This article was written by guest contributor, Suhayl Laher of Tiles Direct.
More often than not, consumers buy into a brand through more than just a product. This makes ensuring you have strong, cohesive branding across all aspects of your business vital – particularly at events where you’re competing with other businesses all vying for attention.
With this in mind, in today’s article we’ll be examining the importance of branding design for businesses at events, and how to create an impactful strategy you can implement in the world of events.
Master the basics with a consistent message
Powerful branding is all about consistency – spreading a persistent and unified message across all areas of your business. Before you put your brand in front of consumers in the event world, it’s important to establish a core branding format for a cohesive approach right from the start.
Think about who you are and where you want to be as a company, as well as your target audience and what they want. Understanding these basic elements will provide you with the foundations to design a unified branding strategy that can be applied across both physical and digital marketing activities.
Champion simple design
The design of your business branding will be the cornerstone of your event marketing strategy, but with so many factors to consider it can be easy to get carried away with too much detail. To create impactful branding it pays to keep things simple – designing a brand that’s instantly identifiable, with a succinct and compelling message.
From colors, fonts and logos to a memorable strapline, take care not to overcomplicate your design. Using just 1 or 2 stand-out colors, a simple logo with easily legible fonts and a short, punchy slogan will ensure your brand message is easy to digest for consumers.
Keep online branding unified
With the availability of integrated event planning software, businesses can now create event profiles that allow them to deftly communicate with attendees and collect valuable data. Whatever event you’re promoting, it’s vital everything you put on your platform ties in with existing online branding.
Matching your website branding and social media platforms with event pages will maintain a continuous message throughout, strengthening brand recognition and loyalty with attendees as they interact with you across multiple channels.
Be unique in your approach
In an event environment, it can be hard for smaller businesses to stand out against larger opponents who often have bigger budgets and resources to invest in their branding. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t still make an impact by taking a unique approach to your branding strategy.
Research successful tactics used by bigger brands in your niche and try to find ways to offer attendees something that they don’t. From a commitment to eco-friendly practices in your strapline to a striking logo and simple color palette, these can all allow you to stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Bring your event stand to life
Designing and manning a jaw-dropping exhibition stand requires time, effort and planning. Whether you’re promoting your new showroom by handing out sample bathroom tiles for attendees to take away or you’re a start-up encouraging would-be consumers to follow you on social media, every aspect of your branding reflects your business – so cohesion is key.
Ensure stands are aesthetically appealing, while also championing unified brand design. From highly-visual branded pop-ups and eye-catching displays to promotional materials, make sure people can easily recognize your brand and what you’re offering. Whether you provide free goodie bags or host on-the-day competitions, you want to give attendees plenty of reasons to come and visit your stand.
Wherever you’re exhibiting, paying close attention to branding design and taking a consistent approach is sure to put you on the right path for building a successful brand profile that will have a lasting impression on your target audience.
About Suhayl
Suhayl Laher works at Tiles Direct, one of the UK’s largest independent tile distributors and retailers – bringing design inspiration to homeowners, architects and developers.