First Impressions Count
BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS ARE FORCED TO CHANGE
It’s no surprise to what degree small businesses are having to struggle in order to survive in today's economy. Especially for those labs that have not invested in a professional and appealing company identity. The esthetics of a serious company can sometimes make or break it’s success – after, all first impressions count!
Only a few years ago the extinction of what websites once were, began. Since then, companies who choose not to invest or move forward with today’s technologies have sadly begun to fall behind. And their competitors have taken control of the market. Now more than ever, it is imperative for a business to stand out in order to be seen by potential customers.
Every month millions of people search online for businesses like yours. Our digital society is driven by instant access to information by device recognition. If you use a device such as a iPhone or Tablet, chances are your customers also view your business online the same way.
CHANGE OR RISK BECOMING EXTINCT
Either a potential customer will find your business online because you were ready to be found or they'll find your competitors.
• 54% of Americans have substituted the Internet and local search for phone books
• 89% of customers use search to make a buying decision.
• 52% say watching product videos makes them more confident in purchase decisions.
• Nearly 80% of local mobile searches turn into purchases
• 92% of mobile video viewers share videos with others
If your site can’t be viewed easily on mobile devices, you may be losing customers.
In fact, 48% of people said that even if they like a business, they will use them less often if the company’s website isn't mobile-friendly. They felt that the company just didn't care about their business. And 40% turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile web experience.
You only get ONE CHANCE to make a good first impression.
One of the most powerful elements of any business is BRANDING. BRANDING is how the world sees your company and services. BRANDING adds VALUE to your business.
The result of a professional presence is good design, a solid strategy, strong branding and a real online business which is the key to gaining visibility in the market place.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there are approximately 23 million small businesses in the United States.
If you don't have a strategy for outdoing your competition, you could find yourself treading water for years to come.
BE SURE YOU STAND OUT IN A CROWD
The marketing image that a small businesses projects could determine its future profits and growth. Labs that lack a professional presence have an increased chance of losing potential customers to their competition. That is why Ck2design works to help your lab be seen by your customers. Helping small business owners are our specialty and we work hard to insure your business is visible in the market.
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IS your website mobile-friendly?
In 2015 Google started expanding their use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact on our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.
BUILD A BETTER BRAND
To build a better brand let's first take a quick look at what a brand is. If marketing is doing then branding is being. Often the two are so integrated strategically and tactically that it’s hard to say one comes before, or is more important than, the other.
A small business that understands branding and marketing and the relationship between the two will find that attracting and retaining customers is not really that hard. The struggle in marketing often comes from the belief that branding is just for products or big companies. This leads to the disconnect between who your company is being and what your company is doing. Every business has a brand, and it can make or break you.
Even if you don't have a website and have done nothing to build a brand, good or bad, you have a brand. And depending on how satisfied your customers are may also reflect your current brand. Thanks to social media and review sites such as Yelp, if you don't have a website but you have an unhappy customer and someone searches for your lab they will find the review and maybe your address listed on a generic business listing. Both images together could possibly send that potential customer to your competitor.
In the simplest form, here is a simplified description of what a visual brand is.
Brand + Identity + Logo = Your Image
Brand - is perceived an emotional image as a whole.
Identity - is the visual aspects that form part of the overall brand.
Logo - [custom symbol, mark, icon] identifies a service, product or business in the simplest form.
There are tons of books, blogs and publications written on how, why and what is a brand. Many believe that branding only consists of a few elements such as a logo, a few fonts and colors and maybe a slogan. While those elements are very important they are only a part of the brand identity package.
If you're serious about improving your small business’s’s image, you should consider hiring a qualified designer to help build your brand. They can design and form the foundation of your brand, and suggest guidelines that will help you grow and maintain a strong brand.
Your Small Businesses Is Either Visible or Invisible!
Interested in competing in today's market with a new professional presence? Contact us today or fill out our project request form to get started NOW.
THE PROCESS
Ck2design works with a wide variety of dental, cannabis and motorcycle industry type of businesses. And while we love to brag about our work, it's not in our best interest to share our client's information. After all, they may very well be your competition.
METHODOLOGY
How it Works Lets start off by looking at the steps we'll be taking to get your project from start to finish.
- Introductory - First we would need to go through an introductory phase to see if we would be a good fit.
Ck2design works exclusively with only a few clients at a time, this is to ensure the best possible service is provided. - Discovery - through a process of surveys and meetings we'll gather all the information we need to have the best understanding of your business and goals. Architecture - just like a building, a website needs a solid blueprint. Together we'll determine the best way to organize your website and sketch out a rough outline.
- Content - with a solid blueprint in place it will be your job to collect, organize, edit, and deliver to us content for each page of the website.
- Design - at the same time you are working on content our team will be creating non-functioning comprehensive layouts showing possible design directions.
- Development - with all the necessary architecture, content, and design elements in hand we'll create the first working version of your website.
- Launch - getting your website "go live" ready will inevitably require several rounds of revisions and polish. Once the website is ready, we'll go through the final launch checklist.
- Final - your site is now live! Over the next couple weeks our team will be training you on how to manage the website and helping you solve any issues.
DON'T BE A WILLY-NILLY
Invest in your company and hire a real designer that understands your business, this is just plain smart business planning.
There are two distinct marketing approaches used in the dental industry, Professional and Willy-Nilly. Of course each of those approaches also has different levels of styles within them, the good, bad and the ugly.
The Professional approach often displays a variety of cohesive branded materials, visually tasteful and creative designs, unified in appearance and providing useful information along with a clear call to action. The Professional Approach is typically well organized from the start and uses a structured marketing plan. This is to that ensure all materials are exposed to the intended target within a consistent time line. This consistency will help build trust and create customer loyalty.
The Willy-Nilly approach will often display a variety of inconsistently designed materials that are lacking any sort of brand unity. These materials are typically created in-house under the art direction of lab management. Often times, unknowingly, more emphasis may be placed on the message rather than good design which causes damage to the brand they are working to create.
The Willy-Nilly approach to creating materials can result in an inconsistent and unprofessional looking brand, unorganized and confusing content, bad graphics and low quality printing which will send the wrong message to your intended target.
Can you image if a car company didn’t use a professional approach?
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Work Smarter, Not Harder
We already know the dental industry is crowded with competition. And that the main component you need to stand out in the crowd and set you apart from another lab offering the same products and services is a strong company brand and professional online presence. The easiest thing to do is just hire me. But you should know your options and what to do and look for in hiring a good designer. Remember just because someone claiming to be a designer has a computer with graphics software does not make someone a designer.
Marketing to a small businesses is very different then marketing to a or patient.
A creative won’t need to fully understand all the steps of a layering technique or dental procedure, but they should already be aware of the differences in what appeals to consumers verses B2B (business to business). There are already too many lab websites that look great but are designed to appeal more to another lab when the intended target was the dentist. Talk about missing your mark!
That’s why hiring an experienced creative designer is such a vital ingredient to your lab’s success.
A creative is much more qualified to develop a unique, credible and personal brand for your lab then anyone on your staff.
You may be tempted to go with a less experienced designer to save a few bucks but in the end it may actually end up costing you more time, money and stress. In some cases the lack of experience may lead to having work redone or pulling a print job from a press run due to unforeseen errors, which can be costly.
An experienced designer will be able to develop a unique, memorable and effective creative brand for your business in a reasonable amount of time for a fair price and will save you many headaches.
But before you hire a designer you need to be ready to let go! Like anything else, you hire a designer for their expertise and their insight. It may be difficult for you but you will need to loosen your grip, let go of how things were done in the past and/or how you think your brand should look. Trust your designer, after all your brand is being created for your intended target market, NOT YOU.
Note:
Don’t bully an artist into doing what you think looks good,
after all you're not a designer.
Can a Dental Lab Compete Today
Without a Professional Presence?