2021 is shaping up to be an exciting and significant year for brands, with many needing to evolve to meet the changing shifts in our online behaviours. From the way we interact with businesses, to how we consume content, the pandemic has changed everything and posed new challenges for technical branding.
1. Connect through People & Personality
In our current ‘Zoom/Teams’ culture brand needs to stay connected on an emotional level with customers. During the first UK lockdown, 1 in 5 remote workers said they struggled with loneliness, so building more emotional connections through your brand is becoming vital. You might not be able to meet your customers in person, but you still want to give them that welcoming feel when they visit your website or LinkedIn page.
One way to achieve this is by introducing more people imagery throughout your online channels. This adds more interaction and connection to your brand and influences customers to feel more positive emotions when considering your business and its offerings. To add to your overall technical branding, you could add more people imagery on your hero/header images, team pages or on your blog articles.
More people imagery can also be included throughout your other supporting online channels, such as your LinkedIn or Twitter branding or even your email signatures to help customers and prospects put a face to the name.
Below are a few examples of how Motion have been achieved this for a selection of our customers:
2. Simple Iconography for Quick Messaging
You want to avoid information overload, which can be difficult to achieve if the product or service you are offering is particularly complicated. Utilising simple iconography will provide better visual aid for consuming and understanding the key points of a page. When skim-reading a page are you more likely to digest key benefits quickly from clever icons and punchy messaging, or a block of text or merging bullet lists?
Clever and simple iconography stops information overload and focuses the user on the core knowledge they need to know, like key product/service benefits or why a customer should choose your business over a competitor. For double effect make sure you pull out all the key statistics in your business and match them carefully with iconography.
At Motion, creating an iconography suite as part of technical branding is a must. Our core industries are often complex and need simple solutions like this to help. Below are a few examples of our creations:
3. Infographics to Educate, Inform and Enable as Part of Your Technical Branding
Much like last year, 2021 is the year for education and enablement. We are in a time where customers do not want to be sold to. They want to feel like they are making an informed decision and it should be part of your marketing strategy to ensure they have the tools they need to achieve that at the right stage of their journey.
Infographics are one such tool that can significantly help in the sales cycle. They can take complex solutions or abstract concepts and simplify them visually, to help with understanding and focus their minds on the core messaging.
Infographics also help during the sales cycle when a complex solution/product must appeal to different stakeholders in a prospect’s organisation. Not all will have the same technical capability, so providing a simplified visual aid will help highlight the core benefits and drive belief in your offerings.
4. Videos & Animations
When created properly, videos and animations can convey a lot of information in a short space of time and is often much more engaging and easier to consume than a long page of website text. With on-site customer and prospect visits off the table to explain how a product works, consider sending an instructional video instead?
There are plenty of uses for B2B video marketing, many of which we discussed in our recent blog, but some ideas to consider include whiteboard videos, to explain with visual graphics and short, punchy text a complex topic. Or consider creating an introduction video for your company including the team where safely possible, to help with building deeper connections and trust whilst meeting in person is still limited.
5. Data/Statistic/Facts Visualisations
Facts and stats are engaging but looking at a skew of figures can be difficult to take away the core messaging. Utilising simple data visualisations will pair style and substance, creating more digestible content that is easier to grasp the data.
Determining how you visualise data is important for providing the best user experience. You need to choose the best visual for your data and its purposes, such as tables, charts, graphs, maps or dashboards. Adding interaction and animation can also take your data to the next level and help to hook the user quicker.
6. Muted colour pallets for a more calming 2021
You can’t blame users for wanting a more calming mood this year, especially after the turmoil of 2020! This year, we expect to see more calming and neutral colour tones taking centre stage in the technical branding for technology, manufacturing and engineering sectors. The muted colour pallets have been helping users feel more relaxed, secure and trusting towards business brands.
We have seen many of our health sector and pharma clients already moving in this direction, opting to use clean and light designs that help clear and refocus the mind. Below are some examples of our recent project work where we opted for more light and muted colour tones:
Is your technical branding doing your business justice? Consider applying some of these top trends to take your brand and business to the next level. View our creative services for more information or contact the Motion team to get started on your next project.
