When starting a company, branding is essential. Equally important is making sure your brand conveys the right message. I consulted with Laureen Burd from LadyBurd Designs for her expertise on what you need to know when branding your business.

According to Laureen, there are many branding to-dos, including choosing and obtaining a company name, as well as defining your business. The next steps are what we will discuss today:

• Your Logo
• Colors and Company Fonts
• Consistent Branding Message

Branding Your Business: Creating the Logo & Tagline

The first step in branding your business is to develop a logo and tagline. These should not only represent your brand but be unique and stand out in an often crowded marketing environment.

Creating Your Logo

Logos come in many forms. For instance, they may include the company’s name stylized, an eye-catching illustration, and/or a combination of the two.

Because creating a logo can be overwhelming, before you begin, start by getting some inspiration. First, look at your competition and other companies that have great logos. Then, refer below for suggestions on how to get those creative juices going:

• The logo needs to speak to your customer. For example, what does this demographic look like? Are they more conservative, modern, progressive? What are their hobbies? Do they like to garden? Represent this in your logo.
• The logo needs to look good in black and white, not only in color.
• Needs to have a classic design, not trendy, or out of style in a year or two.

The next step, it is time to create your logo. There are numerous tools out there to help you do this. Here are some free logo design tool options.

Additionally, you will need multiple logo versions. Multiple versions are needed for websites, print materials, websites favicon, social media, etc.

The Right Tagline for Your Brand

A good tagline is memorable, short and perfectly defines your brand. Think about Nike’s “Just Do It,” or M&M’s “Melts in Your Mouth Not In Your Hand.” For either of these brands, you recognize the company by just hearing the tagline.

To create the perfect tagline, start brainstorming and jotting down ideas. Here are some questions to think through:

• Words that describe your company’s brand?
• What services does your company offer?
• Emotional or action words that describe your brand?

Now take the words you jotted down and start to play with creating your tagline.

There are also free slogan generators. Even if you don’t use the generated slogan, it will help to get you started. Before you sign off, always have others review.

Branding Your Business: Finding the Right Colors & Font

Now it’s time to decide upon the colors and fonts. 

These are key to having great branding. If a potential customer can not read your ad, website, etc., that results in lost business.

To start, look at the competition. An easy way to find out what fonts and colors a competitor is using on their website is by inspecting elements on their web page.

The Right Brand Font Styles

Another way to inspect font styles on a web page is to install a free font finder plugin tool, such as WhatFont. The link is to WhatFont’s Chrome plugin. They also offer plugins for different browsers, as well as mobile. Then, think through your brand and what type of fonts will work best for your brand.

Additionally, if using multiple font styles (should not use more than 3) they must work well together. An easy way to find font pairings that work well together is Google fonts and their fonts are free. There are many font sources that charge or are only free for a certain use. Always read and understand the font licensing before using it.

Once your font styles are chosen, there are more decisions to be made. For additional information on font guidelines refer to this blog.

The Right Brand Colors

Great font style is backed by a good color theme. This means across the web, print media, etc. the colors need to reflect your brand and should work together.

The first step, determine your color theme. There are free tools available such as Canva, which offers color selection resources. Adobe Color is another option. Furthermore, with Adobe Color you can look through premade themes or create your own color theme. Also, if you have an Adobe Creative Suite account you can add your color theme to your Adobe Library.

The next step, deciding your company’s primary and secondary colors. The primary colors are the colors you will use the most. Secondary colors you will use sparingly. Because color is part of branding, you need to clarify primary and secondary colors to keep yourself and your team consistent.

Last thing to keep in mind, be aware of colors and font being used for those that are color blind.

Branding Your Business: Consistent Brand Message

The final topic in branding your business is having a consistent branding message.

Consider the example below. There is a mix of branded materials, printed materials and digital materials, which all have the same brand message.

The photo on the left is of a company’s printed marketing materials and on the right the same company’s website. Branding materials provided by LadyBurd Designs.

Same Branding Message with Photography and Graphics

Now let’s talk about your visuals, photography, graphics, and all other visuals that give your media some life. Below are some popular visuals that you will probably use and some guidelines:

• Photography – Photos need to be shot at the same angle, use the same lighting and look cohesive. The same standards apply when using stock photography.

Example of What Not To Do

Example of What To Do

• Illustrations/Graphics – Same color story and same style.

Example of What Not To Do

Example of What To Do

Below are some graphics and photography sites that provide primarily free resources (read the licensing on each photo/graphic before downloading):

Photography:

• Unsplash – https://unsplash.com/
• Pixabay – https://pixabay.com/

Illustrations/Graphics:

• Vecteezy (attribute required) – https://www.vecteezy.com/
• Freepik (attribute required) – http://www.freepik.com

When using illustrations/graphics or photography online, read through and understand the licensing agreement. If you are questioning the license, reach out to a legal professional. Using a graphic or image inappropriately can end up in a fine.

Providing Branding Standards

Now that you have completed the steps above, you need to create a branding guide book. In this book, you will provide everything created above and standards for each of these areas. This will ensure everyone in your organization and external users use your branding elements appropriately.

In conclusion, branding is a big project to take on. However, once complete, you will be very thankful you put in the time and your business will reap the results. There are many companies that specialize in color and branding like LadyBurd Designs that will create your branding kit.

Once your branding is done you will have all the information needed to start to market and build out your responsive website.

Did you know that every month there are more than three billion people worldwide using social media? And most of this can all be accessed by the phone in our pocket. So, why aren’t more businesses using these wide-reaching platforms? We from Bente Online are teaming up with Kallen media to inform you about the importance of social media for your business. We are adding a bit of European flavor to the mix.

The importance of social media has increased even more this year. As a result of Social Distancing, we had to find a way to stay connected and maybe even stay relevant. We are social beings, and we are constantly in need of keeping in touch. Consequently, when contacts from our workplace, school, or daily activities lessen, the need for online interaction increases substantially.

Besides seeking social contact during this pandemic, we also have a lot of free time on our hands. People choose to spend their time on countless social media apps. We seek entertainment, find ways to fill up our spare time and keep up with the news. Apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok were visited even more this year. However, it’s not only these platforms that have increased in popularity. Platforms like Skype, Microsoft teams, Google hangout, and Zoom are also beginning to shape our digital future. With all these changes, there are a lot of business opportunities being created online.

Staying Active on Social Media

But why is it important to stay active on social media as a business during these circumstances?

Covid-19 is something that affected everyone. Aside from the creativity the lockdown brought, it also brought a lot of complex problems. That is why you need to stay relevant as a business owner and take advantage of this increased use of social media during such a period. Looking at the way technology has been advancing in just the last 10 years, technology use will probably increase even more in the following years.

Lockdown or not, being present on social media is essential to growing your business. If you don’t have a LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram with your company name linked to it, you are simply not taking full advantage and are missing out. Only merely creating a social media account is not going to do it.

Essential Use of Social Media

I’m going to discuss the four main reasons why proper social media use is essential.

Reason number one being, the importance of engaging with your customers. Letting customers know you are active online provides an effortless and, most importantly, accessible communication platform. On these platforms, you can connect with your customers on a personal level. By doing this, you get more exposure, get to know the customers, and target the right target audience. You can create a platform with stories that people can relate to. Bingo!

The second reason would be to stay in touch with your competitors. Try to stay ahead of competitors by analyzing their social media and improving on this. If you have a social media account, you can see how they engage with their customers and learn from it. Incorporating related questions and problems in your social media posts will help you stay one step ahead. You respond immediately and post a social media post about the issue.

The third reason is that Social Media marketing is relatively cheap compared to other online marketing firms. By creating the right content and using social media ads the right way, you can get a lot of value for your money through social media leads. You need to know who you are targeting, and you need to create the right audience. If done the right way, it generates an organic way of getting sales from ads.

The last reason would be that it provides traffic for your website and improves your Google reachability. By providing useful and interesting social media content, you can get your followers to click on your website and find out even more about your business. Moreover, it provides an opportunity to improve your SEO.

A Final Tip

By creating a good and interesting Instagram name, you are one step closer to being a click away from your customers. For example, you are a restaurant in New York that sells cookies. Your username would be your business name, while your regular Instagram name could be NEW YORK COOKIES BY SAM. Therefore, leading to better reachability on Instagram as people search for their wants and desires; stumbling upon your well-formulated page.

In the current digital information age and especially during this pandemic, we can take advantage of the increasing amount of social media users. Social media is a powerful platform, so use it optimally and efficiently to take advantage maximally.

Bente Online

Bente Online is a young creative company that provides Social Media marketing services to small and medium-size companies without its own marketing department.

We create, design, and maintain your Social Media channels to connect with your target groups and growth in the number of followers. We also sell social media posts separately for private and commercial use. Bente Online is your online manager.

While offering structure in combination with creativity, we realize a structured quality approach for a part of your business, which is so important nowadays.

In our view, the use of corporate social media is all about communicating interactively with your relations. A higher goal is to make them fans and ambassadors who can recommend your product or service in their network. There are 3 important conditions for this: openness, mutual trust, and a good reputation. This type of fast media is all about a healthy portion of creativity, discipline in your repetition, and perseverance.

Fundraising is very often the only source of revenue a nonprofit has to draw from. And without a good fundraising plan, most nonprofits wouldn’t be able to sustain themselves. Over the years working with charities, we’ve learned firsthand how fundraising can impact a nonprofit. That’s why Kallen Media has spent time outlining how to get a fundraising campaign noticed.

This blog will focus on fundraising at different business stages and how social media can help you connect with your base. Then we will tell you about some ways you can ensure your next fundraiser will be a huge success.

Fundraising at Multiple Scales

Every fundraising campaign should have a set goal, but at the same time, you should have sub-goals and a plan to keep supporters engaged throughout the entire process. That’s why multiple scales of plans can help keep your campaign on track. At the beginning of a campaign, this can often mean your fundraiser starts with a soft launch.

A soft launch is a process where you begin your fundraiser by reaching out to your known supporters or previous donors. Essentially this process helps kick start your main fundraiser with early donations! At the same time, this gives you the chance to fix any unforeseen problems with your event. A soft launch is a smart way to guarantee your main event is not only ready for public consumption but already has some inertia.

Before you’ve reached the minimum goal you set initially, it’s important to focus on increasing your campaign’s momentum. A lull and loss of interest can be the death of a fundraiser, so it’s important to have plans to keep people interested in your fundraiser until you’ve met your goals! But what if you’re more successful than planned and you exceed expectations?

If your donors really resonated with your fundraiser and meet your initial goals, you’ll need to be ready for surplus donations, and people will expect you to have a plan. Stretch goals will help make sure that any extra money from fundraisers will go to good use. By setting stretch goals, you can guarantee an initial project and then begin to dream about incredible extra ones too!

Social Media Marketing and Fundraising

From crowdfunding sites to Facebook birthday charity drives, social media changes the way people connect to causes. And Nonprofit marketing companies are well suited to this fundraising landscape. Making sure your next fundraiser is well advertised on social media could vastly improve your exposure. But how exactly does a nonprofit get a fundraising campaign noticed on social media?

One simple way to improve social media awareness is a fundraiser hashtag. Specific social media branding for your fundraiser can give people a place to come together and check in on goals or even promote to other friends they have on the platform who might not be involved yet. Creating a hashtag gives people a way to promote and engage with your fundraiser more easily.

Show People Impact

One easy way to keep people engaged with your efforts is to show people what their money is paying for. During a lull, people who could potentially be donors might have a hard time seeing why they should invest in a nonprofit. Charities with videos or other testimonial style evidence of their efforts are more likely to receive donations. When people see what charities they want to help, give your potential donors a chance to see what their money would do for the nonprofit. People will also be more likely to promote your material once one of your fundraising campaigns is noticed, so show them off.

Matching Donations

Matching programs are systems that let a nonprofit or another organization match donations for a select period of time. Because you have an extra draw, matching can help get your fundraising campaign noticed. A Matching program is a great way to incentivize people to donate. This promotion makes people feel like they make double the donation. These perceptions make people feel like they have a lot more influence and spending power.

Depending on your fundraiser’s length and goals, a matching partner could choose to back the whole campaign, double your earnings, or only a smaller percentage of donations. Either way, the matching donations system brings in a lump sum of money and additional incentives.

Sponsorships

From 5k’s to pie-making contests, hosting an event is a time-honored way to gain financial support for a nonprofit. But a real big-ticket avenue not everyone thinks of is event sponsorships. Teaming up with a corporate or industry sponsor connects you to powerful financial resources that typically have established audiences through their customer base.

Similarly, if you’re already hosting an event, sponsorship can be a form of delegation. If you’re already worried about several things, sourcing sponsorship and the accompanied help could make your event easier to plan and operate.

How To Get a Fundraising Campaign Noticed.

Fundraising is a critical element of financing any nonprofit operation. And because it’s so important, it helps to have a comprehensive plan for every fundraising level. Your nonprofit must have an outreach plan from the soft open to theoretical stretch goals when looking for capital. Using crowdfunding tools and clever social media tactics, you can help boost a fundraising campaign to new heights. But you’ll need to think of ways to keep customers engaged.

The team at Kallen media has had the pleasure of helping many different nonprofits over the years. And every time we learn something new about how to get a fundraising campaign noticed. So if you’re a nonprofit who isn’t satisfied with the results of your fundraising efforts, Kallen Media can help you. Contact us online or via the phone today for a consultation and a custom marketing plan from a team specializing in nonprofit marketing.

Have you ever had an idea and thought: “I swear someone would pay me for this!” Well, you might be right, but there are some critical steps to take before your idea is a real business. Some people think of incorporating themselves as an impossible task. But making a company is easier than you might think! Today Kallen media will show you How to start a business.

All businesses start with an idea. But before you begin making companies based on random thoughts, you should prepare. Please don’t take it from us; knowing what you want to do and having a plan is key to a thriving company! So where do you start after you’ve had your idea? The first step in creating a business is all about researching your concept.

Market Research

 

Once you’ve come up with an idea for a company, you need to make sure that it will work how you envisioned. Research means testing the hypothesis against lots of real-world problems or conditions. To ensure your idea is viable, you need this kind of market research. Tests often include people’s opinions on your product or service. If people like your product, it’s essential to see if you can target similar audiences.

Important decisions to make here focus on your direct product and target markets. Say you have the right product but don’t know who wants it; Market research can determine where products should sell. Once you are sure you have your final idea and a target audience, its time to move on to some more concrete decisions like location and name!

Operations Prep

 

One of the essential steps in your business venture will be getting funding. There are lots of options for financing, but depending on your network, some options will be better than others. One option is venture capitalists who will fund you for a stake in your business. Another good option is private funding from other angel investors who will be more hands-off.

After you are funded, its time to put all of your research to work for you! The next steps are making some concrete decisions about where and how you will do business. Firstly your business needs a name! Preferably something relevant and catchy so customers will remember it. Once you have all this, you have to decide where you want your business to operate.

Location is a significant factor in your success. So a company should choose its base wisely. If you have a concentrated target market somewhere, consider opening up your shops there. Conversely, if you need to save money on overhead, a state with lower taxes might be your best option. If you don’t think a brick and mortar store is a good fit, you could hire a professional web designer. Either way, location will affect your profits, so make an informed decision.

Permits and Licenses

 

Once you’ve made all the decisions and have your business plan laid out, its time to make it official, you’ll need to register your business with the federal and (maybe) the state governments. Registration will help protect your brand legally. Registering also allows you to get access to other necessary business ID’s

Once your business is registered, you have to acquire federal and state tax IDs. To get these IDs, you’ll need to generate an employee identification number. An EIN is a number that government agencies will use to classify your business; it’s like a social security ID, but for a company. After you’ve done this, you’ve officially got a real taxable company to do business. But depending on your product or services, you might need other licensing.

Once official, your business may need to acquire special licenses to make sure its legal to operate. One classic example of these permits is liquor licenses, which bars need to sell any alcohol to customers. Applying for licenses and permits is vital because, without them, you are potentially breaking the law.

How to Start a Business

 

A lot of people have a good idea or design for something they could turn into a functioning business. But most people either don’t execute their ideas or, worse yet, don’t know how to. But knowing how to start a business can turn your vision into gold! That’s why we think it’s important to understand the basics of making a company.

The first step is to make a business plan. This plan should be a description of what you want and think will work for your business once you have a loose idea to conduct market research. Market research will inform you about the crucial factors that will make or break your company. Once armed with knowledge, an entrepreneur must begin to decide what the business will be and where it will operate. Following all of these, business owners will need to secure funding and proper permits. And after all of these steps, you’ll officially have a legal business!

Once you’ve followed these steps, your journey isn’t over. After planning, operating your businesses will take you places you’ve never imagined. If you have questions about how to start a business or have more questions about running a business, Kallen media is here to help. Head to our website to chat with us about your companies’ rise to the top!

How much money does it take to start a business? Are specific business cheaper than others? Will you need investors? Starting a business is a complicated endeavor. But asking the right questions can simplify the process. Financial planning for your business will make this process easier.

In this blog, we talk about five essential questions that show how much you need to start a business. Financial planning is the key to business success. However, not all companies are the same. As such, the business plan should be unique too. Firstly what does your business do?

What Do You Sell? Products or Services

 

Does your business offer a service or produce a product? This distinction makes a big difference in startup prices. The short answer here is that services tend to be cheaper. Services operate with fewer employees, less manufacturing, and sometimes no rent! Often services are offered by qualified professionals, which means you have to do less networking! There are some cons when providing a service. Services are hard to scale. This hurdle can mean higher costs in the long run. However, products are more simple to scale.

Products have high manufacturing costs. To start your business, you need things made and packaging and other underlying costs. Planning for all of this in budgeting is essential. Unlike services, selling a product is easier to scale. Accelerated manufacturing often makes the unit prices of goods cheaper. One of the hardest parts about starting a product based company is the initial investment.

Staff: how many employees do you need

 

You are deciding how many and which kind of employees you need is vital to operations. Too many employees might make the system inefficient. While on the other hand, too few employees make work impossible to get done. Having the right number of employees is the key to efficient work. But what kind of employees do you need? Between contractors, part-time, and full-time employees, there are lots of choices. E-commerce can also change the number of employees you need. If you require full-time employees, one key consideration is extra costs like insurance and other benefits.

Location: where is your startup

 

Some places are cheaper than others. This difference can be affordable rent for you to live while you build your business. Or sometimes, a state has low operating costs due to tax laws or other factors. Deciding where your business is based is a crucial decision when financial planning. The critical distinction here is rural versus urban environments.

Densely packed cities will always mean higher rents and more competition. And these factors can often kill a new business. Often companies who can’t afford to initially staff where they live will outsource to remote offices. Therefore they are saving money. But they do lose some direct access to work. A less populated environment means cheaper land and often lower startup costs in general. This is doubly true for the internet. Sometimes setting up a website is a better move. Fees also apply to housing. Living in a less costly area means all of your money can be focused on growing a brand new company!

Time to market: out finance the competition

 

This may seem obvious, but it is still vital. If your competition can replicate your product or are already designing a similar service, time to market is very important. If you need to be the first to market, get ready to spend. Accelerating a launch is possible; it just requires more money, time, and effort. The money should be spent if a company could fail based on this time factor. But what if you’re not in a rush?

If you don’t need to speed to market you’re in luck! Because there is no time pressure, saving money is easier. You can wait for better prices and even take time to scale at a healthy pace meaning fewer startup investments.

Salary: plan to keep your day job

 

CEO salaries are vastly different from company to company. Do you need to be paid a salary right away? Sorry, but you’ll probably need your day job. Most companies can’t afford to pay a CEO salary right away. This means you’ll need other income to support yourself. But what if you can survive for a year? Well, if you can make it that long you will probably be ok. By a year, most companies can afford to pay a CEO. So if you can make it that long you get to focus on your business even more!

Financial planning for businesses

 

It’s pretty important to plan out the money you need to start your business. Knowing what kind of business you want to start is essential. If you know that, answering questions like location and staff is more comfortable to answer. Then all that’s left is personal finance questions and long term scaling projects.

Do you still have questions about financial planning? Kallen media is an expert at helping startups maximize their budgets. If you need help with planning out your business, feel free to contact Kallen media via our website.