Instagram’s newest feature is very reminiscent of Tiktok. Can it keep up? And what opportunities does it offer companies and influencers?

The social media platform Instagram is known for constantly implementing new features to make the app experience even more interesting and exciting for users. The fact that the ideas for new tools do not always come directly from the platform itself, but that the makers also like to be inspired by other social media platforms, is nothing new. From the Instagram story, which was copied from Snapchat at the time and is now the focus of influencer marketing on Instagram, to the latest feature that was only recently launched: Reels .

This function is very reminiscent of the Tiktok platform, which is particularly popular with the younger generation. But can Reels keep up with this at all and what opportunities does the new feature offer in the context of influencer marketing for companies and influencers?

Opportunities for influencers and influencer marketing

One group in particular benefits from creative changes or further developments on the social media platforms: the influencers. She has her professional focus mostly on Instagram – exactly where Reels has now been introduced.

Similar to Tiktok, reels give influencers the opportunity to be creative and try out a different type of content. Especially in times when authenticity is more important for influencers than ever before, this new option helps to present yourself even more directly to your own followers. The trend here is moving away from very high-quality, often posted videos to much looser clips that show the influencer from a different angle.

For the followers, Reels has the advantage that they do not have to leave Instagram as a platform to switch to another, e.g. Tiktok. For influencers, this means that they don’t have to build a whole new community on a new channel. As part of the growth of Tiktok, it finally became apparent that many followers did not make the leap to Tiktok together with their influencers – or did not want to make it.

Larger influencers can also use their very high reach with the help of reels to go viral through the newly introduced top reels page and generate more followers. For small influencers, this site offers the chance to grow quickly and attract attention in order to build a community. It is also possible that the feature, similar to Tiktok, will also produce a completely new type of influencer on Instagram who will occupy a completely new niche with funny or particularly creative clips.

Opportunities for companies

With reels, companies in turn have the opportunity to present themselves in a much fresher, more dynamic and modern way. Thanks to the varied content, you can play content here that might not find a place in your account or in your story.

Another advantage is that you can work with your existing network on Instagram – and thus also on Reels. On the company’s Instagram page, followers are exactly the people who are already interested in the products or services. By switching to another platform, companies run the risk of losing many of them. In addition, many companies are still quite skeptical about Tiktok. This is mainly due to the very young target group. For those companies that appeal to a different target group, Reels is a good way not to have to leave the known followers, but at the same time to be able to show themselves through the clips from a different side.

Just like with influencers, companies can also benefit from the Top Reels Page. If they go viral there, they have the chance to make even more people aware of themselves or their products or services and to win them over to their own brand.

The relevance of reels for social media marketing

If you look at Reels as a whole, it quickly becomes clear that Instagram’s new feature has a lot of potential and, above all, very high relevance. Perhaps this is the beginning of a similar effect to the introduction of Instagram Stories a few years ago: After Instagram had more or less copied the format from Snapchat, Snapchat itself took a back seat. Something similar could now threaten Tiktok.

While nothing has been announced yet, it probably won’t be long before Reels introduces the ability to insert links for corporate accounts. This then opens up a completely new form of advertising that could represent great competition for Tiktok. It is not yet possible to insert links there, which is why it has not yet been used very widely as an advertising platform.

Unless Tiktok comes up with anything new or acts in front of Reels as part of advertising opportunities, it is very possible that Reels will replace Tiktok before the Bytedance app could even get really big in terms of influencer marketing.

Anyone who sends large quantities of e-mails, for example as a newsletter, is dependent either on a professional tool or an online provider. We introduce you to the most important German and international providers.

Email marketing enables companies to have direct contact with their customers and is one of the most important pillars of online marketing. The right software is essential for successful email marketing. The market is big and the choice is therefore not always easy. We have therefore put together a selection of promising tool providers for you

Email Marketing: Providers to Get Started Right Away

Quite a few providers have to first obtain an offer or apply for a test access. Other tools can be used directly and their features can be tested immediately. To make it easier for those who make quick decisions to get started, we have summarized the providers accordingly:

Sendin blue

Sendinblue * offers you an email editor with which you can create and personalize mailings using drag-and-drop. The tool also provides you with real-time reports that show you data on the opening and click rate, among other things. A target group cluster analysis also helps you to compare different recipient groups with each other in order to find out which type of mailing performs best for which target group.

This provider offers an easy way to conclude an order processing contract in accordance with the legal provisions of the GDPR, and thus facilitates legally secure application. Data from customers in the DACH region is also stored on German servers.

Sendinblue * offers three different price models: Free, Lite and Premium, which offer a different scope of services. With the free version, 300 e-mails can be sent per day and unlimited contacts can be saved. The prices of the Lite and Premium version are graded depending on the number of emails and start at 19 or 49 euros per month.

Cleverreach

Cleverreach * , like almost all representatives of this list, offers features such as registration forms for the website, recipient management, reports and analyzes of recipients, automatic mails via autoresponder, design and spam tests as well as A / B split tests. You can also create campaigns and dynamic RSS campaigns, which can also be analyzed using reports.

The service has a tidy and user-friendly interface that should make it easier to get started. Cleverreach also has an integrated double opt-in procedure and unsubscribe links and can therefore easily be used in accordance with GDPR.

Cleverreach * offers a free test account with which 1,000 emails can be sent to 250 recipients per month. The functionality of the test account is limited. If you want to use more storage space for images, A / B testing, design templates and other features, you can switch to a monthly tariff. These are graded according to the number of recipients. It starts with 250 addressees for nine euros a month. The largest package for 900 euros a month includes 100,000 recipients.

Clever Elements

Clever Elements * can have a considerable number of references. For example, Amnesty International, Betahaus, Siemens, Dräger, IBM and Adecco use the service, which offers a range of features similar to Cleverreach.

With Clever Elements you are also on the safe side when it comes to GDPR, because with the tool provider you have the option, among other things, of concluding an agreement on order processing in accordance with GDPR directly in your account.

Clever Elements can be tested for 30 days free of charge and then offers either a monthly or a credit tariff. With the monthly model, the recipient is billed accordingly – the mails per month are unlimited. For example, 100 recipients cost five euros per month, up to 500 cost 15 euros and 100,000 recipients add up to 870 euros per month.

Mail flat rate

Mailflatrate offers you all the important functions for your newsletter marketing. You can choose from an extensive database of design templates, connect the tool with WordPress, Magento, Shopware and other programs using an API and create surveys, for example on customer satisfaction. In addition, you work GDPR-compliant with Mailflatrate; the server location is in Germany.

You can test Mailflatrate for 30 days free of charge. After that, the tool costs between 20 and 87 euros per month, depending on the range of functions.

Rapidmail

The provider Rapidmail *  offers you a simple drag-and-drop editor and more than 250 design templates for designing your mailings. In the dashboard you will find a lot of data to evaluate your email marketing afterwards. There is also a Google Analytics integration for an even more in-depth analysis.

In addition to a simple form for order processing, Rapidmail offers you a wide range of assistance with which you can make your email marketing GDPR-compliant.

Also Rapid mail you offers the choice between a fixed monthly fee or a charge per mailing. With the latter, for example, you pay 16 euros for a mailing with up to 2,000 recipients. Alternatively, you can opt for a monthly cancelable flat rate. It costs nine euros a month for up to 500 recipients, 12.80 euros for up to 1,000 recipients and 16.60 euros for up to 1,500 recipients. If you need more contingent, Rapidmail will create an individual offer for you.

Anyone who wants to claim pole position in Google’s search results will find it difficult to avoid link building. In a Q&A, Johannes Müller from Google gives website operators and SEOs specific tips for backlinks.

Link Earning – The freestyle of backlink building

As the first tip in the Q&A of SEO Südwest , Johannes Müller mentions link earning – the free choice in link building. Backlinks to your own website project are not actively built up by the operator, but rather naturally set by users because of outstanding content. This is certainly the most complex, but also the most effective method.

Digital PR – Many visitors lead to good rankings

As a second tip, Johannes Müller addresses digital PR in the Q&A. The focus here is on the awareness of the brand and / or its website. Backlinks generated in this way are primarily about attracting many visitors and luring them to your own web project. Good rankings are not the direct result of such backlinks that may be set via “nofollow”, but they are associated with massive visitor flows.

Broken Link building – Replace dead links with your own links

The broken link building strategy focuses primarily on detective and research work. The principle is simple and ingenious, if not new: If there are dead links on the web that are similar in content to your own web project, you offer the operator a link to your own project instead. Tip: There are numerous tools on the web for finding broken links, and SEO tools such as Ahrefs make searching easier.

Mentions – Good basis for backlinks

For example, if someone publishes a review on a product of their own brand, it is advisable to ask the operator to link the relevant website. According to Müller, such mentions or citations are a good starting point for backlinks to your own web project.

Backlink building: This is why Google rarely comments on strategies

According to Müller, Google is reluctant to give tips on building backlinks because recommendations are usually taken too literally. Therefore, you usually either do not explain anything or refute strategies that are not working. For further techniques, John Müller refers to a contribution by Britney Muller .

Promote and sell your own products on Amazon ? Performance and content marketing are essential for retailers and brands on the e-commerce platform. This German company shows you what to look out for!

Purchasing is enthusiastic about the new product – expectations of performance and sales figures are high. What then follows, however, is an unpleasant realization: even if the product makes an excellent impression in reality, it can neither be well presented nor sold online. At the German e-commerce company Sellvin, that’s what they call the Sophia effect: “Sophia was a very high-quality bedspread in our range. The quality of the blanket was much higher than the regular microfiber blanket, but we couldn’t get that across online. This is an article that you have to touch, ”explains Dorothea Zehnpfennig. She is responsible for content marketing at Sellvin Hürth near Cologne.

Your colleague Patrick Müller takes care of performance marketing and advertising. Together they have a lot of expertise when it comes to selling successfully on platforms. In the Zoom interview, both of them shared their five most important tips with us.

1. Unique content

“We create different content for each platform and our own shop. We do not want our offers mutually cannibalizing, ”explains Zehnpfennig. The first focus is on Amazon. Titles, bullet points, images and A + content are the main focus for Sellvin’s products. Especially products that are important for SEO are edited manually. Dorothea Zehnpfennig had all the products in hand.

2. Research in advance

“You have to plan time for each listing” – that sounds banal, says Zehnpfennig, but you are always tempted to shorten processes. She wants to invest half a day in each product to see what the important keywords are, how the competition is doing – and she analyzes the data. “Brand analytics is a powerful tool,” she says.

3. Image production

First, the product is classified. Which ten unique selling points does it have? A photo passport is derived from this. “How can you express the USP in the picture?” Asks the Cologne native. In their experience, users no longer read the text, but also receive the facts, especially through the images. A size comparison is made by always seeing hands in the picture. “There are pictures out there that don’t work,” says Zehnpfennig. Sellvin has just completely rebuilt the subject of images in recent years. You let professional photographers do the work and present the products in their context of use. “The picture is the alpha and omega for the conversion and therefore also for the ranking.”

4. Retail Media

The competition on Amazon is extremely high and there are a lot of cheap products. “A large part of the products can hardly be distinguished from ours optically,” says Patrick Müller. Nevertheless, advertising works best for him in the Amazon universe, simply because the purchase decision is so close and because the sheer reach is so large. “You also accept a higher CPC than on the smaller platforms.”

However, Müller does not want to rule out that smaller platforms can also play a role in advertising. The French platform Manomano is growing very strongly organically for the Cologne-based company. They are just looking carefully. But the process works like in content marketing: “First test it on Amazon and then transfer it to other platforms,” ​​says Müller.

5. Instagram for awareness

It is not directly part of Sellvin’s business model to bring inventions or previously completely unknown products to the market. Nevertheless, Müller and Zehnpfennig clearly see that Amazon SEO will not be enough for such a product. Awareness is increasingly being addressed on other channels, for example on Instagram with short video clips that explain what is new about the product. There is hardly enough brand space on Amazon itself. “That works better with ads than with content, because we can better address different target groups.”

6. Tools and structure

Both content and performance marketing work with keyword and data tools specifically focused on Amazon such as Helium10 , Sellics, and Amalyze . For Müller, it is particularly important that the advertising account has a very clear structure so that he can quickly output reports and change parameters. “Sounds basic, but everyone knows that a gradually growing offer becomes chaotic at some point.” The naming of the line items follows the principle: brand, category, exact product including color and size.

7. Trend surfing

Current keyword trends are also reflected on Amazon. “During the corona crisis, we let a back support pillow run specifically for the keyword home office,” explains Müller. At the same time, content marketing also takes on such trends in the description. “Some of our ideas come from DIY areas on Instagram or Pinterest,” says the Cologne native.

8. The brand on Amazon

“No, the topic of brands is not difficult on Amazon,” Zehnpfennig defends himself against the critical thesis. Amazon is gradually strengthening this as part of the A + content, with the seller account and of course when displaying product recommendations under its own articles. “It’s also about protecting our offer from plagiarism.” Each product title starts with the name of the brand. Brand keywords play a role in advertising insofar as they are cheap to advertise. With one exception: “Of course we also advertise with competitors.” But advertising in competition is expensive.

Brand safety is one of the most important goals in advertising and at the same time serves to upsell with complementary products. “Basically, it is important to be clear beforehand what exactly the campaign is supposed to achieve,” says Patrick Müller. That also decides targeting, creatives and ad placement. “You should use all formats and coordinate the creatives with one another.”

9. Answer questions

“If the seller replies himself, it creates a lot of trust.” Dorothea Zehnpfennig takes care of bad reviews and criticism in order to show the next user that you are involved and are looking for an exchange. In addition, the important questions and problems give rise to suggestions for optimizing the product content. However, according to the Sellvin experts, FAQ topics do not play a major role in the search. Here the “Amazon search engine”, so much touted in the past, is clearly product-heavy.

10. Know listing rules

Each category has its own Amazon laws and hardly anyone knows them. Zehnpfennig is surprised that some retailers are surprised at a ban, even though they have clearly broken the rules. Rules such as showing the word “Special Offer” or promoting “Free Shipping”. “Then comes the seller performance – also known as the Amazon police – and then your listing is closed and then it takes weeks for it to be restored,” says the Cologne-based woman.

Additional tip: test car campaigns

Müller finds the auto campaign function particularly exciting when he is unsure about the positioning of a new product and the associated keywords. “With auto campaigns, you just give Amazon the product and Amazon controls the display itself.” After two weeks, Patrick’s team analyzes the performance and uses the learnings from the Amazon AI to refine a campaign.

Talking to the experts, it becomes abundantly clear how exciting it can be when the “number crunchers” from performance marketing can get along well with the “fine minds” from content marketing. Müller would like to see even closer cooperation.

And the subject of “competition on Google”? He frowns: “We rank behind Amazon when it comes to our own products, you can’t get past that”. Above all, the fact that customers are missing in his own shop annoys him. “We just don’t have enough data for CRM at Amazon customers.”

The formula for strong customer relationships is simple: first listen, then respond to the needs of the other person. Carl Zeiss Meditec AG shows how this communication can be successfully digitally mapped and customer relationships can be strengthened online.

Specializing in the manufacture of medical lasers, surgical microscopes and instruments for eye examinations, Carl Zeiss Meditec AG addresses a target group with a tight schedule: Doctors and surgeons. “Our customers block traditional marketing content,” reports Dr. Jochen Tham, Head of Global Marketing Communications. The solution: stand out with individual and relevant content.

Digitization: more relevant than ever

The restrictions that come with the current coronavirus situation are massive. As far as digitization is concerned, however, they definitely have advantages. “We usually do a lot through personal contacts,” says Tham. “This is of course not possible at the moment. That opens up exciting new options for us. For example, we have developed a plexiglass protective shield for our slit lamps in order to better protect both doctors and patients during treatment. For the registration process we have developed an international website as well as cross-border social media campaigns. Before the current situation, we would have operated strictly according to country. But this way we were able to all the doctors who came forward Send two of these shields to support during the COVID pandemic – we have sent over 100,000 copies in total. Due to the crisis, we have clearly gained digital momentum – we want to maintain that and expand it further. “

It all depends on the perspective 

This also means that processes have to be rethought. “Our customers are used to customer experiences from big online brands in their private lives – we have to map that in the B2B area too,” explains Tham. That is why Carl Zeiss Meditec AG has been using trigger-based campaigns on its own website and on social media channels since the beginning of 2020 and has dispensed with blast mailings. With the help of Munchkin codes, the surfing behavior of the website visitors can be traced.

This has two decisive advantages: On the one hand, it can be derived which areas and products the users are particularly interested in. On the other hand, specific communication offers can be placed on the basis of previously defined points. Because everyday life in the clinic is so stressful, doctors and surgeons have often perceived the blast campaigns of the past as a nuisance. The situation is completely different with the trigger-based campaigns. These are so popular that the opening and click rates have doubled.

The topic of personalization is also moving up on the agenda. “In the future, we want to use the option to create customer profiles to prepare the website in such a way that specialists can be directed to the content that is relevant to them. This means that an ophthalmologist or a neurosurgeon receive content tailored specifically to their needs without having to click through long product lists or menus, ”says Tham.

Adventure journey customer journey

The way is the goal – this saying is no accident. Especially when there are several years between the first contact and the purchase, the customer journey has to be convincing. Whether congresses, information portals for medical professionals or your own website: both online and offline, it is important to connect as many different and diverse touchpoints as possible.

Without targeted tracking, you quickly lose track of where a customer is currently in the sales funnel. In addition, the customer journey does not end with the purchase – after all, devices have to be serviced regularly. To ensure that the journey does not come to an abrupt end, data should be accessible across departments and transparently for all teams.

For Dr. Jochen Tham is therefore clear: “Marketing must not be an ivory tower. Not only marketing and sales have to work closely together, but also marketing and IT. ”When marketing starts a campaign and the customer then calls the sales department with curiosity, the sales team must of course be familiar with the campaign. “Keeping everyone on the same page is an increasingly data-driven process for which marketing and IT have to agree on a common nomenclature.”

Digital marketing thrives on dynamism

Support is provided by a versatile marketing solution such as Marketo Engage from Adobe, which can be easily integrated into all existing programs and data sources thanks to flexibly programmable interfaces (API). Carl Zeiss Meditec AG uses Marketo Engange, for example, to transfer its customer data centrally to a Power BI dashboard, thus ensuring that the respective campaigns reach the right target group.

Whether lead management or email marketing:  Marketo Engage supports brands with flexible tools and solutions to get the best out of their customers. And because this only works when all teams pull together, Marketo is bringing sales and marketing closer together – for customer experiences that inspire.

In the new t3n Guide, the Cologne-based online marketing agency morefire presents its self-developed SEM strategy, with which it brings together all the advantages of SEO and SEA and holistically ensures more visibility in the search engines.

The well-known formula “SEO + SEA = SEM” deserves an update. Anyone who is familiar with the disciplines of SEO and SEA knows that more than a mere addition of both measures is necessary to get the best out of them. Do you want to quickly buy a bit of visibility without stealing the organic traffic? Can be done, but should be done carefully and thoughtfully. Or save budgets where a high organic positioning has already been achieved? Makes sense, but can also backfire.

Long-term success on the SERPs

In the new t3n Guide, the experts from the Cologne agency morefire present their self-developed approach to interlinking SEO and SEA and pass on their experience and expertise in this way. Which search and user intentions have to be considered in general? What are the strategies for linking? How can optimization be sustainably and comprehensibly tested for everyone? And how do you create the basis for this, procedurally and structurally?

Together, Désirée-Sina Kellner, Head of Paid Media, Isis Neuerbourg, Senior Account Director, and Rhea Moore, Senior Consultant SEO, guide companies, self-employed or Helps agencies with the optimal setup in the SEM area

What exactly can you expect in the guide?

• Basic introduction to holistic SEM
• Understand and use user and search intentions
• Introduction and comparison of the various hybrid strategies
• Step-by-step instructions for creating, filling and ongoing use of an SEO-SEA matrix
• Carry out, implement and evaluate test plans
• Excursus: team structures and collaboration
• Lots of helpful practical tips and checklists

Now ensure that your company has a sustainable, efficient visibility. Available individually for 99 euros (gross) or as part of a pro membership.

There have been major changes in Google search results worldwide. The reason was apparently not an algorithm update, but an error on the search engine.

Search engine optimizers from all over the world report massive changes in search results on Twitter and in industry forums. According to the Search Engine Journal , it was sometimes no longer even possible to search specifically for the article from a certain page, even if the name of the page was part of the search term. Confronted with this on Twitter , Google’s webmaster trend analyst John Mueller was able to reassure the concerned search engine optimizers: “I don’t know all the details yet, but it seems that there was a glitch on our side and it has been fixed in the meantime.” What exactly what triggered the problem and how long it lasted is currently unclear.

Online shops and affiliate sites were apparently particularly often affected by the error. SEOs from several countries reported on social networks and in industry forums that Amazon, Ebay and news publishers in particular had benefited from the error. According to others, there were massive fluctuations and the search results changed massively several times within a few minutes.

In early June 2020 , Google also had problems with search results . At that time, a bug resulted in some of the new search results not being indexed or being indexed very slowly. Large publishers such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were also affected. There were similar problems with indexing in April. After all, the problems were quickly fixed both times. Last year it looked somewhat different: in 2019 there were multiple indexing problems and in one case it even took almost a week to completely correct the error. In contrast, two similar cases in May 2019 were resolved within one and two days, respectively.

Organizations are not perceived differently than people: They have a personality – the brand or brand. A lot can go wrong. We present you with six typical branding failures.

The term branding is used so often arbitrarily that it quickly appears as empty marketing speech. We want to briefly explain to you what we are talking about here. Branding means: You build up a brand as a figurehead for your company or product, with which you differentiate yourself as much as possible from your competitors. From serious to caring to fun-loving: You can define how your organization or your product comes across. You control this by associating the brand with positive messages and emotions – and of course it also wants to be cultivated.

This is where branding comes into play, i.e. the conscious design of the brand personality. If you neglect that, you leave the external perception to chance. And that’s not a good idea.

3 steps to a strong brand

When you develop a branding, you first need a clearly defined mission and vision – best formulated as short, catchy statements: What is your organization for?

Then it goes to the profile sharpening. The brand only becomes tangible through competitor analysis, the elaboration of your unique selling point and your target group. Even the storytelling should be already thought along in this step.

Only then does the design development of the brand begin. An individual corporate design makes your brand visually strong and combined with a cross-media identity you create long-term recognition value for your brand.

6 typical mistakes:

1. Everyone cooks their own soup

The person who runs the website designs new pages here and there and the social media team uses their own graphics and colors.

Problem:

• no long-term recognition value
• no cross-media identity

The target groups perceive different personalities and are irritated.

Tip:
Develop a user-friendly and as short as possible style guide in which the most important key data such as logo, colors and fonts for your brand are defined. It should be accessible to all employees.

2. Passing the target group

You want to appeal to teenagers, but the colors and design are deadly serious?

Problem:
You may like your brand, but not the target group.

Tip: work
with your target group! Create personas and let them discuss various logo designs, for example. What appeals to you, what doesn’t? The most important thing is that the target group can identify with your brand.

3. “What is it about?”

The users are wondering what your project is about because they can’t figure out what the website is.

Problem:
Topic, mission and vision are not yet clearly defined or are not communicated across media, not only in the logo, but also on the website and so on.

Tip:
Let three to five people who correspond to the target group but are not familiar with your project look at your homepage for five to ten seconds. Then let them share their first thoughts with you. Do you understand what it’s about? If not, you should definitely sharpen your profile.

4. Your branding is not inclusive

People with disabilities cannot access, see or understand your content, or are otherwise excluded.

Problems:

• Color contrasts are too low and cannot be seen by people with visual impairments.
• Oops! Your name or your tagline means something unwanted in another language – hopefully something good. 😉
• Your name doesn’t work on an international level, because unfortunately nobody abroad can pronounce “Kreuzberger Getränkekombinat”. Therefore, from the start: Think big!
• You are exclusive in your visual language or your wording, for example you do not use gender-sensitive language, photos without diversity and so on. This makes it difficult to address important target groups such as women, migrants and people with disabilities.

Tip:
Make your content accessible to everyone, think differently and in this way do not inadvertently exclude anyone. To do that, of course, you need the right platforms with various stock photography. Free platforms like Pexels often only have a limited selection, but creative search queries can help!

5. Your branding is 08/15

Are you turning something into green energy and your website is green? The others do the same.

Problem:
Those who stick to all conventions quickly become inconspicuous and arbitrary. You run the risk of constantly being confused with your competitors.

Tip:
Create a recognition value for your brand and differentiate yourself from thematically similar projects. It is therefore helpful to do a detailed visual competitor analysis when developing your (re) branding.

6. The branding is too complex

You have a detailed logo, sophisticated storytelling and a super sophisticated corporate design – but new employees are overwhelmed by using it strictly … and the logo will not fit on the next leaflet either.

Problems:

• Too many or small-scale elements prevent recognition and limit usability. Anyone who uses many colors in the logo can prepare for expensive advertising material with four-color printing. Many details make it difficult to print on small areas, for example ballpoint pens.
• If your corporate design manual is as thick as a dictionary, it will overwhelm your team.
• Storytelling should always be engaging and contain certain elements such as a hero – but your story also has to be told in a few sentences.

Tip: In the
long term, think about all possible uses of the corporate design during development. Test and update your style guide regularly with the people who will use it later. Is it understandable and manageable?

Because good branding should be sustainable and, as is so often the case, here too: less is more.

Conclusion: Do your homework and ensure a good foundation!

With the development of corporate design basics, the ideas from your heads become reality: in the form of drafts of a logo, your tagline, design elements for your web project and the appropriate wording.

This gives your website, app , social media channels or print products an unmistakable look. And if you avoid the six branding failures, nobody will forget you any longer! 🙂