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Four Common Reasons Why Some Brands Fail

Four Common Reasons Why Some Brands Fail

It’s no secret that some businesses never seem to get off the ground. Sometimes this is because of a bad business plan, poor management, or because the business wasn’t a good idea. While these issues can contribute to a business’s failure, a surprising number of times, the main reason the business fails is because of poor branding.

There are several reasons bad branding issues result in a business failing to catch on.

They Fail to Connect to Their Target Market

It doesn’t matter how good a business is. If the business fails to catch the eye of its target market, they aren’t going to make it. The problem is that the company usually spends all of its money casting a wide net with its marketing efforts instead of investing in consumer research and pinpointing the type of branding that resonates with its ideal customer.

The Brand Fails to Live Up to Brand’s Promise

One of the common mistakes we encounter when we’re looking at a business that failed because of the branding is that the company failed to live up to the brand’s promise. We see this the most frequently in businesses that novice business owners started. They have a great idea but aren’t confident about how they want to handle their branding, so they look to other businesses for ideas. The result is a brand that looks good but doesn’t quite match the business or product/service they’re offering.

Overextending the Brand

Recently we’ve noticed an uptick in branding failures that aren’t the result of the company having a bad brand but that the company is simply trying to do too much with its brand. This usually happens when a successful company expands its product line or offers more services. While the brand perfectly fits the original idea, it jars with the extension, and customers get confused. When it comes to expansion, careful consideration must be given to whether the company should expand under the same brand or if it would be better off creating two separate brands.

Creating Sub-Brands that Hurt the Primary Brand

While we are in favor of creating sub-brands, we do urge you to use caution. We’ve seen cases of businesses that launched a good sub-brand without realizing that the sub-brand was sending a message that ultimately contradicted and, in some cases, even hurt the main brand.

Does the process of branding your start-up leave you feeling overwhelmed? Feel free to contact us. We take the stress and mystery out of successful brand creation.

Tips for Creating a Brand for your New Business in Stockton

The problem that many business owners just like yourself run into is that they don’t know what steps should be taken to create the strong brand they envision.

The good news is that there are some things you can do to help you learn what makes a good brand image.

Take a Look at Your Competition

No, you don’t want your brand to be just like that of your competition. When all is said and done, you’re going to want your business to stand out, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t turn to the competition when it’s time to start branding your own business.

Look for common themes that each of your competitors has incorporated into their branding. The reason these themes are common is that your target market identifies with them. You’re going to want to build your own brand around these themes. Once you have mastered the theme for your industry, you should be able to build your brand around it until you have something that’s both unique and effective.

Know Exactly What you’re Business’s Value, Purpose, and Definition Are

When creating a brand for your up-and-coming business, make sure you can easily identify what your company’s purpose is, what industry it suits, and what values you plan on breathing into it. Once you know this, you can use words that reflect your business’s purpose, values, and definition in every piece of marketing and branding material you create.

Consistency, Consistency, Consistency

Take a few minutes to look at the companies within your industry that have crashed and burned. In many cases, the reason the company failed was that they weren’t consistent with their brand, especially as they started spreading out across various social media channels. Instead of simply making random posts, treat every single piece of material you place on your social media accounts as a tiny piece of your brand. Make sure each post, tweet, and image connect back to your business. This can be done using keywords, colors, and images.

A Professional Touch Never Hurts

If you’ve done as much branding research as you can stand, and still aren’t sure how to brand your up-and-coming business, it’s time to talk to the professionals. We have the experience and resources needed to help you build a brand that will resonate with your target market and withstand the test of time.

2022’s Hot Web Design Trends

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Staying on top of the latest trends is the best way to make sure your business website never looks outdated or becomes boring. Now that 2022 has finally arrived, it’s time to look at the hottest upcoming web design trends and figure out if they’re something you should incorporate into your website.

Big Bold Colors

Expect 2022 to be a bright year. If there’s a way to incorporate bright colors into your brand, you should seriously consider going for it. The current consumer wants to feel good about themselves and by extension, good about your business, and bright colors that trigger a sense of cheer is the simplest way to do that.

While incorporating bright colors into your website is a great idea, don’t go overboard. Think bright but minimalistic. You don’t want so much color it hurts visitors’ eyes or creates a sense of pandemonium.

Progressive Lead Generation

Lead generation has always been important. That’s not expected to change in 2022. Tweak your web design so that you’re able to gather information from your clients in a way that’s subtle, private, and discrete. One of the simplest ways to do this is is creating a website that leads them from one page to another and slowly asks a series of questions as they go. An example of this is creating one page that maybe asks for a name and general location. Followed by another page that explores why they visited your page, followed by the lead funnel page that requests an email address in exchange for your free product.

Keep your lead generation forms, clean, unobtrusive, and simple.

Don’t Discount Loading Speed

Don’t let 2022 be the year that you slack off when it comes to your website’s loading speed. The average consumer is more impatient than ever before. They’re not going to wait for more than a few seconds to load your page. If they don’t get near-instant access to the information they seek, they will move on.

Sit down with your web designer and discuss different ways the current loading speed of your website can be improved. It’s especially important that all your leading landing pages fully open almost as soon as the link is clicked.

Not sure that your website is ready for 2022? Contact us. We’ll look at your site and discuss different ideas that will make it more appealing to your target market.

4 Ways to Strengthen Your Brand Message with MHD Group Web Design

4 Ways to Strengthen Your Brand Message with MHD Group Web Design

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Your website should be a natural extension of your brand message. If you currently feel that there is some discord between your brand message and your current web design, it’s time to revamp your website.

You’ll be amazed by how much a well-designed website helps strengthen your brand message.

Better Brand Identity

Your website is the place prospective customers will turn to when they want to learn more about your brand identity. Every single piece of content you include in your web design should connect strongly to identity.

It doesn’t matter if you’re revamping your entire website or have simply decided to tweak the design, before going live with the newly redesigned website, look at every single aspect of the website and make sure it helps uphold your brand identity and sends a positive message to consumers.

Add Emotional Elements

Every single business should strike an emotional chord with its target market. A good web design allows you to showcase this emotional aspect of your business and will use it to strengthen your brand message.

Sit down with your web designer and let them know if you want your brand message to be tranquil, happy, fun, compassionate, or something else. They will choose fonts, images, layouts, and even colors that will help trigger an instantaneous emotional connection between yourself and prospective customers.

Creates a Solid Sense of Value

When you meet with your web design team, you’ll likely hear the words, value proposition tossed around. In this case, value isn’t necessarily the financial value of your website, though a good value proposition will lead to a nice increase in sales.

When your website is fully designed, the value proposition will appear as a short statement in an area where visitors’ eyes will naturally be drawn to as soon as your website loads. The idea of the value proposition is that it provides your visitors with an instant understanding of what they will get from visiting the website. Reading the value proposition will make your visitors feel good about the website and help them develop a solid understanding of your brand message.

Stand Out From the Crowd

The best thing about a good web design is that not only will it enhance your brand message, it will also show how your business differs from the competition. Aspects of web design that help hone your brand message and stand out from the crowd include the use of color, tone, the type of content you incorporate into your web design, and more.

Want to make sure your web design aligns with your brand message? Contact the MHD Group and learn exactly what tricks we have up our sleeve that will enhance your brand message.

The Importance of White Space in Web Design

The Importance of White Space in Web Design

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Many people are surprised when they see the mockup for a web design and instead of blocks of text and images all crammed together, there is a great deal of blank space. It’s not uncommon for them to assume that the blank space means the website developers didn’t know how to compile enough information to fill the space.

Web designers refer to these gaps as white space and, in many ways, they represent important website real estate. The way the white space is used is one of the first things visitors use to determine if they want to explore your website or if they click past it.

The truth is that blank space is a crucial part of web design. While you don’t want several inches of space between blocks of content, your website should have generous gaps between paragraphs and a nice border that separates images from the text.

The most important thing white space does is improve the readability of your website. Pages become more readable when there is a small amount of space between the paragraphs. That’s one of the reasons so many book publishers now print books with larger text and more white space because those are the types of books readers are likely to purchase. The increased number of sales generated from the white space more than justifies the increased printing and shipping costs.

Webpage visitors who encounter a massive block of text that has little to no white space will quickly become overwhelmed and close the website. When that same block of text is broken into many paragraphs and a little white space is inserted between those paragraphs, the visitor will read all the content and then either explore your website or enter your sales funnel.

The rule of thumb for adding additional white space to your website is to limit sentences to under 21 words and make sure the average paragraph is only about three sentences long. Using bulletin points is another great way to generate more white space.

The correct use of white space does more than simply make your website more readable and therefore more visitor-friendly. A knowledgeable web design team knows how to use white space to attract attention to a block of extra important content and to subtly guide your visitors to the products and services you most want them to notice.

Why Website is Necessary for Business

Why Website is Necessary for Business

A simple question, What is a website? In its bare form, a website is a single domain that consists of different web pages. We should all know that by now, but surprisingly what we don’t all know, is the benefits a website can provide for your business, and it’s shocking to witness how many businesses don’t actually have a website or online presence.

If you have a business and don’t have a website, you are losing out on great opportunities for your business. A website itself can be used to accomplish many different marketing strategies to help your business grow.

As a business owner, you need to know where your consumers are. But what if consumers know your business and what you can offer, but they can’t reach you? That is one of the risks you take by not having a website for your business.

What are some other benefits of having a business website?

Cost-Effective

You know exactly how much your website is going to cost you and its ongoings – a brick and mortar store on the other hand is susceptible to many out of the ordinary occurrences which could blow out the costs such as leaving the lights on, theft, damage, extra staff, etc.

A strategically developed website and online presence solution provides tremendous benefits and costing outlines.

Accessible around the clock

Your website and social media accounts are accessible 24/7/365. Imagine that you want to buy from a store. You put in all the effort required to go to the store, but when you get there, it’s closed. We all know how irate we feel in that situation. You’ll think twice about going back given the bad taste it left (ok might have been your fault for not checking but hey, this is proving the point here!). You will just find another store that is more easily accessible.

Since your website is operational around the clock, from the convenience of the local coffee shop, their couch, or their bed, your customers and clients can easily access your website and services.

Convenient

What is more convenient: driving outside to look for different stores that are available to shop in, or sitting in the comfort of your own home and shopping for the products you’re looking for? The pretty obvious answer, unless you like aimlessly driving around. Smart businesses realize this and thus have their own website housing their products and services so that potential customers can browse online for the products they want to purchase.

Credibility

By building a website you are giving your business the opportunity to tell consumers why they should trust you and the testimonials and facts to back up those opportunities. Believe it or not, most people will search the internet for a product or service before the purchase to check the credibility first. When you provide good service or product, positive word-of-mouth about your business is likely to spread. Which in turn, delivers more repeat and new business.

People tend to trust a business after they have done business with it. Using your website, you can continuously serve consumers online and increase your credibility as a business owner.

Your website is the front door to your business. MHD Group has provided results-driven website design solutions for hundreds of businesses. Website design must be planned, defined, and executed as a priority in your marketing strategy.

MHD Group provides results driven solutions that elevate brand awareness above the competition, motivate buyers and ensure customer loyalty by effectively integrating branding strategy, graphic and web design, marketing, digital media and public relations.