The power of imagery is about communicating. Communicating an idea, a motif, or a style. In business, that image is as important as your staff or budget. The image is what gives your business its style, the first impression is everything to a customer, and if you make a bad first impression it will cost you many things, including custom, which will impact on your company. So you need to examine every aspect of your image, how it looks, what it communicates, and how you can tweak it to make sure that you are getting the most out of it in terms of your business brand.
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The business brand is the personality. Not to be confused with the image, but the image does form part of the brand. In order to work on the business imagery and how it is projected, you must first start to think about your “voice” or business ethos. It is an easier process to get into if you have a small business, or a company that is only just starting to have legs. If your business is one that has been trading for years, it can be difficult to assess what your ethos may be, because you have been doing it one way for so long and it can be hard to get out of that mindset. By going back to the basics and figuring out what it is that you want to communicate as a company, the other aspects of marketing will fall into place, such as the target audience and the best ways you wish to communicate your business, such as via social media or by podcast.
Once you have set off on the road to fulfilling your business ethos, you may have a radical rethink of your business imagery. This could be on your website, or your logo, or anything else that has your business brand on it, such as your products. The perils of small companies are that there are limited resources to giving a makeover to business images, and so many of these businesses can suffer due to the lack of funding, but the accessibility to a branding company is much more attainable now. If you look at the features from Chase Design, you can see there are various methods that marketing and branding agencies can work with to help your company improve its image.
As a means of communication, an image is the most important tool you will have. Because of the amount of connotations that are attached to an image, also known as semiotics (the study of signs and signifiers), you need to understand what your image is and have complete control over it. This means working very closely with a marketing team or the people responsible for designing the image and making sure every aspect of your business is clearly represented in the image. Wherever the image may end up, you need it to communicate your brand, which you need to be synonymous with quality and consistency. That is the name of the game.