Identity & Branding – Riley & You

The Importance of Brand Guides

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Whether you are just starting to create your brand or have a well-established brand identity, every company can benefit from a brand guide. At Riley & You, we help businesses develop strong brand identities with accompanying guidelines for brand consistency. According to Forbes.com, “A style guide is essential to keep your brand identity consistent, recognizable, and ownable, even as different people develop content for your brand…it’s important to spend the time and resources to get it right.”

A brand guide is a tool that streamlines your brand identity across various media platforms and multiple design and communication partners. It helps to keep everyone on the same page as they represent your brand to your audience. A consistent brand establishes credibility and recognizability, which further solidifies the connection customers feel with your brand and everything that it represents, making them more likely to trust and value what your brand offers.

A brand guide includes all the elements that are needed to create a consistent brand identity. One of the major elements is your logo and all the different forms your logo can take, including size, proportions, and taglines. Often brand guides also contain a color palette and specific fonts and typography that you will use to represent your brand. It’s also a good idea to include your mission statement and a buyer persona so that these parts of your brand are clearly communicated to all your marketing partners.

Marketing is about more than just branding; it’s about storytelling and inviting your audience into that story with you. At Riley & You, we know how to use your brand identity to tell effective and consistent stories through every marketing platform. We have helped companies like Hagedorn’s Appliances and Guardian establish their brands and all the elements that they need to communicate to their audience. Contact us today so we can help you craft your own brand identity.

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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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.

Showcasing Our Work: Appliance Gallery

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Appliance Gallery is a locally owned dealer serving homeowners, designers, and builders from the same location for over 25 years. Their history, combined with their knowledgeable staff, premium product lines, and commitment to customer service puts them in a prime position to experience significant growth.

We kicked off our relationship with Appliance Gallery by giving their logo and branding a fresh look. Once that was in place, we turned our attention to an integrated marketing strategy to take them well into 2019. Using proven tools customized for their brand and their audience, we’ve helped them map a path towards more business, greater profit margins, and greater market share.

Step One: Branding

We created a refreshed version of their logo by updating fonts, styles, and colors to better reflect both the client and their audience. From there, we updated their existing website and social media with their rebranded look and added a Resource Library to their website for articles and additional resources.

Step Two: Promotion

With a strong foundation built, we created a new marketing plan to promote Appliance Gallery. Key elements include a custom booklet targeted to builders, interior designers, and homeowners, Brand Positioning Cards™ designed to be used in the showroom, interior and exterior showroom signage, and integrated Sales Campaigns featuring a targeted Lifestyle Mailer™, email and online marketing.

We understand the world of the premium appliance dealer, and we’ve enjoyed using our expertise for Appliance Gallery. Contact Riley & You to learn more about the services we offer and how we help premium appliance dealers experience growth.

2018: Half a Year, Twice as Fun

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Portfolio image for Guardian Mixed Martial Arts At 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!