If you own a small business, you know how important marketing can be. Social media is one of the best tools available for marketing today. It’s easily integrated into most people’s daily lives and presents a friendly, welcoming face to Read More
Marketing isn’t something you can do part time or as a hobby. Small business owners who want their businesses to grow must understand that a solid marketing strategy plays a huge role in making that dream a reality. With that Read More
Many business owners select their color scheme based largely on personal preference, but did you know that there is a whole psychology behind color choices? Choosing the right colors for your business logo is essential. Color can be used to invoke certain emotions, creating a whole range of feelings, from calm to energetic. When choosing a color for your business, consider its connotations. For help deciding what works best, here are some examples of from local San Antonio businesses who rocked their color choices:
Purple is a color of mystery and richness, and is often associated with royalty. It embodies the energy or red with the calmness of blue and it is neither a warm nor cold color…thus the mystery. It is at the same time uplifting and associated with bravery, case in point the Purple Heart. Very few businesses use purple in their logos the most famous being Yahoo and Crown Royal, they really embrace the connection to royalty.
Purple can also convey sophistication and spirituality, which are both embodied in Saint Mary’s Hall, one of San Antonio’s best private schools. Founded back in 1879, this originally Episcopalian school has shed its religious ties, but still promotes academic excellence. St. Mary’s prepares its students for life after high school with a rigorous and challenging curriculum, even offering 26 AP courses. With tuition ranging from $13K for kindergarten to $24K for high schoolers, this school isn’t just for anyone. Families paying those kind of rates for their children’s education expect the royal treatment.
Red is the color of passion and energy and it evokes a visceral response. It triggers the pituitary gland and raises your heart rate, it is attention grabbing and provocative. It is used by brands like Coca Cola and CNN, brands once thought to be cutting edge.
Rocking a red logo on your brand will give your customers the impression that your brand is strong and established. That it’s something they can trust. Logos in crimson have been proven to work best for restaurants and retail stores since it increases appetite and encourages individuals to buy impulsively.
Reminiscent of the sky and the ocean, blue is said to put you at ease. It is arguably one of the most common colors used in logos and branding. It conveys sincerity, family, wholesomeness, responsibility and general good feelings. Blue works well for the corporate world and you will find it used most often by conservative business, attorneys, accountants and insurance companies. Famous businesses branded with the color blue are Dell, Facebook, Walmart and American Express just to name a few.
In San Antonio, the blue Frost Bank logo is synonymous with stability and dependability. Around since 1868, this San Antonio based company has been taking care of Texans’ banking, investment and insurance needs for more than 150 years. Today, Frost Bank is the largest Texas-based bank, with 126 locations throughout the Lone Star State. The relatively simple logo is uncomplicated, with just a simple emblem and undecorated font. This bank isn’t about being fussy with their design; they are all about the business of banking, which is what we would hope a major financial institution would prioritize.
100 West Houston Street
San Antonio, 78205
(800) 513-7678
Green is often associated with calm, freshness, nature, health and healing. Like blue it is extremely common as a branding color, invoking emotions like compassion and empathy. Some big businesses that use green are Whole Foods, John Deere, and Tropicana, all of these are associated with food and farming. Health industries will use green a great deal too.
Right now, the San Antonio Zoo (Twitter) is rocking the green look with its playful logo that incorporates the silhouettes of some of its most popular residents, the giraffe and rhinoceros. This logo welcomes visitors to take a peek at some of the most intriguing animals found in nature, while suggesting health and well-being.
San Antonio Zoo
3903 N. St. Mary’s Street
San Antonio, TX 78212-3199
(210) 734-7184
Yellow is most associated with the sun so it invokes feelings of optimism and hope. It is warm and happy while stimulating the logical side of the brain. However, too much yellow can cause anxiety and nervousness, so for business in makes a better accent color. That hasn’t stopped plenty of big brand names from using yellow to stand out, McDonald’s and Subway both use it.
San Antonio energy magnate, Valero, makes great use of yellow as an accent color splashing across its otherwise teal logo. Not only does this dash of color catch the customer’s eye, but it suggests energy, which is perfect statement for a gas company. Zip in and fuel up on Valero gasoline, and hit the road with renewed optimism and oomph.
One Valero Way
San Antonio, Texas 78249
(210) 345-2000
Orange
You take the cheery yellow and combine in with the boldness of a red and you have the cheerful confidence of orange. It is a warm and vibrant yet bold and playful color, and you will find orange splashed across some well-known logos. Hooters, Amazon, Payless and Harley Davidson all use the richness of orange to stand out in the crowd.
There are few things that Texans love more than BBQ. Major BBQ outfit, Bill Miller BBQ (facebook), has been serving up some of the best brisket and ribs in San Antonio since 1953. Their iconic orange and brown logo featuring a cartoonish cow, chicken, and pig, beckons drivers to pull over for a decades-old tradition of delicious food. Though it appears that the logo hasn’t changed since the 1950s, neither has the company’s commitment to smoking fantastic BBQ. We think they should keep things just the way they are!
P.O. Box 839925
San Antonio, Texas 78283-3925
(210) 225-4461
Before you go out and redesign your entire logo and marketing materials to make everything blue or red, bear in mind this is very subjective. Color is too dependent on personal preferences and life experiences to ever effectively translate into a universal statement. However, if this article leaves you craving a logo revamp, we’d be happy to help!
When it comes to the sheer number of tools available to users, there really isn’t a field that compares to digital marketing. For both small business owners and professionals, alike, there is a vast amount of software and platforms available to make executing a successful SEO campaign quicker and easier. From competitive analysis to social media automation to list building, there is an offering to make nearly every aspect of digital marketing more efficient. While some are just a waste of money, we’ve found there are some we simply cannot do without. We collaborated with SEO Austin company to come up with a list of the 5 most loved marketing technologies every marketer should be using.
Hubspot offers an all-in-one marketing solution that’s affordable for even small business.
Hubspot is really the Swiss army knife of inbound marketing tools. With it you have a lite version of CRM (customer relationship management), email marketing, form submission, landing page generator, and integration with CMS. One of the most valuable parts of Hubspot is the ability to do split testing. Split testing is a means of testing different versions of a webpage to see which version best converts traffic. Marketing, especially inbound marketing, is all about testing what’s effective, with the ultimate goal of maximizing conversions. Hubspot allows you to easily test different landing pages to see which one gets the best response, improving your overall marketing results.
Buffer takes your social media campaign and puts it on autopilot leaving you free to concentrate on other aspects of your marketing campaign. Success on social media means posting often and posting valuable shareable content. For most small businesses, the frequency with which most experts say you should post on social media is simply far too onerous. According to Short Stack, the recommended recipe is 5 Pinterest posts, 3 Tweets, 3 Google+ posts, 2 Facebook posts, 2 Instagrams, 1 LinkedIn, and 2 blog posts a day. Keeping up with this much social media would require a small army. With the Buffer app, anytime you come across great content, you can schedule it to automatically post on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets.
This is another “all in one” type of solution for inbound marketing, which is similar to Hubspot, but is geared towards larger organizations that can afford the hefty price tag. Big companies like Salesforce and Chrysler use Marketo to track their campaigns, while smaller companies tend to flock to Hubspot. On the upside, Marketo lets you purchase its product modules separately or all together, making it a more customizable solution than Hubspot, but because of this customization, it also requires more technological savvy to implement.
Before embarking on any marketing campaign, you’ll need a website. WordPress is far and away the most popular platform for building out a site, powering over 26% of the web. It’s also the most recommended platform among SEO professionals; at We Are Pixel 8, we only use WordPress for our design work. The main perks of WordPress? It’s flexible, free, easy to use, and robust enough even for the biggest of sites. If you’re still thinking of WordPress as a simple blogging platform those days are long gone. It is easy enough for anyone to use, so no more hiring a developer to change a couple of lines of text for you and waiting 6 months for that to happen. There are millions of plugins available to make your site look and do whatever you want. Plus, the backend code is clean and search engines love it.
One of the key tools of an online marketing campaign is the email list. Through email, you can keep customers current on your latest offerings, sales, and more, but managing your list can be a pain point. Mailchimp is a great tool for organizations of all sizes, managing email efficiently and effectively. The Mailchimp platform offers a double opt-in system to keep your list clean and up-to-date. Plus, Mailchimp can also help you send out well-designed newsletters or sales letters, track the open rates, and the rates of engagement.
These tools are essential to the arsenal of any marketing team, to grow your business, track leads and campaigns. Though they make time to incorporate on the front end, it is well worth the investment of time and money to use these tools to your advantage.
While the average consumer has an inbox jammed with sales offers, business owners have it that much worse. Many marketing emails get immediately trashed without being opened, because people simply don’t have the time or desire to read everything that Read More
