Through television, smart phones, tablets, the internet, and social media, we are constantly bombarded with images. Because of that, it can be hard to make an impact in the sea of other information.

One way to help your business stand out from the crowd, is through the use of custom graphics. While many view custom graphics as an unnecessary, or frivolous expense, the cost may be justified if they can help boost your business.

Below are some of the benefits of having custom graphics created for your business.


Unique to your business
Generic logos, photos, or other graphics can make your business blend into the background, rather than helping it stand out. Likewise, these all-purpose images often don’t fit the message your business is trying to convey. Custom graphics, however, are uniquely created for your business and your business alone. With custom graphics, you don’t have to worry about another business – or a competitor – having similar materials.


Create a recognizable brand
Even if your business is in its early stages, custom graphics are a great way to invest in your business’s future. Well-designed custom graphics can help create the impression of a more professional, successful brand. Likewise, creating a memorable logo will help your existing and future clients easily recognize – and remember – your brand.


Add warmth to your office
Custom graphics can be used in many different ways throughout your business. In addition to logos and designs for things such as business cards or letterhead, custom graphics can also be used to bring your mission statement to life, create realistic looking windows in windowless work spaces, or bring warmth to break rooms, hallways, or public spaces.


Cohesive branding
Working with a designer to create custom graphics for your business often leads to more cohesive branding. Using the same colors, fonts, logos, or designs, can allow material to be quickly and easily recognized as part of your business.

Whether you need a logo, new letterhead, or a full rebranding, custom graphics can help take your business to the next level!

Marketing isn’t about communicating with the clients you already have; it is about expanding your influence while reaching new customers. However, with the sheer volume of ad content produced each year, doing that can be difficult.

The ad industry spends more than $465 billion each year to try to capture our attention. However, despite their best efforts, many marketing tools, such as direct mailers, wind up going straight in the trash, without being opened. With all of the content that consumers are bombarded with each day, how can you make your company stand out?

The following three questions will help you reevaluate your marketing strategy, leading to more successful campaigns and increased business.


Choose a different medium
Modern marketing is so much more than direct mail or email. Instead, the most successful advertising campaigns are often those that utilize unusual mediums.

In 2009 T-Mobile orchestrated large scale flash mobs to promote their “Life’s Worth Sharing” campaign. The videos of these events have more than 100 million YouTube hits, raised online searches for the company by 38%, and sales by an incredible 52%.

Choosing an unusual, or out of the ordinary, medium for your next marketing campaign, is an opportunity to be creative, while standing apart from your competition. Comic books, music albums, art installations, or flash mobs are all unusual ways to generate buzz about your company.


Choose what you’re marketing
Consumers, especially in the younger demographic groups, are becoming more interested in business practices than products. Because of this, running a campaign focusing on the ethical treatment and wages your corporation provides to overseas workers, may be more effective than a breakdown of the features of your latest project.

This also gives your company a chance to highlight your mission statement or values. For example, in 2012 Zappos released a comic book titled “Delivering Happiness”, which highlighted two of the company’s core values. The comic has consistently been in the top five best-selling customer service and retail books.


Choose who you work with
How you implement your marketing campaigns is often just as important as the content that contain. Because of this, it is important to work with a marketing group that supports and understands your visions. If you have been doing in-house marketing, consider employing an outside team for part or all of your marketing. Likewise, if you have a single company handle all of your material, consider diversifying with and using a new company for a print or radio campaign or even creating content yourself.

While reevaluating your marketing strategy can be risky, when done correctly it can have enormous payoffs.

In the social media age of going viral and trending topics, staying relevant is often one of the greatest challenges company’s face today. However, it is not an impossible task. Business innovation is one way that companies can ensure their continued and long term success.

While innovation can sometimes seem like an impossible task, there are a number of ways in which businesses can help themselves stay ahead of the competition. These three business innovation strategies may seem simple, but they can help you change and improve your business model and operations.

Don’t reinvent the wheel
While innovation is important, it doesn’t always mean a ground breaking, or earth shattering, discovery. Instead, business innovation can be as simple as a shift in outlook or strategy. Too often, businesses invest time, energy, and resources into projects or research that never come to fruition, because they are trying too hard to come up with “innovative” ideas. Instead, work within your established principles, and core values, to find ways to adjust your perspective and keep moving forward.

Encourage collaboration
Companies like Google, Samsung, and Amazon are often considered the industry’s top innovators. However, it is not because they have more time or money; instead, they provide their employees with better platforms for brainstorming and sharing new ideas. By giving people room to cultivate, explore, and experiment with new ideas, their employees can work together to find creative solutions to pressing problems.

Listen to feedback
Oftentimes the most innovate ideas can come from vendors, employees, or customers. Because they regularly use and interact with your business or product, these people often have the best insight as to how to improvement it. Likewise, frontline employees are often the most equipped to tell you what is working, what isn’t, and what new trends can be expected in the future.

Business to business marketing can be a competitive and cutthroat environment. Your marketing needs to make an immediate impact and have a strong message, or risk being lost in the crowd.

While B2B marketing can be difficult, it is not impossible. The following unique B2B marketing ideas will not only help your business stand out, but can also increase the number of contacts, meetings, and sales your marketing materials generate.


Don’t just show up – sponsor
Walking in for an unscheduled sales call is a thing of the past. More and more companies are finding innovative ways to create meet ups between their sales teams and their target corporations. One way to do this, is through event sponsorship. Sponsoring an event or seminar your prospects will be attending, is one way to get your foot in the door when it comes time to make a connection. If they regularly read an online publication or newsletter, find out about sponsoring an email or prominent ad space. Likewise, sponsoring a charity or philanthropy event, hosted by your prospect, is another way to almost guarantee a face to face meeting. Websites like Meetup make this even easier, especially for small businesses with limited resources.

Let go of “What we can do for you”
When it comes to B2B marketing, most companies focus their message on “what we can do for you”. While this tried and true marketing strategy tells your prospects why they need your services, it is rarely exciting. Instead, focus on major successes you’ve had with other clients; a mailer bragging about how you saved one client $10 million in one year is much more effective than a multi-page cost benefit analysis of why they should work with you.


Create less content, not more
Over 90% of B2B companies rely on content marketing to generate sales. While this is an effective strategy, it also leads to market oversaturation; in an effort to get their services noticed, business wind up flooding their prospects with marketing content. Instead, reduce the quantity and increase the quality. Most target corporations will appreciate receiving 4-5 well designed, easy to read, and relevant messages, as opposed to 8-10 general or universal messages.

While the B2B marketing world can be difficult to stand out in, it is not impossible. By focusing on creating authentic and meaningful interactions between your company and your prospects, you can decrease the amount of time spent making cold call and increase sales.

Business intelligence is a competitive area that keeps the industry moving forward. Because of the innovation present in the field, this year promises to bring lots of improvements and advancements in the field. Below are some of the latest trends in business intelligence.

1. More competition
   

Big companies and independent developers have become fiercely competitive in their attempts to create new and innovative BI platforms. Some of the most popular – and innovative – independent developers include Advanced Visual Systems, Tableau, MetaLayer, Pentaho, Tibco, Infer, and the cleverly-named Qlik. For those looking for more market presence, or a proven track record of success, Google, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Cisco Systems all have their own DV platforms.

1. Data from internal and external sources
   

In order to make informed business decisions, companies need to look at data from a variety of sources. This means not only looking at internally generated data sources, but also considering overall market and consumer trends. Using information from multiple sources, will give business the edge to excel in their fields.

1. Increase in data governance
   

Corporations are providing their workers with unprecedented access to data and data sources. Because of this, there is an increased need to manage and monitor how and for what this data is being used for. For many companies, this will be done by adding a Chief Data Officer.

According to Gartner, there are currently twice the amount of Chief Data Officers as there were two years ago. These numbers are expected to continue to climb, with as many as 25% of all companies having a data management position by the end of 2015.

1. Simpler ways to view data
   

As we are constantly bombarded with images and information, data needs to be easy to read, interact with, and interpret in order to hold our attention. Because of this, dashboards and analyses are becoming increasingly simpler; by displaying the most important information in a faster and more efficient way, businesses can better understand their data and directly apply it to their operations.

1. Focus on social intelligence
   

More and more companies are beginning to view social media as a legitimate way to gather data. By allowing corporations to follow trending topics in real time and giving them unprecedented access for customer interactions, social intelligence continues to evolve and change the face of BI.