budget will force you to focus and prioritize your spending on what in necessary for your branding efforts.
Areas to consider for budgeting are:
- Design needs (logo, stationary, packaging etc.)
- Advertising
- Website (both building it and maintaining it)
- Time for development of SOP’s
- Any resources needed to help employees carry out brand promises
Not everything has to be done at once. As long as employees understand your company’s core values and branding and they deliver on those brand values and promises, your company has a great chance at success.
Keep in mind that going cheap on the development of your brand when creating your logos, stationary, packaging and advertising now and then trying to change it later could prove costly. Your consumers could have already built an attachment and relationship with your brand, which could prove problematic when trying to change it.
Brand of the week
We design, revise, and vector logos for business’s almost everyday. The Efficient Energy Solutions in Sacramento logo was a revision for a brand created by one of the company employees and revised by us at Adrian Graphics in Sacramento, CA. This logo has a strong and simple font that immediately tells you that efficiency is the priority of this company. The tone leaf gives off digital and technical look emphasizing the advanced technology and services offered.
Here are some of the thing that our customers brand represents
1. Advanced Technology
2. Easy to work with
3. Efficient and money saving services
4. Green Sustainable energy provider
What is a Marketing Plan?
Every Business Needs A Pinpoint Marketing Plan
To develop an effective and exceptional business strategy, it takes careful planning as well as a comprehensive understanding of the market. Also, if you want to achieve success, make sure to get started with a marketing plan.
Marketing plays a vital function in every business. Business owners should be familiar with the customer base of the business and the weaknesses and strengths of their competitors. Such factors and others must be identified in the best and well-prepared marketing plan.
A great marketing plan will help you outline how your business can retain and attract customers and how this will help you beat your competitors. Your needed budget will be also included in this plan to get positive results. This must also include, business location, market research, competition, target customer group, service or product being sold, promotion, advertising, and budget.
Market Research
A successful marketing plan starts with conducting a market research. It will give you relevant information that will allow you to solve any possible marketing concerns. More often than not, the 3 most pragmatic ways in conducting market research are utilizing a telephone survey, direct mail survey or through conducting a focus team.
If you consider using a direct mail survey, ensure to keep your questions short with a length no more than 2 pages. The consumer probably will not voluntarily participate with your survey without providing any incentives. Therefore, you must include postage-paid envelopes so that your respondents won’t have to pay for the privilege of assisting you. If you have sufficient budget, sending a reminder about 2 weeks after initial mailing can be a good idea. Take note that direct mail can be expensive as you will need printing of direct mail, postage, envelopes, and other incentives used.
Phone surveys are also another option you may consider. This is the most cost-effective technique in which you can conduct a survey without the need of worrying about mailing or printing costs. The major costs in phone surveys are the fee of the interviewer, questionnaire preparation, and phone charges.
Focus Groups are also another good way of gathering specific information of your targeted audience. Your main costs could include the expenses in assembling and recruiting the groups, fee of the interviewer, research time, renting rooms if possible, incentives, and recording cost of the interviews.
Secondary data is imperative to develop a successful marketing plan. Studies and reports done by the government agencies, some businesses or trade associations within your industry can offer you essential statistics on the research area.
Regardless of what kind of market research you do, you should concentrate on gathering enough information when determining who your potential customers are and other things that would help youmake your business grow in no time.
The Marketing Plan Components
Once you are done with your market research, the next thing that you should do is to start developing your marketing plan, which has some basic components and these are:
- Executive Summary
At the start of your marketing plan, you should always include a brief summary that would summarize its contents.
- Business
In this part, you will need to define vital characteristics regarding your business.
- Goals
Discussing your marketing objectives will help you create a good marketing plan. These must be clear, attainable within a particular period of time, and realistic. If you many goals, see to it that they complement each other and ensure that your plan’s components support all your marketing goals.
- Customers
Evaluate your customers based on their gender, profession, age, educational level, neighborhood, and income. Know where some of your customers shop and what qualities of your products or service that your customers value.
- Service or Product
Describing in detail your service or product and emphasizing its exceptional selling points, features, and many more is also an important component of a marketing plan.
- Competitors
Knowing your competitors can also play a huge role in achieving results with your marketing plan. So, know your competitors first and find out how you can beat them.
- Location
Include the location of your business and the pros and cons of your location.
- Budget
Including your budget will allow you to know the cost that will be allocated for promotions and advertising including material distribution and printing.
- Pricing Strategy
List the best pricing methods and provide a brief description of every technique. With this component of marketing plan, you will know how to price your service or product properly.
A comprehensive and well-written marketing plan is important in every business venture as it describes how you plan to retain and attract customers, what resources you will have, and how you will stay ahead of the competition to achieve all your business goals.
The Perks of Marketing Plan for Your Business
There are numerous benefits you would get if you will make a marketing plan for your business. Some of them are:
- Marketing Plan Allows Clear Decision Making
Knowing which factors could affect your business and auditing which resources you have within your business to deal with, you can guarantee that you will make great decisions that will lead you to success.
- Marketing Plan Can Help You Prevent Panic Decisions
Marketing plan will provide you a clear view of what’s going on in today’s market and will provide you a framework that would help you make decisions no matter how tough the situation is.
- Marketing Plan Also Offers Direction
Marketing plan also provides you a direction. Since it includes all of the things you need to know for your business, you will be able to stay on the right path, regardless of what issues may arise in the long run.
There are other benefits that you could get from developing a marketing plan. So, if you are planning to establish a business, ensure that you start with a marketing plan first because this can make a huge difference and can help you reach all you goals in a hassle-free manner. The Adrian Graphics team can help you craft a marketing plan for your business today and discover how our Market Optics Program can turn your business into a success.
For more information about developing a marketing plan feel free to call us directly at 916-905-0551
Artist Profile – Graphic Designer Sacramento, CA
Adrian Boysel, Graphic Designer and Videographer Sacramento, CA
Since the age of 4 years old, before I even realized I was an artist, my parents noticed my affinity toward drawing. I can still remember drawing my first picture for my Aunt Brittany while we sat at my Tinker Tots multi color picnic table and pretended to be doing business with each other. Since that time my love for art has only grown significantly.
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| Oriental Cuisine Express – Panda Drawing – Panda Art |
That passion for art carried me until my beginning years as videographer and graphic designer, where I won my first award in junior year of high school. When I was just a youngster, maybe 9 or 10 years old, my step mother Gina told me “Someday you will combine your awesome artwork with computers, I don’t know how, but I know someday you will.” If I only knew then what I know now about my future in art and business. She was completely right!
With the advancement of Photo editing, graphic design and video editing software I was then able to take my hand drawn works of art and bring them into my a computer to illustrate them into clean vibrant designs that were scaleable to any size. As I continue my career in the business to business world, I see a growing need for brands to create a unique brand through creative artwork and design.
I’m driven to inspire other artists and companies to convey who they are and what matters most to them through custom images and artwork planned and executed by the best artist’s in the country. I’m excited to see what more the future holds for not just myself, but for everyone that is a part of the Adrian Graphics family.
5 Tips to Develop a Great Tagline or Slogan
There are 5 basic steps that we use for developing a great tagline or slogan:
1. Simplicity: Use simple words and short keywords that relate to your product or service.
2. Identity:. A good slogan must stay consistent with your brand name. Obviously stated or strongly implied, it is better to describe the type of business it is.
3. Unforgettable: The best slogans or taglines are still being used today, even though they were launched many years ago. Find the passion in your brand and promote it.
4. Benefit: Reveal your value and benefits of the product or service by conveying the slogan or message in your market’s language. Create a positive feeling for your target customer, make the bad into good.
5. Contrast: In an overcrowded market, companies in the same industry need to set themselves apart through their original tagline or slogan.
If you need help developing a slogan, our experts can provide!
For a FREE Brand Assessment Contact Us at 916.905.0551 and ask to speak with Adrian about your brand.
[skill name=”Slogan and Tagline Creation” level=”100″]
How much is your logo worth? 3 tips for a great logo design
A brand is so much more than just a logo, and that is why it’s important to look at some factors of your logo and analyze if your logo is really working for your business.
1. Is your logo pixelated or fuzzy? Many graphic designers will sell you on their “CUSTOM LOGO DESIGN” and tell you that you are paying for custom work when in reality your logo is a combination of a bunch of images combined into one with photoshop. A real logo designer does not work in Photoshop for his final project, unless he is unfamiliar with Adobe Illustrator and is using the vector capabilities that photoshop has recently integrated in to their program. Having a vector version of your logo will allow you to scale your logo to any size for any medium without the worry of a blurry or pixelated graphic. Vector is a completely different process than a photoshop design. Photoshop uses what the industry calls PIXELS, Vector is Path connected to one another with anchor points and curves, creating a solid object that will retain it’s quality and clean look no matter the size.
2. What does your logo say about your business? Stock logos have become so popular with the enhancement of web capabilities and access to royalty free images. Many companies are choosing to use very generic logos that not only do not match their industry and services, but their brand. This can be a very costly mistake. Its very important to establish your business and a unique and trusted figure in your local area as most of your business will come from local supporters, friends, and even family. One look at your logo should give that potential buyer an exact, if not very close idea, of what type of business you are. From company colors to typography there are many elements of a logo design that determine how people see your business. For example Jim’s Pool Cleaning probably won’t be using the orange and yellow designs without some some dominant blue colors representing the water.
3. Do you LOVE your logo? It’s your brand, and your brand is you! If your logo does not make you feel excited to build your brand, or make you want to show it off to every friend and co worker, you probably are suffering from a condition I call “Branditus” (only joking about the condition). You should feel proud of your companies brand and image, it’s your first impression to give and it’s how people see you, your business, and services. How would your customers describe your company when they are telling their friends or co workers about their purchase or services you have offered to them.
Here are just some keywords to identify if your logo has these qualities: Trust, Power, Reliability, Timeless Established, Innovative, Professional, Creative, Intelligent, Hard Working, Affordable, Dependable, Fast, On Time, Efficient, American, Local.
Here are some keywords that your logo should not be related to: Cluttered, Busy, Flashy, Blurry, Old, Boring, Generic, Simple, Basic, Expensive, Tiny.
Adrian Graphics Custom Logo Designs
Here are some additional creative logos for your inspiration.
Brand Identity Designer in Sacramento, CA
I have been in Sacramento, CA my entire life. Although I’ve traveled all over the United States Sacramento is my home. Lucky for me it also happens to be the Capitol of the Golden State. Much government agencies and large corporations call Sacramento home as well.
Being from Sacramento I understand the geography, people, and culture of the city and know how to reach the public. It starts with an in depth analysis of your business and services, we will review your business and marketing plan and give you recommendations based on strategic research from various study groups of local Sacramento Residents. Buyers in Sacramento are very critical of who they trust so it is important that you build your brand by not only the best quality products and services but exceptional customer service as well.
The city of Sacramento it self is a very diverse and fairly small town with outlying cities that make the valley’s population quite large and the potential quite large. If you have been burned by other web site designers and developers, graphic designers, and marketing gurus, then now is your time to work with a company who can not only do everything you need under one but do it with excellence and on time. We back our services with a 100% Money Back Guarantee. If for some reason you are unhappy with our results in the first 30 days of our agreement or project we will refund you all of your money.
We specialize in custom graphic design, logo design, brand identity design, digital & offset printing, signs, banners, canvas, stickers, decals, promotional items printing, business card printing, internet marketing and advertising, and even website design and development. For larger businesses we also offer 1 on 1 consulting with our monthly marketing packages.
For more questions or for a free quote please contact us and we will get back to you right away!
Thank you for taking the time to read this, we value your business and would love the opportunity to show you why Adrian Graphics is the best Marketing Company in Sacramento, CA
Respectfully,
Adrian Boysel
Founder
Adrian Graphics LLC.