Symbols in Business: The Marketing Mix

A properly-designed logo gives your company credibility and an identity in the business world. It can be as simple as your company’s name printed in a certain font and color. It can be as complex as using geometric shapes and detailed graphics. Careful attention should be given to the selection of your company’s logo because it is the one constant that will appear on your letterhead, promotional materials and all other marketing efforts.
The Importance of a Logo in Your Total Marketing Mix
Like peanut butter and jelly, logos and marketing are hard to separate. You can’t have one without the other. Everything starts with developing your company’s identity through a well-conceived marketing plan. Having a professionally-designed logo can enhance your marketing efforts. Following are three good reasons why you should incorporate a logo in all of your marketing plans.
Giving Your Business the Stability It Needs
Think about how people react to change in general. A good example is “Obama Care” or the Affordable Health Care Act. Businesses are holding back on hiring because they do not know with certainty how the law will affect them. Panic has arisen in the senior community with the recent talk of changes in Medicare and Social Security. While some change can be good, more often than not, too much change is destabilizing and can cause a negative reaction.
When you create a logo, you want it to be long-lasting and be appropriate for your company. It can be very expensive to change logos because you not only have to replace all of your marketing materials that have the old logo on them, but, you also have to spend money to introduce your new logo design. People can get quite confused if your company changes logos more than once or twice without adequate warning. Your company may look like it is struggling or trying to reinvent itself. Stability gives people comfort and is better for business.
Legitimizing Your Company
Not paying attention to having a good logo design can make your company look unprofessional and discourage customers from patronizing your business. Writing signs by hand to advertise a sale looks cheap and amateurish. You may see a restaurant advertise the daily special on a chalkboard, but, they also have a professionally-designed sign with their logo hanging over the entrance to the restaurant.
When you buy something at a garage sale or flea market, you have little or no expectations that the seller will be there to handle any complaints you may have with your purchase. In a retail store, people have a much higher expectation that you will stand behind everything that you sell. Having an identifiable logo adds to your credibility and the confidence of consumers.
Staying Focused
You can be consistent and focused when you use the same logo on your business cards, brochures and other forms of advertisement. If you use different fonts, colors or designs on different ads in your marketing mix, you are losing the chance to develop brand identity and loyalty. Imagine the confusion and chaos that would ensue if Coca Cola suddenly decided to use green or blue labels instead of their trademark red labels?
An Effective Logo Can Cost a Little or a Lot
For most small and medium-sized businesses, the cost to design a logo is within reach. Depending on your budget, you can have a professionally designed logo created by a graphic artist for a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars. Price does not necessarily assure you that you will get the perfect logo for your company. Following are a few examples of what major companies paid to acquire their logos.

• Google did not pay a cent as their rainbow logo was created by co-founder Sergey Brin, using a free graphics program.
• Nike’s famous swish was the work of a Portland State University graphic design student who was paid $35 for her design which is recognized all over the world.
• A simplified and clear font was all it took for the BBC to introduce a new logo. When the company made the change in 1997, it came at a cost of $1.8 million.

Having the proper logo is of incredible importance to businesses of all sizes. A logo is tied in directly to all marketing efforts and helps create a strong brand identity. It gives instant credibility to a new business and can be worth millions to an established company. Your company can gain a competitive edge over its business rivals by having a professionally-designed logo.