Category: Identity & Branding

What Classic Blue Means for 2020

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Pantone recently named their color of the year for 2020: Classic Blue. It was a surprising choice to usher in the new decade as we’ve all been used to seeing vibrant, exciting, trendy colors from Pantone to signify each year.

Pantone describes Classic Blue as “a timeless and enduring blue hue . . . elegant in its simplicity. Suggestive of the sky at dusk, the reassuring qualities of the thought-provoking Pantone 19-4052 Classic Blue highlight our desire for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era.”

“It’s a color that anticipates what’s going to happen next,” said Laurie Pressman, the vice president of the Pantone Color Institute, which selects the Color of the Year.

Color is a multi-million dollar business. It’s a major factor in buying-decisions, from home decor to home renovations to automobiles to fashion and more. Pantone’s color of the year is meant to be a reflection of our culture: where we are and where we’re headed. “Manufacturers and product designers can better appeal to consumers by using color trends in their product planning. In fact, on-trend color can increase packaging readership by 40%. Better yet, 85% of customers said color was the number-one reason they picked a product from the shelf.” –Color Marketing

Classic Blue offers dependability, stability, and connection to an era of turmoil. It’s very safe, secure, familiar, and constant. Businesses who are producing products for consumers want to be on trend with colors, and we’ll continue to see classic blue appearing in the market throughout 2020.

5 Tips to Create Brand Loyalty

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Tablet Featuring Loyalty and Business Graphics

When you think of the word “brand,” you may think that means just your logo and your tagline. But logos and taglines don’t create loyal customers. If you want to build brand loyalty with your customers, your brand needs to be reflected in every interaction you have. Those positive interactions create brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty is important because it allows you to build and grow your business through repeat customers. Additionally, customers who are loyal to your brand give you free marketing whenever they talk about the positive interactions they’ve had with your company. The Forbes Agency Council states, “The more a consumer resonates with your brand, the more likely they are to buy from you again. Creating this loyal following of customers can ensure continued success and help drive sales of your company’s products and services forward.” Here are five tips to create brand loyalty:

1 – Consumer Engagement

This is the core of creating customers who are loyal to your brand. Maintaining conversation can be the difference between keeping and losing a customer. According to Customer Loyalty Statistics, “poor service will inspire about 79% of customers to seek out a competitor within about a week.” As long as your customers are talking to you, then you need to be talking to them by responding to all messages and reviews, soliciting feedback on products or service and giving personal recommendations and add-ons. It is important to follow up regularly to try to keep the conversation going, but no one likes spam in their email. At Riley & You, we can help you craft meaningful and valuable content that your customers will want to read and share.

2 – Anticipate Needs

Think about what your customers need and want from your brand and go the extra mile. This makes a huge impression on customers and can make your brand stand out against your competitors. This may also go beyond your product and services into other areas of your customers’ lives. For example, do they need a new recipe or a checklist for seasonal home repairs? If you know your customers, you can anticipate what they need.

3 – Customer Appreciation

This can be everything from a “thank you for your purchase” note to a happy birthday or happy holidays. These are easy opportunities to open the conversation and invite engagement. Riley & You can help you set up automated ways to do this and craft the messages to fit your brand. Every interaction you have with your customers needs to reflect your brand and be valuable to them. Sara Davis from Osmond Marketing says, “Don’t just write content for the sake of content or throw out minimal discounts or offers. Provide something your users actually care about. What do they want to know, see, do, have? Give them more of that.”

4 – Be Dependable

Being dependable means that you have a high-quality product that exceeds customer expectations. It also means that you are authentic and consistent. People need to know what to expect when they encounter your brand. Dave Wendland from the Hamacher Resource Group says it this way: “Loyalty emerges when trust is established. Trust results from consistency.”

5 – Stay Relevant

In today’s rapidly changing world, you need to have a way to monitor trends and your competition. When you know what the trends are, you can make the most of them for your brand. You also need to stay on top of your business and marketing strategy. This needs to be flexible so that you can adjust based on results, trends, and data. Riley & You knows you may not have time to do all of this, but our team can do it for you. We monitor all parts of your marketing strategy and make recommendations based on actual data.

At Riley & You, we recognize that branding doesn’t end with a logo and tagline. We know how to help companies create and maintain brand loyalty. We take time to get to know you so that we can help grow your brand into everything you want it to be and more. Contact us today about how we can do that for you.

2018: Half a Year, Twice as Fun

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Portfolio image for Guardian Mixed Martial ArtsAt Riley & You, we are having a blast in 2018. The year is only halfway done, but we are having twice as much fun. We’ve had great results with great clients, and the second half is only going to get better. Here are some of the great projects we have worked on so far this year.

Dynamic Landing Pages

DLPs are one of the oft-used tools in our tool belt to customize online marketing campaigns. This year we partnered with appliance manufacturers in a co-branding opportunity for one of our appliance store clients. Our internal team did a great job designing the landing pages, and the manufacturer provided the funding for the campaigns.

Website Design

The new owners for a local business were ready for a new website that targeted their family audience and reflected the values of their brand. We also helped an established business feature their big, beautiful signs on their website and made it easy to navigate for potential customers.

Digital and Print Advertising

We designed delicious-looking ads for a local restaurant that featured their award-winning food. Some of them were web banners, and some were featured in print. All were designed by our Riley & You team.

Special Events

We helped plan a special in-store event series for one of our appliance clients. The event was designed to educate people about the details of a kitchen remodel by bringing in professionals to teach in their areas of expertise. These events covered everything from design to cabinetry and, of course, featured amazing appliances. Overall the store experienced increased attendance and ultimately exposed more people to their brand.

Marketing and advertising is such a diverse field that is constantly growing and changing, and we get to help our clients in so many different ways. We keep up on all the latest trends so that you don’t have to. We are looking forward to the second half of 2018 and can’t wait to see what else we get to do this year!

The R&Y Difference: Websites Designed With Marketing In Mind

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Marketing team working around the tableThe Riley & You team has been hard at work on several new websites in recent months. These projects have given us a chance to dig in with clients, evaluating what they like and don’t like about their current websites. The goal is to launch a new site that fulfills their wish list and sets them apart in the marketplace.

We’ve also used this opportunity to help the clients evaluate their overall marketing objectives, so that we can ensure that their new website is in alignment with those goals. Our design team is top notch, and our developers are great at what they do, but when we start a new website project, our entire team engages in the process. We have a holistic approach that takes the client way beyond questions like “What do you want your website to look like?”

At Riley & You, we truly believe that the greatest opportunity for success comes when our clients embrace a fully integrated marketing plan. 

This is a good example of our comprehensive approach to projects, and highlights the value of working with a full-service marketing agency like Riley & You. When you hire us, you’re getting much more than a beautifully designed website; you’re benefiting from the input and experience of our team of marketing and strategy experts.

Every website project starts with an evaluation of the client’s brand.

Your brand is the essence of who you are. Everything about your brand identity should communicate to clients or customers what they can expect from you. It needs to be the rock-solid foundation for everything you do – including the creation of a new website.

In the case of Symspire, we had a chance to start from scratch, with a brand new company name and logo. Once that process was complete, a new website was created that reflected and amplified the new brand. For DNI Corp, we determined their brand was solid, and their logo only needed a slight adjustment to better reflect who they were.

More than a “one and done” shop.

Sometimes new clients come to us with a singular need, be it a new website, a special print project, or promotional products. And we enjoy getting to work on these projects. But where our clients see the most success – and where our team really shines – is when we go the distance. We are engaged in long-term relationships with many of our clients, journeying through annual marketing strategies, regular evaluations of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) specific to their business, and even implementation of new sales strategies for some of our clients.

Looking Through An Integrated Marketing Lens.

For a business looking for help with a new website, there is no shortage of digital agencies and website designers out there. In some situations, it may make sense to utilize a specialist to accomplish a specific objective. But at Riley & You, we truly believe that the greatest opportunity for success comes when our clients embrace a fully integrated marketing plan. The Data & Marketing Association defines Integrated Marketing as “a process designed to ensure that all messaging and communications strategies are consistent across all channels and are centered on the customer.”

Online and offline strategies need to work together, and your sales funnel needs to be aligned so that each step of your customer’s journey leads them closer to where you ultimately want them to be. When we start a new website project, we bring this kind of thinking to the table. Regardless of whether the client is one we have an ongoing relationship with, or if they’ve hired us only to create a new website, our clients end up with a new website that “fits” their brand, their strategy, and their future.