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Make Your Brand Stand Out With A Positioning Statement

October 20, 2021/in Blog, Marketing/by xSynergy Solutions

Having a stellar positioning statement is key to making your brand stand out. It’s the “how” of what you do and yet so many companies overlook this critical piece of a brand. There may be many companies that offer the same product or service as yours, but only you do it your way. A positioning statement (aka slogan or tag line) is your chance to set yourself apart from the competition. Your chance to position yourself. It is the guiding force of your brand.

Powerful Positioning Statement

In a previous blog we shared about the power of a brand, and the positioning statement is a key element to a strong brand. It’s difficult to develop a brand positioning statement without the help of a marketing professional who can help guide the discussion, in a former blog we explained the elements that go into a positioning statement and one can deduct after reading, that it’s best to seek the help of a marketing professional.

Because a positioning statement tells your audience why your product, or service is unique from similar products/services in the market it must be crafted with a clear and precise message. The statement typically provides the central focus and direction of a company, and the unique reputation they intend to create for the brand.

It must answer these critical questions

Does it effectively differentiate your brand?
Will it grow with you? (does it allow for long-term success?)
Does it paint a clear mental image?
Does it speak to your core audience?
Is it easily understood?
Will it stand out amongst your competitors?
Is it unique?
Is it memorable?
Does it reflect your brand’s personality?

Examples of Successful Positioning Statements

Apple – Think different.
Kentucky Fried Chicken – Finger Lickin’ Good
Nike – Just Do It
Arby’s – We Have The Meats
M&Ms – Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands.
Wheaties – The Breakfast of Champions.

While a positioning statement is a key piece to your brand, it doesn’t stop there.

A good brand must also consider logo development, color, typography, to name a few. Consult the help of a marketing professional to ensure

xSynergy Marketing is a division of xSynergy Solutions, based in Centennial, CO. As a true, full-service marketing partner, we can manage all aspects of your marketing needs: branding and design, website development, digital marketing, social media management, paid search, content management, photography, and video production. Contact us today for a complimentary marketing analysis of your existing collateral.

Choosing a Good Domain Name

August 12, 2021/in Blog, Marketing/by xSynergy Solutions

The first domain name was registered more than 30 years ago. Since then, over 330 million domains have come into circulation. With that kind of competition, choosing a good domain name for your business is imperative. A memorable domain name makes all the difference when it comes to creating a successful online presence. In simplest terms, a domain name gives people an easy-to-remember name and address for your website and allows for brand consistency.

The Importance Of A Good Domain Name

Domain names establish a unique identity for your website and represent your brand. Does it matter if your domain name is different than your business name? Yes! A targeted domain name that matches your company name is critical for avoiding brand confusion, so the ideal situation is to have your domain name match your business name. If you’re just starting your business and haven’t yet decided on a business name, you may even want to adjust your business name to match available domains. For example, suppose you were planning to name your business Shoe Palace, but the domain name shoepalace.com is taken. If shoeemporium.com is available, you could change your business name to Shoe Emporium.

Choosing a good domain name does more than identify your brand. It serves to strengthen your brand’s credibility and enhance your domain SEO.

Things to Avoid When Choosing a Domain Name

1. Domains that are too long

You want the domain name for your website to be something that’s short and to the point. This is what’s going to make it memorable and encourage people to visit it.

In an effort to make your domain name unique, you might be tempted to go with a name that’s on the longer side. But this could lead to people typing your domain name wrong when attempting to visit your site and cause you to miss out on traffic.

2. Domains that are difficult to read

Make sure your domain name is easy for people to read and, maybe more importantly, easy for them to say when they’re discussing it with others. Your audience should have to wonder if they are pronouncing your domain correctly. Also, avoid using any words that might be hard for the average person to spell.

3. Domains that contain numbers

This is almost always a bad idea since it often leads to confusion when people go to visit websites. Let’s say that you want to sell the fact that you own the best gym in town. You might be tempted to make your domain name something like number1gym.com. To you, this might seem like a perfect domain name. But what’s going to happen when half your customers try to visit your website by typing in numberonecarwash.com? Unless you buy that domain name, too, and have it redirect people to number1carwash.com, you’re going to miss out on a lot of potential traffic. It’s best to leave numbers out of the equation altogether.

4. Domains with hyphens

Adding hyphens to a domain name can be tempting because it opens up so many possibilities by giving you access to a domain name that you wouldn’t be able to get without hyphens in it.

But here’s the problem: You’re going to have to work really hard to get people to remember to put hyphens into your domain name when trying to visit your site. Many of them will end up typing your domain name in without the hyphens and visiting a site other than yours. You’re better off coming up with a different domain name than trying to squeeze hyphens into bad domain names.

5. Domain names different from your business name

When you start a business website from scratch, SEO is very important. SEO, or search engine optimization, can give your site a big boost and help it land higher on search engine results pages.

There are a variety of ways to improve the SEO of your site. You can fill it with high-quality content that contains certain keywords that are important within your industry. But one of the simplest ways to improve SEO is by making your business name and domain name the same. Google has been known to give businesses that take this approach to create domain names a slight bump in the SEO department.

6. Avoid using an extension other than .com

A .com domain name is the most common extension and still generally carries more significant value for companies. That’s because most of your customers are going to assume your website is [your business name].com. The .com extension will also have a direct impact on your search rankings. Google prioritizes this extension because Internet users default to .com domains. People expect sites to use the extension – many associate real businesses with .coms, and Google tends to play on user assumptions.

There are a few exceptions to the rule. For example, the .org extension is well-known and trusted. The .org stands for ‘organization’ and is the primary choice for charity or non-profit websites. Website with the extension .edu are assigned to educational institutions.

Your domain name matters, and with a good domain name, you can set your business up for success. Make sure that you avoid the types of domain names that we mentioned above. The future success of your website and business could very well depend on it.

Looking to learn more about coming up with a great domain name or need help with other marketing aspects? Give xSynergy Marketing a call. xSynergy Marketing is a division of xSynergy Solutions, based in Centennial, CO. As a true, full-service marketing partner, we can manage all aspects of your marketing needs: branding and design, website development, digital marketing, social media management, paid search, content management, photography, and video production. Contact us today for a complimentary marketing analysis of your existing collateral.

8 Critical Website Components

June 21, 2021/in Blog, Marketing/by xSynergy Solutions

Having a website that is functional and in line with your brand is critical. In this blog, you’ll learn about eight critical website components to ensure you are maximizing it as a marketing tool.

Responsiveness

How responsive is your website? Being able to answer this question correctly is one of the qualities a good website should possess. You are building for your users, and your users do not all use a single device.

Building a website that is responsive across devices is crucial to creating a fantastic user experience. A responsive website will function well on both old and new desktop devices, and on different types of mobile devices as well, be it smartphones or tablets. So when creating your website, your web designer has to ensure that your site is built with themes that can function well on all devices. In case you didn’t know, Google is now mobile-first, and that means that Google considers how mobile-friendly your site is when calculating the ranking of your site.

Content

Apart from a good design and responsive website, content is equally important. Your design won’t be of much value if you are not sending a clear message to your users.
Capturing readers’ interests with good website content can be really challenging. Most visitors will spend just a few seconds on a web page before deciding what to do next.

Good website writing is the key to beating these odds. Well-written content that’s optimized for the web rises to the top of search results and holds readers’ attention. The content must also be consistent with your brand’s personality.

Load Time

Your website loading time is another factor to watch out for. The average load time of your website is one of the qualities that make an excellent website. Optimize your website to ensure it doesn’t take too long to load.

When you have a website that loads fast, you will simultaneously reduce your site’s bounce rate. Website loading time is the speed at which your website loads when a visitor tries to access a webpage on the site. Bounce rate, on the other hand, is how frequent and how quick visitors leave your website when they visit. If your site’s visitors are impressed with what they find on your website, they will spend more time on it, but if they are not impressed, they will leave almost immediately.

Design

You shouldn’t take the appearance of your website lightly. Consistency in the appearance of your website matters a lot. Ensure that your website maintains consistency throughout, from webpage to webpage, the navigation, the fonts, margins, spacing, color, heading sizes, button styles, etc. As readers go through your web pages, they should feel like they’re in a peculiar space that has a single identity the captures your brand. Your website should not lack coherence. As they go from articles to articles and check different pages on your site, the unique identity of your site should still be glaring. This means that you shouldn’t use design elements that look out of place with the rest.

Besides consistency, your website design should be created with people who may have difficulty seeing in mind. Make use of white space, this will highlight the text on your webpage. Your color choice should be aligned with your brand colors and shouldn’t be too bright or too dull that readers will have to strain their eyes to read your web content. Secondly, make use of clear fonts, not stylish fonts as that can make it difficult for people to read the words on your website.

Contact Form

Tracking user activity and conversion and collecting user data is a good practice that can be used to improve your website and your business at large. Using a contact form makes it easier for your visitors to enter their details without leaving your website. Your contact form should always be accompanied with a thank you message.

Call To Action (CTA)

A quality website needs to have a call-to-action feature, as this can help increase your conversion rate by a large margin. The call-to-action feature can be used to build a mailing list, give out coupon prices or make an actual sale. Call to action is a key marketing strategy; hence you need to have it as part of your website, and you have to implement it strategically too to get the best results.

Your call to action (CTA) isn’t just a text asking your target audience to make a commitment, it is a pitch, so polish it and make it look appealing and convincing.

Security

The security level of your website is paramount to the users. A good website must ensure proper security measures are in place to shield it from hackers. If your website is insecure, do not expect users to keep their information with you, neither will they trust you enough to make use of your website.

The first thing to do if you want a secure website is to host your website on a web hosting provider that offers strong security. Your website should also have SSL encryption.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is a crucial part of a quality website, so ensure your website follows SEO rules and guidelines. A website with a poor code structure won’t fare well when it comes to SEO, which reduces the ability to attract traffic from external sources and search engines correctly.

There are several SEO practices you can do to make your site rank well on search engines — good use of keywords, internal and external link building, optimizing your title tags, optimizing your images, etc.

You can also make use of SEO tools that are sure to help you achieve your SEO goals and invariably improve the quality of your website. Google Search Console is one of the highly recommended SEO tools you can use to monitor your site’s performance. You get to see how many people visit your website, how your site is doing on search engine result pages (SERPs ), and then use the data to improve your SEO practices.

Conclusion

The above eight key points are the qualities a website should at least have; they are essential to a website’s survival and growth.

xSynergy Marketing is a division of xSynergy Solutions, based in Centennial, CO. As a true, full-service marketing partner, we can manage all aspects of your marketing needs: branding and design, website development, digital marketing, social media management, paid search, content management, photography, and video production. Contact us today for a complimentary marketing analysis of your existing collateral.

The Importance of a Positioning Statement

February 28, 2021/in Blog, Marketing/by xSynergy Solutions

A business’ brand plays a vital role to the life cycle of any successful organization as it exposes and promotes your products and services to hundreds of potential customers. A positioning statement is a critical piece of any brand and it is commonly overlooked.

All the marketing efforts in the world are useless if the market does not remember your name/brand. This is the hard truth about marketing and unfortunately, it seems many business owners fall short in this category.

In previous blogs, we have written about the power of a brand and the critical elements that contribute. This blog is focused on the importance of one of those key elements, a positioning statement.

What is a Positioning Statement?

One way to ensure people remember you and your products and/or services is to come up with a brilliant positioning statement. A positioning statement should define what you do, how you do it, and position you within your industry all within a few catchy words. Some good examples include Apple “Think Differently” and Kentucky Fried Chicken “it’s finger lickin’ good!”. Both statements identify briefly what the organization can do for you in just a few simple words. Remember, the KISS rule definitely applies here! Keep It Simple, Stupid. Not our words, but a universally accepted sound business principle.

How to Develop A Positioning Statement?

It is critical to engage a marketing professional who is well versed in the branding process. A good marketer will assist you in developing a strong positioning statement, one that is aligned with your brand, and considers these key steps:

Begin by reviewing your company’s Mission and Vision Statements and keep these in mind throughout the process. Understand the difference, mission/vision statements share how you plan to execute your strategies, while a positioning statement is part of your brand and states “how you do what you do”.
Make a list of your audiences and prioritize them.
For each customer type, figure out what their urgent needs are. Do not assume you know what your customers’ needs and pains are. Get out and talk to customers to get an in-depth understanding of their wants and their needs, and pain points.
Make a list of key features of your products and/or services and how each one solves the customer needs identified.
Analyze your competitors. Gather information from their website, printed materials, and other sources. Evaluate how they are positioning themselves and what their key messages are.
Now you have all the necessary information to identify your distinctive positioning, focus on how you meet the most urgent need, or top two if there is a close second. In solving those needs, what do you do that is unique compared to the competition? Identify the one most compelling reason for customers to do business with you. It is important to be focused. We tell our clients to think of how they would complete this sentence: Only we ______. Hint: it cannot be related to customer service; we hope that is a given!
Write a sentence that gives a distinctive advantage, not just presents your value as a superlative claim. Keep honing it until it is clear and feels right. Check it out with outside contacts for confirmation that it conveys the compelling reason to do business with you.

Own It

Once you have applied these steps, you should have in your hands an effective positioning statement that will soon become the single most important sentence in your marketing arsenal. Use this positioning statement wherever you can. Remember, keep it simple. There is nothing worse than a position statement that takes more than a few seconds to read, process, and most importantly memorize.

Engage With a Professional

xSynergy Marketing is a division of xSynergy Solutions, based in Centennial, CO. As a true, full-service marketing partner, we can manage all aspects of your marketing needs: branding and design, website development, digital marketing, social media management, paid search, content management, photography, and video production. Contact us today for a complimentary marketing analysis of your existing collateral.

The 5 Whys of Lean

January 28, 2021/in Blog, Optimization/by xSynergy Solutions

When you think about the power behind the five (5) whys process for lean, it’s best to reflect on a conversation with a young child. The inquisitiveness at that young age when they repeatedly ask “why” in an exhaustive fashion. While believing the first couple of responses should have quelled their constant but “why” and yet it does not, there is delight in the end with successfully helping them find the true answer to their original why. What is fascinating with this process is that it will drive an understanding of the core why (root cause).

There is a tendency when examining a failure in a business process to stop when the first or second why is answered so we can move onto the next business issue. The shortcut: stopping at the first or second why does not allow an organization to get to the real why (root cause) and thus does not allow for the creation of a solution that prevents the error from occurring again.

What is the five (5) whys analysis process:

State the specific problem that needs to be addressed
Identify and categorize the possible causes for that problem (the first “why”) and attach any supporting documents
Rate each cause based on the likelihood that it led to the problem
Move forward with the top-rated cause and identify the possible causes for that problem (the second “why”)
Repeat steps 1–4 until the root cause of the problem is identified
Develop an action plan to resolve and mitigate the identified root cause

Why use the five (5) whys process?

Identifies the root cause, not just the symptoms
Allows users to perform an evidence-based analysis
Ultimately eliminates issues in the system for good
Seeks to drive improvements and welcomes change
Builds a culture that embraces progress

The power of the five (5) whys is to poke yoke (error proof) the process where the root cause occurred, and the benefits come in many forms. The benefits include improved customer experience, process waste eliminated, and employee satisfaction to name a few. To learn more about lean please contact xSynergy Solutions at info@xsynergysolutions.com

xSynergy Solutions is a full-service business transformation firm located in Centennial, CO. We impact every aspect of your business from marketing to operational strategies. Learn more at xsynergysolutions.com.

The Power Of A Brand

November 17, 2020/in Blog, Marketing/by xSynergy Solutions

What is a Brand?

When we develop a new brand or rebrand a company, we often find clients think they’re just getting a logo. A mark to stamp anywhere and everywhere – front and center on the back of the business card, thrown in the corner of a letterhead, etc. Of course, the logo is the centerpiece of any branding project and creates the visual of the company’s identity, however when done right, there’s so much more that is involved.

A brand speaks through a visual language, writes in a consistent voice, takes on a perspective, and evokes a specific feeling. There are many elements such as color, typography, and imagery style that, once defined, create the outline for the brand and anything that can be done within those boundaries is how the identity grows. A company’s brand not only states WHO they are and WHAT they do, but HOW they do it.

A brand should include the following elements:

Defined color palette
Hierarchy of typography
Imagery style
-This could be a photography style, illustration style, or both
Consistent icon family (if applicable)
Logo in color, black, and white
– Some companies may have a primary and secondary logo format
– Some companies may have an icon that can be used separately
Positioning Statement
Brand Guide

What Makes a Good Brand?

A good brand draws inspiration from and reflects its creators and their values. A designer will listen to their client, and based on personal experience or research, will come up with several directions to take a brand. But a great designer balances 1.) best-practice design and communication principles, 2.) current trends in the market, and 3.) the themes and messaging that inspired the client in the first place. A great brand rests comfortably, and seemingly effortlessly, on these 3 legs. But of course, getting to this point is the farthest thing from effortless and is done with deliberate intent.

A good brand flexes everything it has to create a cohesive design system. Of course, you can simply throw your logo everywhere on everything, and probably for a lot less money, however, the result of that would be cheapening the logo (and by extension your brand) by significantly reducing the amount of impact it has on the consumer. A logo is your chorus and every instance that you use it should be thoughtful and intentional. It is the culmination of all the big ideas that went into your brand, the climax, and just like a song your brand needs verses. A good brand utilizes all of its core elements (color, typography, etc.) to evoke emotion and communicate its mission, stance in the marketplace, and goals. To do this, you must create a design system that cohesively presents the brand in different, visually interesting ways, from many angles. The elements and graphics created within this system should push and challenge the boundaries of the brand without breaking them.

A good brand is very carefully defined, in every aspect, and maintained for consistency. A brand can ebb and flow and even ultimately change over time. However, it is of the utmost importance that the core pillars, themes, and messaging that went into creating the brand in the first place are maintained. Every decision should be made with deliberate intention.

A good brand is easily executable to any/all relevant mediums. If your logo is only going to live online (maybe it is a subset of a larger company and only needs a space off of the main website) many options are available. If the logo is going to be sewed or embroidered on fabric or used on small swag items…. then you need something simple. If the logo is going to be screen printed, then having a design that accommodates for colors and/or limitations specific to screen printing is critical. These are just a few examples, and when xSynergy’s marketing team is managing a brand we take into account all these considerations.

The Impact of a Powerful Brand

A powerful brand can propel your business into the world and command attention, it can situate you in the marketplace alongside good company or differentiate you from a sea of the same, and it can roll with the punches or scale easily with growth while withstanding the test of time. A brand that consistently and clearly communicates its messaging, purpose, and personality can garner true, unwavering loyalty. A new brand that positions itself well in relation to its competition while effectively solving an existing paint point or problem can take over an industry.

At the end of the day the question that we find to be most important, and the question that should be asked at every turn is “What am I trying to communicate?”. Whether you are creating a brand from scratch, pivoting your existing brand, or just developing your brand and its strategies further, come back to this question every time you need to make a decision. Ensure that the intent of communication aligns with the brand’s core principles, message and execute accordingly and creatively within the brand’s visual language and tone of voice.

xSynergy Marketing is a division of xSynergy Solutions, based in Centennial, CO. As a true, full-service marketing partner, we can manage all aspects of your marketing needs: branding and design, website development, digital marketing, social media management, paid search, content management, photography, and video production. Contact us today for a complimentary marketing analysis of your existing collateral.

Tag Archive for: #websitedevelopment

Make Your Brand Stand Out With A Positioning Statement

Powerful Positioning Statement

Examples of Successful Positioning Statements

Choosing a Good Domain Name

8 Critical Website Components

The Importance of a Positioning Statement

What is a Positioning Statement?

How to Develop A Positioning Statement?

Own It

Engage With a Professional

The 5 Whys of Lean

The Power Of A Brand

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