Blog: The Spin
#LaundryMarketingNews
July 24, 2018
How to Design an Effective Visual Brand for Your Linen or Uniform Service
Do you still have the same hand-drawn logo that you did 70 years ago? Does your website use about 10 different fonts? Are your print ads straight out of the 1980s?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, then it might be time for a brand redesign.
You might assume that your logo and website design have little to do with the quality of your linen or uniform service, which is kind of true. You could have the best website in the world and never make a correct delivery. However, your corporate design has a huge impact on how customers perceive the quality of your business, which is just as important.
These days, there are very few situations in which your corporate design isn’t one of the first meaningful contacts that a potential customer has with your company. Whether it’s a business card given by a friend in the industry, the sight of your trucks driving around town or a Google search that lands them on your website, great corporate design could make the difference between a call that rings to your office and a call that goes to your competitor.
Why Visual Branding Matters
Branding isn’t just important to your business. In many ways, it defines your business. Here’s why having great corporate design is so important to your brand:
1. It sets you apart from your competitors
At its core, branding is all about differentiation. Without a unique, distinct visual brand, you’re going to blend right into the crowd. Good corporate design can distinguish you from your competitors and show how you’re different.
2. It connects with people on a deeper level
Humans are visual creatures. Did you know that 90% of the information that our brain processes is visual? When it comes to grabbing consumer attention, visuals are one of the best ways to engage with and make an impression on potential customers. Without good corporate design, you’re not going to be able to take up any consumer attention.
3. It helps you communicate what you’re about
Are you a family company? Are you locally-owned? Have you been around since the early 1900s? Do you use the latest laundry technologies? No matter what aspect of your company you’re trying to promote, you can use corporate design to communicate your values to potential and current customers in a way that is subtle and aesthetically pleasing.
The Key Elements of Good Branding
Just because you have a linen or uniform service brand doesn’t mean it’s a good one. In fact, if your branding efforts aren’t lining up with customer expectations, then branding could be hurting your business, not helping it.
1. Good branding is audience-based
One of the first rules in any marketing effort is to think about your audience. If your audience can’t connect with or understand your brand, then it’s not good branding. For example, visual designs depicting your state-of-the-art laundry processing plant probably mean nothing to your potential customers. They don’t know the ins and outs of commercial laundry processing and they don’t need to. Instead, visuals of smiling customers using clean towels and sheets or employees wearing tailored and well-maintained uniforms are likely to have more of an impact. If you aren’t reaching your audience with the right message, then your branding efforts are meaningless.
2. Good branding is consistent
If every piece of visual content you produce looks totally different, then your brand has a consistency problem. In order to create a recognizable visual brand, your logos, colors, fonts, images and more shouldn’t look that different each time you produce more visual content. So, if you want your customers who frequently visit your website to be able to find and like your page on Facebook, then you should be using the same logo on both your website and Facebook profile or customers won’t know if they’ve landed on the right page. Consistent visuals help your potential customers identify and build a relationship with your brand.
3. Good branding stands out
Good corporate design is hard to define, because often you just know it when you see it. Whether it’s simple and minimalistic or colorful and out-of-the-box, good branding should connect with you and provoke some sort of response.
Essential Design Types
Visual design can take many forms, but there are a few designs that your business absolutely needs to create a marketable visual brand: print design, web design and ad design.
When it comes to print marketing, newspaper or magazine ads probably come to mind. But print design is so much more than that. Print design can include brochures, business cards, product catalogs, upsell material and more.
Web design includes everything connected to your website. Every page should have a consistent brand design but should leave room for unique touches depending on the purpose of the page.
Ad design is connected to web design, but ads are a little more targeted to a specific purpose – usually to get people to contact your business. Ads should have a high visual appeal and should work on a variety of different online platforms.
Get Corporate Designs from Laundry Marketing Experts
We provide corporate branding, design and development specifically to the linen and uniform service industry. We can help you refresh your brand visuals with designs that will connect with your customers and create a good impression of your business! Whether you need a website re-branding or a business card design, we can help you create engaging and effective visual content.
Check out our design portfolio and contact us today for more information about our services!
