Can we help your business thrive in 2023? Vantage Media’s experts share their top tips for growth in the year to come
When it comes to growing a business there’s no one-size-fits-all solution and, whether you’re the founder of a brand new start-up or CEO of a global corporation, you’ll know that there’s a million different areas that demand your attention every day. But when it comes to engaging your audience through branding and communication, we believe there are few simple resolutions that any enterprise can agree on, to help boost your business in the new year.
At Vantage, we know that the needs of every company are unique, and so we always tailor our creative packages to suit your goals. Our experienced design team can guide you through full branding suites or simple logo and design refreshment, help update your marketing products and create simple modern websites that are easy for you to manage in house.
For a powerful way to add value to your business, our award-winning publishing team is on hand to create anything from regular in-house magazines (print or digital), to quality coffee table books and luxurious brochures. To find out more, email michelle@vantagemediagroup.co.uk
Here, we spoke to our team to get their top tips and New Year’s resolutions that might add value to your business growth plans in 2023. Happy New Year!
Whether your business is large or small, nothing is more powerful than knowing your audience. An up-to-date and fully formed customer profile can help define your communication style and social media – as well as inform your branding and product design – so that you can reach your target market effectively and authentically.
If your business has an engaged customer base already, the new year is the perfect time to survey your audience to refresh your understanding and find out what you can do to further excite them. A newsletter or pop up questionnaire – attached to a discount or prize draw – could be just the ticket. If you’re ready to launch a new line, product or brand, a more structured focus group could be an ideal way to gather opinions from potential customers across a range of demographics to help inform your communications strategy going forward.
Once you’re familiar with your target audience, their needs and expectations, it’s well worth taking a step back from your current branding to ask whether your visual style still meets your customers’ needs? Take cues from long-lived brands like Coca Cola, MasterCard, Google and IBM – all of whom have regularly changed or tweaked their colours, logos, fonts and communication style to keep up with changing times – and changing customer demographics – and global regions.
At Vantage, our designers love to explore new ways of appealing to your audience across different platforms, mediums and scales. It’s important that your visual branding and logo communicates who you are and what you do, but that your designers understand both your current goals and strategy as well your vision for the future. After all, there’s no point spending your branding budget on a beautiful logo that is perfect for today, but out of date in six months. We believe in building brands that can grow with your business.
Six reasons why your company needs a new logo design
For many businesses, building a network of loyal customers, members or collaborators is crucial to longterm success. Just think about the companies that you recommend to your friends, or the services that you keep going back to: what is it that keeps you coming back?
Asking this question can help define what it is that you really offer your customers, beyond just the product or service that you sell. Are you reliable, efficient, quick, friendly, fun to communicate with? Do you offer added value services that build a community or provides aftercare?
Once you know what your audience loves about you, you can find creative ways to keep them coming back. Whether this is through seasonal – or personal – offers and discounts, added extras or exclusive first look at new products, there are many ways to take what you are already doing well and offering that in a more targeted fashion to continue to reward your customers throughout their journey with you.
There’s no denying it: we are living in a digital world. Even the most modest bricks-and-mortar shop or service can benefit from a simple but modern website design and social media presence. Equally, even purely digital brands should be ready to represent in the real world – whether that means branding that’s designed to be used on billboards or tube advertising, or you’re a luxury brand that could benefit from some kind of physical, real world offering like a coffee table book for your clients to take away.
When we speak to our clients about their branding or marketing, we always ask them to consider their future advertising: where would they like their brand to be seen in the future, not just today? This helps us ensure we provide the building blocks of everything they might need to scale – literally, in the case of creating logos that work beautifully as an online avatar or splashed across the screens of Piccadilly Circus.
When we spoke to our team about growth resolutions, one concern we all shared was the danger of generalising. Every company is different and needs to work within its own timeframe, and so your design and publishing goals should be part of your communications strategy. It’s up to you to decide whether you make gradual changes or take the risk on a major overhaul – there are positives to both approaches – but we at Vantage are here to support you whatever your approach.
We recommend building your ideas into your business strategy, while working to strengthen what you have right now. A great example of this could be that your business could benefit from an in-house magazine to add value to both your partners and clients. Print magazines are highly trusted by consumers and, in fact, something like 30% of magazine readers engage directly with the company, as well as being a powerful marketing and communications tool for your brand, and so it’s no wonder that they are still as desired as ever. But if print is too sudden a change, you could begin digitally, by delivering more robust and creatively designed newsletters, blog posts (digital editorial content) or digital magazines to test the market before committing to a physical magazine later down the line.
There really is no limit to a robust design and publishing strategy that grows with you, adds value for your customers, and supports your goals for 2023.
To find out more about how Vantage can work with you to support your goals, contact michelle@vantagemediagroup.co.uk
