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I think most of us can agree there are generic logos in the world that we easily forget, and then there are great logos that we’ll always be able to recognize (even without the brand’s name attached).

But what is it about a logo that makes you recognize it? What is it about the design that can elicit a memory or even a specific emotion?

If you’re in the process of creating a logo for your company, you’re in a unique position to make a powerful impact on how consumers perceive your brand.

Everything you do, say, and, display as part of your new business will tell your prospects more about your company’s identity. It’s vital to ensure from the beginning that you present a cohesive and clear statement regarding your company’s message.

And while a logo may seem quite simple to create, designing a great one isn’t always easy. It involves a lot of market research, a deep knowledge of your buyer personas, and thoughtful consideration of the principles of logo design. Often, designers find themselves creating many iterations of a single logo before getting it “just right.”

So, where do you even begin to design a logo? Right here. We’ve broken down the nine key steps (with a few tips thrown in) you’ll need to take to create a logo that not only you love, but your prospects will too.

How to Design a Business, Company, or Personal Logo

1. Start With Your Story

Companies are created to make money — it’s not the most poetic statement, but it’s the one you need to start with. And in order to make a profitable business, you need to be able to sell yourself just as well as your product. Marketers today tend to agree that buyers connect much more strongly to stories than they do to the basic facts of your product. What does this mean to you? There needs to be some story in your logo.

Before you even think about what this logo will look like, take some time asking yourself what the story behind your company is. When we look at Coca-Cola, we don’t see a brown, carbonated beverage — we see polar bears and thick, white script letters.

Image via Coca-Cola

Step outside of what your company does and convey why you do it. That “why” is the root of your story, and it should come through in the color, shape, and typeface of your logo. If your logo were the title of a movie, what would it look like?

2. Brainstorm Words That Describe Your Brand

Now that you have your story, it’s time to take your logo draft from story to setting. Open Thesaurus.com and enter a term that best describes your product into the search bar.

For example, if you’re in the clothing industry, you might simply type in “clothing.” You’d be surprised by how descriptive the synonyms are that appear. You can even click these results to start new searches and dig deeper as you zero in on the words that best capture your brand.

Image via Thesaurus.com

Find five to 10 words that describe not only what you do, but the why from the previous step. Each of these words can fit like pieces in a puzzle and help guide you to refining a concept.

3. Sketch Ideas Based on These Words

Armed with your why and a few keywords for direction, grab a pencil and paper and start sketching every idea that comes into your head. Allow each new concept to evolve on its own. Don’t get frustrated if the first few aren’t right — keep refining, using previous sketches to influence the outcome of new ones. You might focus these sketches on a shape, the name of your brand, or both.

As you’re sketching the concepts for your logo, keep these tips in mind:

• Keep the shape simple. If you can sketch the most symbolic components in seven seconds or less, you’re in good shape. You should absolutely avoid any popular clip-art artwork or generic symbols like a globe, star, or similar icons that people too easily identify from other places. These are easily forgotten at first glance. The more creative you are at this stage, the better your final logo. Your logo is what your consumers will remember the most. Be honest in this artwork.
• Colors can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. You need to include color with your logo, but be selective on which colors you use. Be mindful of current color trends already being used today and in your target market. As a general rule, don’t choose more than three colors. Choose a color or group of colors that will make you stand out from your competition. But please, for the love of marketing, don’t use the whole rainbow!

4. Test Your Top Sketches With Your Buyer Persona

Once you’ve got a handful of different sketches on paper, take a step back and pick the top three concepts. Don’t think too hard about this — consider the designs your eyes keep going back to, and select them to show to others.

Share these drafts with your friends, family members, and a colleague you trust. If possible, bring these sketches to someone who best fits your buyer persona — or your ideal customer profile. This gives you the most productive opinion on your artwork because it can indicate how customers will receive your brand — not just the people close to you.

Be prepared for honest feedback and don’t take any negative comments personally. These criticisms will only make your final logo better. Use their feedback to select one final concept to develop into a design.

5. Refine Your Chosen Sketch

Congratulations, you’re well on your way to having an awesome logo! Once you’ve identified a sketch to run with, it’s time to refine it and perfect the story you started with in Step 1.

To begin refining your logo, look back at the terms you identified when you first used Thesaurus.com in Step 2. Now look at your chosen sketch and ask yourself: Which terms does this sketch not yet capture? Use them to develop your sketch further, and add back the traits you liked best about the designs you didn’t end up choosing for refinement.

6. Develop Your Logo’s Layout on a Free Design Platform

Now, it’s time to get technical and turn your paper drawing into a usable digital format. To bring this design to life, you have many free design platforms available to recreate your sketch in digital format. Here are a few free solutions:

• Logo Crisp
• Logojoy
• DesignMantic
• GraphicSprings

The platforms above can help you put your sketched logo in digital format, but bringing your concept to life for a business audience requires a bit of technical direction. One of the most important things to get right is the layout. Make sure all of your text and shapes are perfectly spaced and the logo itself is aligned with its surroundings. 

Your logo doesn’t have to be symmetrical, but it should be aligned in different contexts. Chances are, you will encounter situations when your logo sits against different vertical and horizontal borders, and it should appear even with these surroundings no matter how you might repurpose your logo and where you might publish it.

7. Pick Versatile Color Options

Your logo’s color scheme might look great against the color of the canvas on which you designed it, but eventually, your logo will be placed on backgrounds whose colors you didn’t start with.

Let’s revisit our Coca-Cola example from Step 1. As you can see below, the company’s logo can work across any colored can it sells.

Image by Jay Moye

Always be sure to have logo color variations for both dark and light backgrounds. That might mean only having to change the color of your font. Or, in some cases, you might have to change the color of your entire logo.

Create one of each option to make sure you’re prepared when ordering promotional products that will display your logo. T-shirts, stickers, notepads, and coffee mugs are just a few of the many items for which you’ll have different color variations of your logo.

8. Choose a Font

This is the time to combine text with imagery. If you’re chosen sketch is primarily a shape or symbol, rather than text, begin to factor in the written name of your company. Consider the typeface this text will carry if your company name ever stands on its own without the symbol.

Believe it or not, your font choice can say a lot about your business. You can choose a font that’s either serif (with stems on each letter) or sans serif (no stems) — also known as classic or modern, respectively.

Stay away from generic fonts that come standard on every word processor. Some examples of generic fonts are Times New Roman, Lucida Handwriting, and Comic Sans. These fonts will only work against you and your company by making you less memorable.

9. Ensure Scalability

Logos are meant to represent your company on multiple platforms — in print, on your website, on each of your social media business pages, and across the internet as your business grows. You want a logo that can be blown up super large for a billboard, but also scaled down for screening onto the side of a pen.

Every part of your logo should be legible, regardless of the logo’s size.

Whew — still with us? We know this might seem a little overwhelming, but take it slow and don’t rush yourself. It’s better to follow the process through to completion and end with a remarkable brand than to start over a few months later due to a design error or change of heart.

Once you’ve completed your logo, how can you tell if you scored a winner? Easy: Use our Logo Grader to assess the sustainability and effectiveness of your new logo.

Co-authored by: Rachel Begg, Julie Hruska, and Britt Schwartz

You’ve spent months perfecting the script, storyboarding, finding the right talent, shooting, and editing. The end result? A blockbuster brand or product video.

With all that time invested, you can’t stop at just embedding the video on a homepage or sharing it on social media and hoping someone watches.

While great content is bound to be found, it’s also important to be proactive about gaining the attention of and educating prospects and those unfamiliar with your brand. Running a series of YouTube ads is one way to make sure more of your target audience finds the video content you’ve produced.

And with new formats and tracking capabilities, you can also use this information to report on its ROI.

The thing is, advertising on YouTube is very different from running a PPC or paid social campaign. There are specific creative constraints and a ton of options for this platform, and you need a base knowledge before you even scope out your next video project to make the most of the paid possibilities.

What’s New With YouTube Advertising

In January 2017, Google announced it would make changes to AdWords to allow advertisers to reach more viewers on YouTube — especially across mobile devices, where 50% of YouTube views take place. Among the changes it rolled out, possibly the biggest announcement was that advertisers will soon be able to target viewers based on their Google search history, in addition to their viewing behaviors YouTube was already targeting.

Marketers can now target ads at people who recently searched for a certain product or service to target the video ads they’ll be served on the platform. If the content of a video ad is closely related to a search the viewer has been researching, they might be more likely to watch the entire ad or click through the ad to the website.

Keywords are relatively less expensive to target on YouTube than in traditional Google Search: Views cost an average of $0.06 per click on YouTube, compared to the average Google Search cost per click, which is estimated to be between $1-2. When YouTube targeting includes search history, it may be a more cost-effective way to target your audience with a more engaging form of content — video.

The 3 Types of YouTube Video Ads

There are three key types of video ads in which you can invest on YouTube: TrueView, Preroll, and Bumpers.

1. TrueView Ads

TrueView ads are the standard video ad type on YouTube. Advertisers only pay for TrueView ads when viewers watch or interact with their ad (for example, by clicking on a call-to-action), and videos can be easily customized to share a variety of content.

Advertisers only pay when a user watches the ad for at least 30 seconds or until the end of the video or if the viewer takes an action, such as clicking on a call-to-action. YouTube requires that skippable TrueView ads be between 12 seconds and 6 minutes in length, and that non-skippable TrueView ads be 15-20 seconds in length.

There are two types of TrueView ads with which you can optimize your YouTube channel:

Video Discovery Ads (Previously Named In-Display Ads)

Video discovery YouTube ads show up on the YouTube homepage, search results pages, and as related videos on YouTube video watch pages.

These ads appeared after performing a YouTube search:

This display ad appears as a related video on the right-hand video sidebar:

Once a user clicks on the ad, the destination video page features a spot on the right-hand column where a companion banner display ad will appear.

In-Stream Ads

TrueView in-stream ads play before someone watches the video they’ve selected on YouTube. Viewers sometimes have the option to skip the ad after watching it for five seconds. You can also make them play anywhere in the Google Display Network (GDN) — or sites that purchased Google video ad space.

In-stream ads let marketers customize video ads with different CTAs and overlay text, as highlighted in the skippable in-stream ad example below from Grammarly.

Here’s what another skippable in-stream ad from Wix looks like. In this example, there’s another CTA from Wix on top of the right-hand video menu display:

What TrueView Videos Can Include

TrueView video campaigns can include people, dialogue, and music that was retrieved with permission — or is considered royalty-free. However, it’s best not to run a standard promotional commercial. Because these videos can be skipped, you need to give your audience a reason to keep watching, and product plugs historically don’t get the views you might expect.

Instead, tell a story with the time you have in this video. People love seeing case studies of those who faced a struggle that they can empathize with. It’s a source of entertainment that makes your brand memorable and less tempting to skip.

With TrueView ads, advertisers can gain a ton of information about the performance of their ads for optimization and testing purposes.

Using AdWords, YouTube account managers can collect data on an ad’s completed views, partial views, if the video drives channel subscriptions, clickthrough rates on CTAs, views sourced from a user sharing the content, and views on the brand’s other content that can be attributed to a person initially viewing a video ad.

These actions help advertisers better understand the full value of their video ad spend and where to allocate budget to increase results.

2. Preroll Ads

Some in-stream ads are non-skippable and can play before, mid-roll, or after the main video. These are called Preroll ads, and they can be 15 to 20 seconds in duration.

Here’s an example of a non-skippable video ad before the main content on YouTube:

There are also non-skippable, mid-roll video ads, which appear midway through a YouTube video that’s 10 minutes or longer in length.

Source: PC Daily Tips

What Preroll Videos Can Include

Preroll ads give you just as much freedom as TrueView ads in their allotted content. You can include people, dialogue, audio, and more elements that you find best represent your brand in 15 to 20 seconds.

Because preroll ads can’t be skipped, these videos are best created with a call-to-action (CTA) so you can optimize the attention you do have from the viewer. In other words, encourage viewers to click on your ad and receive something in return. Perhaps you’ve released a new product or promoting a major event this season and are looking for signups — use this preroll ad to get those clicks. 

Keep in mind YouTube sells Preroll video space on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis. Make the click worth it.

3. Bumpers

Bumpers are the third and shortest type of YouTube video ad available to you. At just six seconds per bumper, these ad spots play before a viewer’s chosen video. 

Bumper video ads obviously can’t tell a good-enough story in just six seconds, but they make terrific complements to larger video campaigns on a new product launch or event. Just be sure to use this six seconds wisely, and include only the components of your brand you want your audience to remember.

How to Set Up & Launch a YouTube Video Advertising Campaign

Once you’ve created a marketing video you want to advertise on YouTube, it’s time to create your video ad campaign. (If you haven’t made a video yet, here’s how to get started with Animoto or Wistia, along with a few great examples.) Then, upload your video to YouTube.

Now, you’re ready to set up your advertising campaign. First, go to your Google AdWords account to set up your campaign.

Campaign Type

Tap the drop-down menu on the right-hand side of the red “+ Campaign” button on your Google AdWords homepage and select “video.”

Campaign Name

Enter a name for your campaign, and make sure Video has been chosen from the Type drop-down menu.

Video Ad Format

Select “In-stream or video discovery ads” to ensure your video ad will be in TrueView format (in the style of the examples outlined above).

Budget

Set your budget per day. You can also select a delivery method — either the standard delivery, which shows ads evenly during the day, or accelerated delivery, which drives views as quickly as possible. The latter would be useful if you want to capitalize on a trend or news item relevant to your brand’s video.

Networks

Decide where you want your ad to appear.

• YouTube Search: Your video ad will appear in results for searches and will appear on the YouTube home page, channel pages, and video pages.
• YouTube Videos: This runs TrueView ads that can appear in-display ads or in-stream ads. With this option, you can choose for your video ad to appear before or around videos shown across the Google Display Network.

You should create separate campaigns for YouTube Search and YouTube Video as this will help you to better track performance metrics. These ads are served to people performing very different activities and require a different amount of commitment from the viewer, so it’s best to monitor performance separately.

Locations

Define the location of users whom you want the ad to be shown to. You can also exclude certain locations.

Language, Device & Mobile Bidding

AdWords will let you specify the operating system, device, and carrier for more advanced targeting. This is especially useful for mobile app ads, and there’s an option to increase or decrease your bid based on if the video ad is shown to someone on a mobile device.

Advanced Settings

With the advanced settings section, you can set begin and end dates for your campaign, create a custom schedule for when your video ad should be shown, and limit the daily impressions and views for users. This all helps you to get the most return for your ad spend.

Creating the Video Ad Creative

Name your ad group, and then insert the YouTube link for the video you would like to run the ad for. You will then choose whether you want this to run as an in-stream ad or an in-display ad.

For in-display, you’ll need to include a title and short description, which is entered on two separate lines. Note: Titles are limited to 25 characters, and the description lines are limited to 35 characters each.

In-stream ads provide you with the option to overlap a display URL on top of the video. You should use a vanity URL that directs to another final URL to make it more memorable. You can include advanced URL tracking options. In addition, a companion banner made from images from your video will appear on the right side of the video ad.

Bidding

You’ll then determine the max price you will pay for each view, which you can adjust to increase the number of projected views your video may receive.

Targeting

Finally, you can further define the audience you would like the video to be shown — options include gender, age, and parental status. You can also target individuals by their interests, such as beauty mavens, cooking enthusiasts, horror movie fans, etc. Try running multiple campaigns to target different groups of users to discover who is most engaged, rather than including everyone you want to target in one campaign.

Advanced Targeting

You can also target individuals by keywords, topics, or websites where you would like your video ad to appear. Keyword targeting with in-display ads can be a powerful tool for finding individuals who are looking for a visual answer to a question. Be sure to do your research, and try testing out different groups of keywords to see which leads to more views, clicks, or conversions.

Additionally, you can use AdWords video ads to remarket to people who have been in contact with your brand already. This can help you to re-engage those who are already familiar with your brand.

Linking Your Account

You should link your AdWords account to the YouTube channel where the video is hosted if you haven’t already. You can also click “finish” to begin running your video ad campaign.

10 Tips for Optimizing Your AdWords for Video Ads

Launching a video ad campaign is a great step, but there are some things you should set up prior to starting to pay for views to make the most of your budget and to see the highest return for your client.

1. Define your metrics and goals.

When analyzing the results, there are four main categories of metrics you can track for each video. These are located under the “column” drop-down in your campaigns interface.

Views

Under the “views” category, you can better understand what percentage of the ad people viewed and understand how the ad drove earned views or views on your brand’s other videos.

Audience

This category can be used to track likes and shares for each video ad.

Branding

The view rate should signal if the creative and message are interesting or entertaining enough for people to watch the ad. By increasing your view-through rate (VTR), you will lower your cost per view.

Conversions

Conversions will help you better understand if your ad is driving leads and returning a high ROI for your brand.

Depending on the goals for the brand, you should determine a few goals based on these metrics and formalize a plan for optimizing creative and trying different targeting criteria to improve results. Your goals should also determine the type of content you will feature in the ad — some metrics are better for branding goals and others will drive leads and conversions.

2. Track low performing placements.

If you’re running in-display ads that will appear across the Google Display Network, you can review where the ad has appeared in by navigating to Video Targeting > Placements > Where ads were shown > Display network from your Google AdWords Campaigns dashboard. Review this list to see if any particular sites are contributing to poor performance for your desired metrics. Exclude these sites from your ad campaign moving forward to increase your average CPV.

3. Use a custom thumbnail image.

Design or use a high-quality still image from the video to entice a viewer to click on your video. Remember, this image needs to be legible by users on different devices, including mobile. If your image contains a person, make sure he or she is looking into the camera. If you are featuring a product, make sure the background isn’t distracting. 

4. Drive people to buy with cards.

A YouTube card is teased with a small “i” symbol, which the viewer can click to expand. You can time this appearance so only users engaged with the video and content will see the notification.

With cards, you can feature a product related to or featured in the video to drive product purchases. You can also use cards to drive fundraising donations, traffic to a URL, or traffic to other videos as shown in the example below from Refinery29. Each format will allow you to customize the card with text, images, and other options.

5. Create calls-to-actions.

When promoting a video on YouTube, you can include call-to-action overlays that link to a URL. You could link to a landing page, product page, information page, career page … whatever you’d like. You could also send people to a favorable report or interview featuring the brand.

Adobe highlights one of its live videos using a call-to-action overlay:

6. Create a YouTube end slate.

Create an end screen to drive subscribers to your channel, promote your social networks, or increase interest in your brand. If someone has watched a video until the end, it’s a good sign they enjoy your content and might be interested in subscribing to your channel for future updates. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon‘s end slate uses this screen to drive subscribers and social media fans while also highlighting other interesting topics its host has featured. Once you build the image, you will be able to annotate the end screen in YouTube’s video editor.

7. Use negative remarketing.

If you are running a campaign for a longer period of time and want to only attract new users to a brand, consider creating a list of people who your ad will not be shown to. When viewing your AdWords Campaign screen, select “Shared library” on the lower left sidebar. Then select “Video remarketing” and “+ Remarketing List”. You can stretch your campaign budget and target only unique users by selecting to not show your video ad to someone who has previously viewed the specific video, who has visited your YouTube channel, or shared, liked, or commented on any of your videos on your channel.

8. Use close captioning to cater to viewer’s needs and wants.

This tip applies to all YouTube videos — but it’s a general best practice that’s not followed by many brands. Include a quality video transcription you’ve generated and approved. Only user-uploaded transcriptions are indexed by Google because YouTube’s automatic captioning can be less than reliable. Depending on your target audience, you may also want to include transcriptions in various other languages. You can also offer users the option to download or visit a site page with the full transcription in your video description.

9. Qualify viewers.

Sometimes, your ad will be seen by people who have no interest in your product. Encourage them to skip the ad if the content isn’t relevant so you don’t have to pay for the view and they don’t waste their time watching irrelevant advertising.

10. Consider making your ad longer.

When it comes to TrueView ads, if the ad is under 30 seconds, you pay only if a viewer watches until the end. If the ad is longer than 30 seconds, you pay if the viewer watches it for at least 30 seconds. In both cases, you pay if the viewer interacts with your ad before it’s over. Consider this when you are coming up with ideas for content for the ad. You may want to put messaging at a certain point so uninterested viewers can skip the ad, or you might provide special offers towards the end of the video.

The Future of Video is Bright

We’ve told you before: Video content is a must-have part of your content strategy. This is even truer now that YouTube lets marketers target users based on their search histories. YouTube advertising is more targeted than ever, and it’s less competitive real estate than the world of Google Search because video content is newer to the content scene and less popular than blog posts.

Stay tuned for more from us about how to make great video ads for YouTube and social media, and where we think YouTube marketing is headed next.