You know your company better than anyone else. You’ve spent countless hours refining your products and services, studying the market, and acquiring the right people, processes, and technology to launch your business and start driving revenue. But how much thought have you given to your brand?

Far from just a marketing catchphrase, your brand is the identity of your business at its very core. It’s how your customers think of you and what will drive them to connect with you instead of your competitors. An experienced design agency like Fortico can help guide you through creating a strong online brand that will stand out. Here’s how.

Research and discovery

The first step in brand creation is to get to the heart of how you view your products and services and the unique value they offer to your ideal audience. When you describe your business to someone, what words do you use? How do you differentiate your business from others in the market? Second, it’s critical to understand how your competitors are branding themselves and how well it resonates with potential customers. Branding is equal parts art and science. With the proper data, we can craft a brand proposition that will serve as the heartbeat for your business.

Cornish Brand proposition

Think of your brand proposition as the promise you make to your customers. What can you offer them that no one else can? As we explore the competitive landscape to reveal your brand differentiators, we can begin to craft that unique promise as the foundation for your creative presence online.

Visual identity

As part of the creative branding process, we’ll create possible themes and associated logos that help illustrate your brand proposition and the visual identity you want to create for your company. Your brand should be recognisable and consistent, no matter where your customers find you or what device they use. From your font and typography to your company logo, to the graphics and icons you use for presentations and social posts--we will help you build a cohesive identity that instils trust and credibility with your audience.

Brand guidelines

Brand guidelines play a large role in the effort to ensure consistency for your new brand. We will create a guide for your chosen brand identity that will make it easy for current and future employees to conform to your logo and font styles, colour palette, tone of voice, and more.

Experience matters

As you build your new brand and image in 2023, rely on an agency with the expertise to help your business stand out from your competitors. As a design agency in Bude, Fortico serves brands locally and nationally. We deliver high-quality design and marketing materials that reflect your brand’s authentic voice and ensure an exceptional experience for your customers, whether they find you on their desktop or mobile device.

It’s no secret that your website is the door that leads your customers to your products and services – and you want that door to have excellent curb appeal to attract and hold your audience's attention. Most consumers visit a website multiple times before considering a purchase or making contact with the vendor, and 75% of consumers will judge the credibility of your product or service based on the design and functionality of your website.

With so many web design options available, choosing the right one to attract the right attention may seem daunting. While it may seem simple enough to select a basic WordPress template and hit “publish,” a better, more effective option will draw your visitors through the door and into your site. Here are a few ways a custom-built WordPress site will help your business succeed.

A tailored fit

WordPress is known for its simple content management features and intuitive templates. But it’s also easy to tell when browsing on a plug-and-play WordPress site straight from the box without customisation. A custom-built site retains all of the ease and simplicity of WordPress but with the features and design elements that pertain directly to your business.

For example, if you have a property rental business and you’d like to include a virtual tour to capture the uniqueness of your rental, a custom-built site can use your photos and videos as the centrepiece, drawing visitors into the imagery instead of losing them in blocks of text.

Likewise, if there are website features you don’t wish to include, you can streamline your site to offer only the content and functionality most relevant and appealing to your ideal buyer.

Less maintenance

A custom WordPress site is built to your specifications. You define the features and functionality you want to include, and an experienced website services company will develop your site to meet your needs. With an off-the-shelf template, you’ll need multiple plug-ins to achieve your desired look and functionality. Those plug-ins are at risk of breaking and needing frequent updates. Instead of tacking on features and functionality piece by piece, a custom-built site uses simple functions and commands to create a strong foundation with fewer moving parts and much less risk of malfunction.

A better mobile experience

We live in a mobile-first society. Consumers are constantly shopping on their tablets and mobile devices, and they expect the same experience on the go or at their desks. A custom-built site can be mobile-optimised and thoroughly tested to create an exceptional experience for your customers no matter where they find you.

From better SEO to streamlined content management, a custom-built WordPress can elevate your online presence and help you connect with your audience more effectively. As a web design company in Bude, Cornwall, Fortico has over 10 years of experience in web design for companies in Cornwall and throughout the UK. Contact us today to discuss an affordable, custom site that is purposefully designed for your business.

As a small business, competing with larger companies for rank on search engines can be hard. You may not have the budget to focus on broad, highly competitive keywords.

However, you do have a superpower — you’re a local company. For many services, a customer can’t choose just any business. They need one nearby who can take care of their needs. Also, many people prefer to support local companies.

How can you use your local business “superpower” to improve your search rankings? By leveraging local search engine optimisation (SEO).

Here’s what you need to know.

Use Locally Focused Keywords

The first keywords many people think of when they want their business to rank well are short and broad. For instance, they may want to focus on “hairdresser.”

What’s better, however, is to add a few words to that keyword to create a long-tail, locally-focused keyword. You might say, “Hairdresser in Bude” or “Women’s hairstyles in Bude.”

By including your city, neighbourhood, or even prominent street names, you can help your business rank highly for those who look for services using those terms. You’ll also do well for those nearby who search for “Hairdresser near me.”

Claim Your Google My Business Page

The next step is to claim your business on Google Business Profile. There are so many benefits to having this profile completely filled out that they are hard to list.

First, a Google Business Profile page immediately boosts your reputation with Google, the premier search engine in the world. Having a fully completed profile improves your professionalism and reliability in Google’s eyes, helping your rank more highly.

Secondly, your Google Business Profile page includes essential information for your customers, including your hours, contact information, and details about your products and services. You can also post photos and videos.

Finally, a Google Business Profile page gives you a chance to show up in Google’s Local Pack, a sidebar of search results in the local area. This shows businesses on a map, along with their contact information and reviews.

If you want to do well with SEO, you have to have a Google Business page!

Improve Your Business Visibility Today

Having a small business can make it hard to get noticed, but local search makes a big difference. You can make a big impact by using local keywords and maximising your Google Business Profile page.

Interested in learning more about how to market your business? Contact us today!

How do you get customers to notice you? You put something before them that catches their eye.

Most people won’t take the time to read everything they see, but a captivating image effortlessly draws the eye. Plus, the human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text! Images are like putting your content in lightspeed mode!

Using stock photos is an easy way to add visuals to your online and in-print marketing, but is it the best way?

Here are five reasons why you need your own professional photos.

1. People Want to Get to Know You

Stock photos might do okay at catching people’s attention. After all, there are some amazing artists out there who contribute to stock photography.

However, there will always be one thing missing — YOU!

Customers these days want to know who they’re buying from. They want to see photos of you and your employees or your business process — not some random people from the Internet.

2. Photos Represent Your Brand

Furthermore, your photos represent your brand. Using stock photos can only approximate what really goes on in your business. When you take your own photos, you have full creative control over what appears in the image. You can thoroughly customize it, right down to incorporating your business’s colours and identity in the photo.

3. Social Media Is a Powerful Tool

Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are powerful methods for reaching a new audience. However, posts will get lost in the shuffle without an image.

On average, Facebook posts with images get 2.3x more engagement, and Twitter posts with images get an astonishing 150% more shares!

4. Professional Photos Are Better

Smartphones take some amazing photos these days, why do you need a professional? The gear that a photographer uses is a higher quality and will mean that you have a better end result, sharper, cleaner images that you can use from social media up to printed advertising.

5. Professional Photographers Are Better

Furthermore, there is far more to the art of photography than just pressing the shutter button. Lighting, composition, camera settings, and more go into making a 'simple' photo.

Professional photographers have developed an eye for what makes a good image. They’ve studied the rules of composition, learned how to create with light, and know how to get their camera to capture the vision they carry in their head.

Everyone might play at being a photographer these days, but not everyone has the experience and creative vision to back it up.

How to Get Professional Photos

At Fortico, we work with high-quality local photographer in Bude for your social media, marketing material, media kits and website to ensure your brand shows off your persona, rather than using stock images. This is particularly important if you are producing your own products, or have your own guest house or rental property. Still, even if you are delivering services — quality headshots or photos of your office or workspace are important assets.

Contact us today to get started!

Cadbury, Range Rover, Kit-Kat, and of course, the BBC. These are all famous British brands that are recognisable as soon as they are mentioned.

That’s because each of these brands has well-established and well-designed logos that have been instilled in our minds over the years and decades. How could we forget them right?

Of course, “A logo is a graphic mark, emblem, symbol, or stylised name used to identify a company, organisation, product, or brand. It may take the form of an abstract or figurative design, or it may present as a stylised version of the company’s name if it has sufficient brand recognition,” according to the website Investopedia.

Other memorable logos that might come to mind include the iconic wave-like lettering on a Coca-Cola bottle, or the bold white letters spelling out “Heinz” on a can of British baked beans, How about the two famous Rs that make up the Rolls-Royce emblem placed underneath its Spirit of Ecstasy bonnet ornament?

Don’t forget the UK's well-known biscuit the McVities Digestive revered for its sweet, wheaty taste, crumbly texture, and always perfect for dunking in a cup of tea at high noon. 

Whether you read about these brands here or on a billboard, in a magazine, or see them on the television, they visually pop into your head. That’s because brand logos if done correctly, can make or break a company. A good, designed logo is easily recognisable, memorable, and of course, represents your vision.

If you’re starting a business, a brand, or a company you should consider having a well-developed brand logo created. The right logo will help your target market and/or audience identify with what you are trying to sell to them.

However, a logo is much more than a colourful graphic, and perfect lettering, it’s part of a bigger picture that helps build brand identity and what people will see. It can also ultimately build brand loyalty from your target market, audience, and beyond, as this is the goal.

Long Ago

Logos are surely nothing new and have been around for centuries as some suggest, “… history of logos goes back to ancient family crests, hieroglyphs, and symbolism. Early versions of logos developed in the Middle Ages (around 1300 AD), as shops and pubs used signage to represent what they did. The first modern logo designs were created in the early 1900s, evolving alongside mass printing.”

Bottom-line your well-designed logo must represent your brand identity exactly from the get-go as it will set your product apart from the rest of the crowd.

If you need help creating your perfect brand, contact Fortico today and let's see if we can help you with your Cornish brand.