includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). SEO is the process of tuning your business website so that it ranks higher in the search listings when potential customers enter search terms that match your product offerings. SEO is free. SEM is paid search marketing – for a (typically) pay-per-click fee, search engines such as Google will display your ad when a user enters a search using one of your keywords.

SEM statistics can provide excellent feedback on the effectiveness of your ad, such as the click-through rate (the number of times your ad has been clicked versus the number of times the page containing the ad has been viewed).

While there are still banner ads on the internet, there are also other myriad options available, from interstitials (web pages displayed before or after an expected content page) through text ads. Different social media, such as Facebook, offer their own advertising platforms.

once you have built a subscriber email list of potential customers who may be interested in your products or services, email marketing is a very effective way to get the message out. You can keep them up to date with company news, upcoming events, and special offerings. You can send out newsletters and customized product or service offerings specific to the customers needs.

social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest (just to name a few) are all opportunities for marketing online. Social media is a conversation – it requires active participation rather than just posting ads for your products or services.

Phones are fast becoming the one thing that everyone carries with them all the time, making text messages and other forms of mobile advertising the best way to reach your potential customers.

having a business blog is another way to converse with your customers and keep them informed about your products or services. A blog can be used to provide advice and get useful feedback. See 7 Ways to Get Blogging for Money. Microblogs are a subset of blogs – normally consisting of short text updates sent by email, instant messaging, or Twitter.

Since a logo is the visual entity signifying an organization, logo design is an important area of graphic design. A logo is the central element of a complex identification system that must be functionally extended to all communications of an organization. Therefore, the design of logos and their incorporation in a visual identity system is one of the most difficult and important areas of graphic design. Logos fall into three classifications (which can be combined). Ideographs, such as Chase Bank, are completely abstract forms; pictographs are iconic, representational designs; logotypes (or wordmarks) depict the name or company initials. Because logos are meant to represent companies’ brands or corporate identities and foster their immediate customer recognition, it is counterproductive to frequently redesign logos.

Color is a key element in logo design and plays an important role in brand differentiation. The importance of color in this context is due to the mechanics of human visual perception wherein color and contrast play critical roles in visual detail detection. In addition, we tend to acquire various color connotations and color associations through social and cultural conditioning, and these play a role in how we decipher and evaluate logo color. While color is considered important to brand recognition and logo design, it shouldn’t conflict with logo functionality, and it needs to be remembered that color connotations and associations are not consistent across all social and cultural groups. For example, in the United States, red, white, and blue are often used in logos for companies that want to project patriotic feelings but other countries will have different sets of colors that evoke national pride. Similarly, diverse industry sectors tend to favour different color palettes: strong, saturated colors are favoured in the fast food industry and less saturated, more sombre colors in the banking and insurance sectors.

Designing a good logo often requires involvement from a marketing team teaming with the graphic design studio. Before a logo is designed, there must be a clear definition of the concept and values of the brand as well as understanding of the consumer or target group. Broad steps in the logo design process include research, conceptualization, investigation of alternative candidates, refinement of a chosen design, testing across products, and finally adoption and production of the chosen mark.

In 1898, the French tire manufacturer Michelin introduced the Michelin Man, a cartoon figure presented in many different contexts, such as eating, drinking, and playing sports. By the early 21st century, large corporations such as MTV, Nickelodeon, Google, Morton Salt, and Saks Fifth Avenue had adopted dynamic logos that change over time from setting to setting.

address. For short logotypes consisting of two or three characters, multiple companies are found to employ the same letters. A “CA” logo, for example, is used by the French bank Credit Agricole, the Dutch clothing retailer C&A, and the US software corporation CA Technologies, but only one can have the Internet domain name CA.com.
In today’s digital interface adaptive world, a logo will be formatted and re-formatted from large monitors to small handheld devices. With the constant size change and re-formatting, logo designers are shifting to a more bold and simple approach, with heavy lines and shapes, and solid colors. This reduces the confusion when mingled with other logos in tight spaces and when scaled between media. Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ use such logos.

Logos and their design may be protected by copyright, via various intellectual property organisations worldwide which make available application procedures to register a design to give it protection at law. For example, in the UK, the Intellectual Property Office (United Kingdom)[24] govern registered designs, patents, and trademarks. Ordinarily, the trademark registration will not ‘make claim’ to colors used, meaning it is the visual design that will be protected, even if it is reproduced in a variety of other colors or backgrounds.