Creative Advertising: How to Create a Logo That Will Sell Your Business

Every piece of branded material that your business produces has the potential to be an advertisement for you. Many business owners develop a whole marketing plan around getting these branded products out to the public. There are many ways to do this, from adding a wrap-around to your car to creating a cool and collectible calendar for your clients to hang on the wall.

The Creation Process

Actually creating a logo takes time and artistic skill. Don’t expect to sit down today, draw one out and to be completely satisfied with it. No, you should get together with one or two people who you can trust in their artistic skills. Come up with 10 different ideas and then go through a voting process. Narrow it down to your top three and then discuss which one should become the logo that you’ll end up using on all of your business branding. The one that you end up picking should be attractive to the audience that you’re trying to reach. It should tell people about the company in one way or another. It should also stand out and be unlike other branded logos as much as possible.

How to Use the Logo to Advertise

Your logo is everything to your company. It is how people—your potential customers—recognize your business and product. It has the power to cause you to trend as it can help people to build an attachment to your business if they really like your brand. Think of all of the brand out there—for shirts, shoes, cars, health products, etc. Although not everything you have is brand-associated, you probably have one or two favorite brands where you only wear or have certain things that portray their logo. Getting to that point of popularity, however, is tough and can even take years. Don’t expect your logo to become the next hottest thing tomorrow. Take it slow, but do what you can. Here are just a few things that you ought to consider to help use your logo to sell your business:

Branded Products

This might sound obvious. However, when you think of Nike, what do you think of? The checkmark-swoop, right? Or what about Northface? Or even The Hard Rock Cafe? These count as examples of companies whose logos have become cool fashion statements, bumper stickers, or mobile phone skins. The beauty of this kind of advertising is that the fans of your company will advertise it for free when they wear or display goods with your logo on it.

If creating a logo seems like a difficult thing for you to do alone, run a contest among your friends, family members, employees, etc. This way, everyone can get in on the creative action. Then, narrow it down to your favorite three designs. You can then run a social media campaign to see which logo design more people respond to. Whichever one gets you the most likes, positive commentary, etc. is the one that you most definitely should go with.

If you’d like to take advantage of the free publicity that you’ll get from such a venture, have your logo printed on a T-shirt or a bumper sticker. You could even have it placed on a regular sticker and have it go directly on the product’s packaging or that can be put on people’s shirts.

Car Wrap-Arounds

If you have an exceptionally cool logo, why not have a local vinyl shop create a wrap-around magnet for your car? Your vehicle is like a traveling billboard. You can even take this idea one step further. If you really want your logo to become a selling machine, ask other people—your current customers even—if they would be willing to put a wrap-around with your logo on it on their cars. Usually, there is some sort of compensation for these traveling billboards, which you can work out with those who agree to do this.

Company Pens

Doesn’t it always seem like you’re losing your pen? Aren’t you grateful when you find another one? It’s probably no secret that you’re not the only person who does this. Your customers do, too. If your customers come into your business, you can disperse these pens by putting them in a cup on the counter. This is especially helpful if they need to use pens to sign documents. Encourage them to keep the pens they use after they use them. This way, they’ll see your company name and logo every time they use it in the future.

Branded Calendars

One of the nice things about using a branded calendar is that people keep these up on their walls for the whole year. That means that the calendar with your company logo on it will be seen by someone, maybe multiple individuals, for up to 12 months. Most ads in newspapers don’t run that long. If they do, they’ll certainly be more expensive. As an added bonus, potential clients won’t ignore them because they really won’t be seen as advertising but rather something useful. Just as a tip, though, people don’t want things on their walls that don’t mesh with their personalities. If you’re going to start passing around calendars, then you’re going to want to make sure that the photos inside are epic and something that people want to show off. These calendars should be given out to every employee, certain customers and any product fairs that your company may participate in.

Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment

Creating a logo that is effective may take a few different tries and you might even find yourself needing to rebrand after a couple of years. Initiating a beta phase, however, might prove helpful to you. Remember the logo creation process that we talked about earlier on? When you come down to the three logos that you like the best, it might be best to start experimenting. Copyright each of them, of course, and then start using them to sell with. Have an equal amount of product or services advertised with those labels and then sell them. After a trial period—about a month as you don’t want it to be too long or too short—choose the one that produced the most results.

Hopefully, the above advice has helped you know a little bit more about what it takes to come up with your own logo and how to go about launching it as a brand. All the best luck to you!