It’s no great secret that having a memorable brand and experience is critical for growing a business. By setting yourself apart from the competition and developing an appealing image in the public marketplace, you build customer loyalty and increase your recognition and overall profile.
As a result, once you decide what sort of brand you want to present to the world, it’s important to keep it consistent. Utilizing complementary strategies, media, and rhetoric creates a cohesive picture of what your brand stands for, which can actually increase revenue by up to 23%. Even a few slips to an old, “temporary,” or drastically different brand image can confuse and alienate parts of your audience. That’s why it pays to put thought and effort into your brand assets.
What Are Brand Assets and Why Are They Important?
Brand assets are different types of company (brand) assets or marketing materials used for brand association. Examples of these assets include:
Logos and logotypes
Social media graphics
Billboards
Email signatures
Brand assets form a connection with and reference to your brand. Their value isn't necessarily in the assets themselves, but in what they bring to mind for your audience and what people associate them with. When it comes to this one subject, image is everything.
There are at least four reasons why brand assets are so important. First, they boost customer loyalty by building positive associations with the hallmarks of your brand. McDonald’s fans get hungry when they see those golden arches, Target shopping fiends get excited at the sight of the red bullseye, and classic movie fans respect the roar of the MGM lion.
Second, they build trust over time. After a couple of good experiences due to your brand assets, your audience will seek those assets out the next time they need to work in your market space. Third, brand assets increase the return on your ad spend. If you’re able to create a memorable association with your brand assets, your audience will retain that association long after you’ve stopped running the ads.
Finally, brand assets quite simply create a stronger brand identity. Once you coordinate your brand around a singular, strong vision in this way, it will stand out more, get better attention, and project a more consistent image of your brand to your audience.
Asset #1: Portfolio
Whether you’re in graphic design, research, or IT security, you need to keep a record of your major accomplishments on display. It’s an integral part of showcasing your brand and demonstrating to visitors what you’re capable of. As you can see by the graphic below, it works even better when it’s in the visual format of a portfolio.
Wix is an excellent option for hosting a portfolio since it offers a lot of visual flexibility at an affordable price. You’ll be able to arrange the design elements into the format that makes the most sense for your brand segment and match the aesthetic elements that define your brand.
Asset #2: Branding Guidelines/Style Guide
The only way to ensure branding remains consistent between different parts of your business is to create specific branding guidelines, often as part of a style guide. After all, it’s tough to just verbally describe your brand and have someone else know exactly what you mean. It’s much more reliable to have those guidelines about the look and feel of your brand written down in plain language with relevant media references.
When you look at the example above, you can see how branding guidelines are a valuable and underappreciated part of developing a solid brand image. A style guide lets everyone in your company know exactly how to present your brand to the world. It guides the design for all your content, from social media content to blog posts, commercials, and more.
Asset #3: YouTube Intro & Outro
Video marketing on YouTube is an excellent way to boost your brand’s profile. However, make sure you keep your brand image in mind as you create or update your channel. Take advantage of Youtube’s customizable features and incorporate your logo and other visual elements unique to your brand, such as colors and typography.
Using distinct brand-specific aesthetics and assets in your YouTube videos helps viewers associate them with a specific brand appeal. Perhaps most importantly, you should create unique intro and outro segments in all your videos. That way, no matter what the subject of the video is, your audience will clearly understand its connection to your business and build a sense of familiarity.
Asset #4: Newsletter Templates
A newsletter is a great way to keep up with your audience and let your customers know what you’ve been up to. It can also connect you to other brands and make them aware of opportunities to collaborate with you. We’re not just assuming this either- Zoek has a small business newsletter you should check out. Once a month, we send you tips, trends, and information small business owners need to improve their brand awareness and enhance their marketing efforts.No matter the subject or size of your newsletter, though, you should work off of established templates.
As you can see by the graphic above, this has several advantages, including reducing the amount of work needed for each newsletter after the first, and allowing readers to become familiar with the newsletter format. And, of course, templates consistent with the look and feel of your brand boost that all-important brand identity by immediately showing where your newsletter is from and what values it promises.
Asset #5: Blog Graphics
Simply by including relevant images on your blog, you nearly double the views and increase the amount of time your readers stay on the page. While any decent quality images will help, it’s best to use unique graphics made or revised especially for your blog. In this way, your blog develops its own distinctive look and can help redirect viewers to different pages. Check out the example below:
These graphics don’t just make the blog look more visually appealing when appropriately used, they also help keep the reader’s attention, and tell the story of your blog in a visual way. For an example of how to make blog graphics work for you, check out some more of our blogs. By regularly inserting high-quality illustrations and infographics, these blogs are able to compel readers to stay on the page much longer than just a wall of text could.
Asset #6: Social Media Video Ads
Branded social media ads are a great way to increase engagement and viewership on your social media. However, the unique format of social media means you can’t just post the same video everywhere and expect to get the best results. We recommend having a specific video and format for each social media channel. For Instagram, your social media ad will be in a square like below:
Make sure you account for the particulars of your chosen platform when you edit or create video ads for it. For example, whether videos automatically play with or without audio, and the resolution used on the platform. Ultimately, though, the effort is worth it since branded social videos are so much more powerful than text or image alternatives.
Asset #7: Pitch Deck
Even if you’re not currently looking for investors or co-owners for your business, it’s important to have a high-quality pitch deck on hand. These are a great way to make a solid first impression on your audience and potential partners, attract collaborators, and give key information at a moment’s notice. A quality pitch deck will show any viewer what your brand is about, what problems you’re solving, and your strengths.
As the Canva template shows above, your small business can use your pitch deck to showcase your brand’s bio, sales, and growth in a visually appealing way to its audience. Investors or corporate partners will be more inclined to learn about the benefits of your collaboration if the materials you are using are visually attractive, highlight important aspects, and are memorable.
Asset #8: Mockups
Mockups are one of the best ways to showcase multiple factors of your business, including shirt designs, business cards, stationery, ads, and more. In fact, you’ve probably seen them thousands of times and never realized it. After all, a well-done mockup should look just like the real thing.
The images above are mockups of a fitness studio and dating app our graphic design team created for clients. When high-quality images are preferred by 67% of consumers over product descriptions, having quality mockups on your website and social media is key to creating a highly-engaged, converting audience.
If we hadn’t mentioned those images were mockups, would they have fooled you?
Asset #9: Animated Infographics
Conveying the selling points of your brand to your audience is important, but it can be tough to get them to sit still for data and information. One way to keep their attention is with fun, compelling, animated infographics. These visual assets can be tricky to design, but when done well, draw attention to key facts about your brand and make them easy to understand.
Better yet, they can be shared outside of your website or social media feeds, spreading your message’s reach and demonstrating your expertise to a broader audience.
Asset #10: Landing Pages
A powerful landing page is the foundation for any successful digital marketing campaign. Your offer may be incredibly, and your ads might be on point, but without a good landing page, your campaign is sure to fail. And with the average user’s attention span growing shorter and shorter, it’s more important now than ever to grab their attention within a split second.
A good graphic designer will be able to take important landing page elements into consideration, such as flow, layout, branding, and trends, to create a page your audience can’t help but engage with. Another factor graphic designers take into account that many non-designers don’t is graphic size. If your landing page takes too long to load, you could increase your bounce rate up to 38%!
Key Takeaways
Without strong, customized brand assets, you’ll have a much tougher time creating a memorable brand experience. Using consistent video, image, audio, and messaging does wonders to establish a firm foundation for your brand in the public’s mind. It’s a great way to pull people in and let them discover what you’re all about.
It may be overwhelming to discover you are missing out on a number of brand assets. However, by simply working on them one at a time and steadily adding to your pool of resources, you will continually be improving the quality of your brand image and your public recognition. If you’d like help, our graphic design department here at Zoek would be proud to work with you.
These expert creative artists know how to draft and create appealing brand assets that mesh well with your brand goals and existing aesthetics. You’ll get unlimited revisions and limitless requests.
Just click here to schedule an appointment with a graphic designer today!