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4 New Year’s resolutions for your business in 2021

Here are 4 great business New Year’s resolutions to get you started in 2021 – and how to keep them.

Big ideas start here poster for the new year

After the year we’ve been through, we’re all looking forward to saying goodbye to 2020. But wishful thinking is not enough: to make 2021 a great year for your business, you need a solid strategy. The year end is a natural time for planning, so why not write some goals for the year ahead? 

Here are 4 great business New Year’s resolutions to get you started – and tips on how to keep them in 2021.

1. Prioritize a great customer experience

Did you make your customers feel extra special this year? Research shows that 66% of customers who switch brands do so because of a poor service experience. Customer experience is a pretty crucial consideration, especially in the current context, as they’re less able to interact with you in real life due to covid-19 measures.

But as customer expectations change, how do you know the standard you should be aiming for? Of course, courtesy goes a long way – you’d never be rude, ignore enquiries or fail to fix a mistake. But over time, best practices and technologies evolve and advance, making customer satisfaction a moving target. Fortunately, the best way to find out what customers want is easy – just listen.

How to keep your resolution

Here are a few ideas for assessing your customer experience and keeping your company’s New Year’s resolution:

  • Collate your online reviews and any complaints and emails to look for trends and repeated themes. These are the points to tackle first in the New Year.
  • Cultivate repeat business. Looking at your existing customer base, work out what percentage of your customers were returning vs new. A lack of returning customers could point to a poor experience. Work on cultivating repeat business in 2021 and consider checking in with first-time customers to make sure they’re happy.
  • Run a short, anonymous survey among customers on your database asking for ratings on common metrics like delivery times, website experience and interactions with staff. This will give you a baseline to measure improvements against.
  • Keep an ear out on social media, whether it’s checking your Twitter mentions during the working day, or automating your social listening with dedicated softwares.

For more inspiration, check out our guide to providing first class customer service.

people with laptops

2. Move to an up-to-the-minute social strategy

Few things move faster than social media. That’s why you should regularly review your social strategy to make sure you’re still focusing on the areas that will best benefit your business in 2021.

If you have a dedicated social media team or an expert on staff, they should be able to point towards any obvious improvements that require extra budget or different ways of working. If you’re approaching it from a generalist perspective, fear not – it’s probably easier than you think to make improvements, even as a small business. New Year’s resolutions don’t always require a lot of resources to keep.

How to keep your resolution

  • Check you’re using the right channels. Although the ‘big’ social names like Facebook and Instagram are unlikely to change much year-on-year, it’s worth keeping an eye on emerging technologies and networks, particularly if your customer base includes under 25s, and consider adopting new platforms or jettisoning old ones. Sometimes less is more!
  • Make sure your update frequency is optimal. If you’re posting too often or too infrequently, you could be wasting resources. It’s worth looking at your mix of promotional updates vs. interesting content as well. You may want to ramp up the content and play down the promotions, or vice versa.
  • Ensure your policies and approaches are up to date. As with customer experience in general, your interactions on social need to be in line with what your audience is expecting, whether that’s the speed of your replies or how you tackle difficult questions.

For more on brushing up your social smarts, see our 10 small-business marketing ideas you can easily execute online.

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3. Build a brand that does your company justice

Branding isn’t just the colors on your letterhead – done right, it’s the backbone of your business identity. The New Year is a great time to check that your current branding is still working for you, and make sure it expresses your company’s values, personality and strengths. As a small business, this resolution can actually be easier to keep, as a smaller team and fewer products also mean more flexibility to evolve without having to go through lengthy processes.

How to keep your resolution

Give your brand a once-over to make sure it’s performing in all the important ways.

  • Do a competitor review – compare your branding against similar businesses to make sure you’re still distinctive and not falling behind current design conventions.
  • Assess your tone of voice with a quick spot-check across your website, emails and social. Pick a few pages, tweets or newsletters at random to get a representative sample. Learn how to write tone of voice guidelines here to ensure consistency.
  • Review your brand values and make sure they’re in line with the way your staff members feel, speak and act. If there’s a discrepancy, either your brand or your company culture may need to be refined.

person looking at ideas on wall

4. Deliver a great employee experience

Most businesses know the value of a great customer experience, and as of recently, employee experience is receiving a similar level of recognition. Why not take the New Year as an opportunity to make sure you’re taking good care of those all-important human resources?

Employee experience starts at the interview stage (or on seeing the job ad, if you’re being precise), and continues to the point of exiting a company, so this is a business New Year’s resolution your entire organization can get on board with. Whether you’re a big company or a small business, this New Year’s resolution is a great way to ensure you’re keeping your staff happy and making business thrive in the long run.

How to keep your resolution

  • Make a great first impression by onboarding new employees well. A warm welcome goes a long way towards getting new hires up to speed and happy in their environment.
  • Open up channels of communication so your staff can feed back honestly and openly. An online survey is a popular option.
  • Review your benefits package. Are your staff perks up to scratch?
  • Keep an eye on work-life balance. Do you offer flexible working or an option to work remotely  – especially in the current context? Can staff organize their time to suit childcare and other commitments?

Want to kickstart your business plans for 2021? Plan on paper with our cleverly designed Hardcover Notebooks.

Brand voice is a key element to help customers get a feel of your business’ identity and values. In the social media era, it’s become more important than ever to stand out from the crowd and make your brand memorable.

With a set of useful, detailed guidelines, anyone can create note-perfect content for your brand. Here’s how to create your tone of voice bible.

What is tone of voice, and why do you need brand voice guidelines?

Your brand’s tone of voice is the way you express your brand’s identity and values in communications, both internally and externally. It needs to feel true to your brand persona and be consistent over channels.

Put simply, tone of voice guidelines are a tool to ensure that for every piece of written communication you create – whether that’s internally or to customers – your brand will always sound uniquely ‘you’. No matter what their job is or what they’re writing about,  your guidelines should give confidence to your employees, and keep your brand’s tone of voice consistent across all channels and touchpoints. It can take the form of a Word document, wiki, PDF or even a Powerpoint presentation – whatever works best for your company.

Team Talking Meeting Paper

Tone guides are all about making communicating in your brand voice easier. They could be used to help a new copywriter get to grips with writing product descriptions, or acting as a handy reference for experienced team members tackling a new channel or a tricky-to-phrase piece of content.

However they’re used, one of the big benefits of defining tone of voice guidelines is that they take brand voice from being the remit of a particular person or team, and make it something that’s owned by the whole company and accessible to everyone.

What should your brand voice guidelines include?

A tone of voice guidelines document needs to do two things:

  1. Introduce your brand’s tone of voice and tonal values, explaining what they stand for and how they support your brand and company mission.
  2. Give detailed, practical support to the people creating content for different channels. This part will form the bulk of your brand tonality guidelines, and it’s something people will be dipping into on a regular basis.

Hardcover notebook with notes and doodles

3 tips to write your tone of voice guidelines

Not sure where to start? Here’s how to structure your tone of voice document.

1) Make a list of all your communications channels

Wondering how to create a tone of voice? Start by listing your communications channels. These will be the chapter headings for your tone of voice document. Include the major, high-traffic ones, like your website, email marketing, advertising messages and social media channels

Take time to think through the easier-to-forget elements, like website error messages, automatic notification emails, call center scripts and footnotes. In your voice style guide, you’re aiming to cover every part of the journey for your users, whether they’re customers, media and journalists or potential employees. A quick email around your company can help you get a list of channels and touchpoints to cover, and can help you unearth some you might otherwise have missed.

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2) Highlight the tonal values that apply to each channel

Tonal values are a huge part of building your tone of voice guidelines. Defining your tonal values is a separate exercise that is best done in a team or workshop environment where you distill your brand, values and business approach into a workable tonal toolkit.

When it comes to adding tonal values to your brand tone of voice guide, the key takeaway is that not every value is going to fit into every piece of messaging. For one thing, it’s pretty complicated to try to work everything in, and you’ll probably end up swamping your message in tonal language – far from ideal.

Another reason not to try and use all your tonal values at once is that not every value is appropriate for every message. Although ‘inspiring’ might be a fantastic value to lead on for your press releases, it won’t work so well in an update about delivery times.

For each of your channel-chapters, suggest which tonal values should take center stage and which ones will have more of a supporting role. This section of the voice and tone style guide isn’t about setting down rules – ultimately, the decision is down to whoever is creating content. But recommendations can be really helpful and save time when briefing, creating and approving content.

3) Write best-practice tone of voice examples

Written examples are worth their weight in gold when it comes to tone of voice. They allow people to see the brand’s tone of voice in action and appreciate how it works in the context of real content. Try gathering some best-practice brand voice examples for each of your chapters. For each example, write a short paragraph about why it works and how it fits into your tone of voice strategy.

You can also include some dummy ‘worst-practice’ versions to show how not to do tone of voice. When you’re adding these to your brand voice guide, think about your tonal values and write in a way that’s the opposite of what you’d normally do.

When it comes to sourcing tone of voice examples, sending an email around your company could save you some leg-work and bring a few gems to light. Another option is to run a workshop with heads of departments where they bring brand voice examples from their teams. That way you get extra immersion and buy-in for the value of tone of voice at the same time.

People writing on post-its

How to share your tone of voice guidelines

Once your tone of voice guidelines are complete, it’s time to share them with the rest of your company. There are plenty of ways to do this, and the best option will depend on the size of your company and the resources you have available.

Publish your document

This is an essential. Put your document somewhere everyone can access it, for example an intranet or shared cloud platform. Then, give it some publicity. You could put a link to the guidelines in your company newsletter, send a group email, or even leave paper copies in common spaces in your office.

Make it an onboarding essential

Introduce the tone of voice early in every employee’s journey by adding the brand voice guidelines, or a shortened introduction to them, to your employee onboarding kit.

Hold a brand voice workshop

Organize a half-day workshop for your team to introduce them to the brand tone guidelines. During the session, they can put it into practice with some writing exercises and ask any questions they might have about how tone of voice works or how to use it in a specific situation. These sessions can even help enrich your guidelines with more brand voice examples.

Why not distribute beautiful Hardcover Notebooks to your team so they can practice applying the company tone of voice during your workshops?

Elect a tone of voice champion

Part of the benefit of a tone of voice guideline document is to make sure the tone belongs to everyone. But there’s usually one person – if you’re reading this, it may well be you – who knows it better than most. That person can become the brand tone of voice expert. Add their name and contact details to the tone of voice brand book so that they can field any questions and take ongoing feedback.

Desk Notebook Logo Design Creative

Keeping your guidelines fresh and useful

Although your tone of voice style guide is written down, the rules don’t have to be set in stone for all time. In fact, to remain useful, they’ll need to be kept up to date and reviewed regularly to make sure your team gets the best value out of them. Here are some signs that your guidelines could use a refresh:

Your examples are showing their age

Examples about a product last sold in 2010 are a major giveaway that your voice and tone guidelines are aging, which can reduce their credibility and effectiveness.

Newer channels aren’t covered

Your tone of voice manual about email might still stand after a year or two, but what about the latest social network, or a new feature on Twitter or Instagram? Given the pace of tech innovation, your channel list might need to evolve over the space of months, not years.

Guidance addresses out-of-date business challenges

As well as the kind of language you use, your guidelines will reflect where you’re at as a business and the kind of priorities you use content to address. For example, your guidelines may have been written at a time when customer acquisition was the biggest focus, whereas you’ve since moved on to excelling at service and retention  – or facing a pandemic.

If you have appointed a tone of voice champion, they can schedule in regular reviews to make sure your brand voice guidance is always fresh and current.

Ready to get your brand’s voice heard? Spread the word with MOO Flyers.

Welcome to the rollercoaster world of the startup – where exhilarating highs, a few ‘eek’ moments and lots of life-changing experiences are guaranteed. But in amongst all the growing and building every startup goes through, there’s one constant that can help keep your business focused and maintain its integrity, and that’s your brand.

But how to brand a startup? Branding a new business can be tricky, but also super exciting. Level up your startup’s brand strategy with our tips to start your business off on the right foot.

Startup branding 101: what is a brand?

According to marketing guru Seth Godin, a brand is “the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” In other words, your brand exists in the mind of your customer, and it’s a result of everything your business does that makes an impression on them.

Far from being a matter of superficial color and design, a strong brand runs right the way through your business like DNA. It reflects and unites your values, your practices and what you started this epic journey for in the first place. That’s why it’s so important to spend time on brand building for your startup.

Here are 7 startup branding tips for companies thinking about brand for the first time.

people with laptops

1. Prioritize your brand from day one

When you’re in the early days of your startup business, brand strategy might seem like a nice-to-have as you focus on getting products out the door and bringing in income to prove your worth to investors. But as our branding guide for small businesses explains, the nature of your brand isn’t something to overlook, particularly in those crucial early days.

Brands have a way of emerging and evolving spontaneously unless you make the effort to define them and control them in a conscious way. That’s something that’s much easier to do when your business is in its early days and your team is small and open to new ideas.

Developing a coherent startup brand isn’t just about future-proofing, though. It can also help you stand out in a crowded market and make your business more memorable to potential customers, right from day one. That’s why you need a plan – a branding business plan, if you will.

Learn from the best with RedBull’s approach to brand-building.

2. Define what influences your brand

How does branding work, exactly? Think of it as your business personality. Like a human personality, it’s expressed in multiple ways. It’ll be reflected in your logo, your brand colors, your graphic style and your tone of voice. That’s brand design. For startups especially, it’s a key ingredient to stand out and convey what you stand for.

What you stand for is your brand values – the traits that characterize how you do business and how the people within your company think, feel and behave.

Of course, you’re not robots, which means your brand is going to be nuanced and changing as it reflects the people and personalities that make up your business. It can be helpful to think of your startup’s brand guide as a summary or description of who you are at your best, rather than a set of rules about who you are supposed to be at all times.

Here’s some helpful guidance on how to get your brand culture working from the inside out.

company culture ideas
At MOO, we take exercise very seriously

3. Think about your target audience

Your startup’s brand has both an internal role and an external one. On the internal side, it helps unify your business goals and give staff a sense of connectedness and purpose. Externally, your brand determines how your business is perceived in the minds of your target audience. That’s why it’s so important to think about brand strategy, especially for startups.

You’ve probably already got a sense of the kind of people who are likely to be interested in your products, particularly if you’ve recently gone through the process of developing a business plan. They will make up a big part of your target audience. However, there are also some audience groups you may not have thought of.

These could include people who might want to work for your company, who may be more interested in your way of doing business and the kind of skills you use than in your products. Then there are journalists, bloggers and influencers who may want to feature your business in a story or collaborate with you on some content.

There will also be audiences you can’t necessarily predict when you start out. Customers may find ways to benefit from your products or services that aren’t what you originally intended, so it’s important to keep an open mind and a listening ear to make sure you’ve got an up-to-date picture of your startup brand’s different audience groups when thinking about your startup’s brand strategy.

4. Assess your brand from an objective perspective

Objectivity is an important quality for startups, as Hubspot points out. It’s easy to fall in love with the idea behind your business and skip over any other reactions people might have, such as confusion (‘what is it?’), not recognizing the benefits (‘why do I need it?’) and mistrust (‘who are you guys anyway?’). Focusing on the whole brand experience, including the product concept, sales journey and interactions with your marketing channels, is crucial to getting your startup’s branding right. 

Here at MOO, we’re privileged to supply printing services to a huge range of creative businesses, startups and independents, which gives us a birds-eye view of many different approaches to brand and design. We’d love to help you brand your startup IRL! Here’s some branding inspiration from three awesome entrepreneurs.

people looking at customer journey in meeting

5. Connect brand strategy with marketing

Your startup’s marketing and brand strategies will naturally dovetail together, so when you’re starting out it’s a good idea to develop the two in parallel. As a small business, you have a natural advantage here, because you’ll have less personnel and will be more agile compared to a larger company – everyone will fit in a single meeting room, for a start.

Working together, you’ll need to think about the marketing channels you will use, such as social media platforms, email, website, events, speeches or content marketing, and what kind of role they play in your plans. Each of these channels will express your brand and bring in useful information from your audiences about how your business is perceived.

There are many ways marketing can influence how your startup brand comes across.  For example, the design of your marketing materials, the frequency of different kinds of communications such as emails or tweets, the topics you cover in content marketing activities such as a blog or video channel, and the tone of voice you use. That’s why putting together your startup’s branding guide early on can be very useful to ensure consistency across these channels.

Marketing channels can have a brand management role, too. Increasing your brand awareness, i.e. the level of understanding your consumers have of your brand and how they interpret it, is often a strategic goal for new businesses. That’s something you can assess by listening to your audience through conversational channels like social media.

6. Differentiate your brand from competitors

Your brand is a reflection of who you are as a business, so it’s going to be uniquely you. But there’s no denying that certain industries tend to develop a common brand ‘language’, where certain colors, fonts, illustration styles or even a tone of voice are typical across multiple businesses.

That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it’s definitely something to be aware of and make a conscious decision about when devising the brand strategy of your startup. You need to consider this when devising your startup’s branding strategy and decide whether you want to tap into your industry’s brand trends, or break the mold with something truly unique.

If you’re a design business, you’ll also be working with client brands and interpreting them in your own style. To help you strike the balance between your own style and that of your clients, see how three designers inject brand into their work.

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7. Use audits to keep your brand in tip-top shape

Once you’ve developed your brand and your business has been up and running for a while, it’s a good idea to check in regularly with a brand audit every six months or every year. A brand audit is an internal process that helps you keep track of how consistently your brand comes across, how well it aligns to the way you do business, and how it’s perceived by your customers.

After all, your brand is a reflection of how you do things, and all being well, your startup will have blossomed into something bigger, bolder and brighter over the space of a few years.

Now you’ve set up your startup’s branding strategy with these branding tips, why not design your first Business Cards to get the word out?

When it comes to simplicity and elegance, black and white is the ultimate staple. Clean and timeless, this classic palette is key to many simple yet striking designs. From lino printing to abstract design, black and white can enhance shapes and lines with powerful clarity.

Want to stand out from the crowd with a black and white Business Card? Get inspired with these effortlessly cool black and white designs by our creative community.

Beth’s Branding Co: high-voltage design

Beth’s Branding Co founder Beth Stefanczyk is a graphic designer from Brentwood, Essex. Her mission? Designing unique branding that makes businesses look the part – including electrical solutions specialists, Frederick’s. Beth steered the brand in a classic, minimalist direction (a real jolt in a category not known for its design sensibilities). Now her minimal black and white design stands out on their uniforms, van signage and these MOO size Super Business Cards, with a Soft Touch finish.

Simple black and white design by Beth Branding for Fredericks electrical solutions

Curtis Thornton: typographic wonders

Product designer Curtis Thornton met singer and songwriter Joseph Veazie shortly after moving to Dallas, Texas. Invited by Joseph to work on a rebranding project, Curtis created a range of designs for the artist, from logos to website design and business cards, and has continued collaborating with him ever since.

His most recent batch of Business Cards included a custom QR code – a quick, useful way to send new fans straight to the award-winning performer’s site to find out more. Curtis created 16 black and white designs, taking advantage of MOO’s Printfinity option to vary typefaces and layouts. For a singer known for versatility, it’s the ideal choice.

Joseph Veazie business cards with cool black and white designs by Curtis Thornton

Molly Fraser: a taste for retro

UK-based costume designer Molly Fraser rediscovered her love for illustration during lockdown. She began creating poetic artworks with a retro feel, taking inspiration from historical costumes and children’s literature. To promote the Etsy account where she offers prints and postcards featuring her illustrations, she created lovely MiniCards with a variety of cute black and white designs that can be used as tiny bookmarks.

Mol Fraser business cards with cute black and white design

Christian Azolan: a clean slate for creativity

Digital visual artist Christian Azolan designed his business cards with one objective in mind: making them a physical extension of his brand. To him, a business card remains an effective way to promote his work: “even as a digital artist and in a world filled with screen and digital communications I know and appreciate the value of the physical and a good business card can make all the difference. A business card is tactile, you can touch, hold, cherish and keep”. 

Christian Azolan business cards with simple black and white design

Using the same font and color scheme as his website, Christian focused on simplicity and consistency for a minimalist yet luxurious feel. He created 10 beautifully simple black and white designs, enhanced by the thickness and rich texture of Luxe paper. To Christian Azolan, the devil is in the details: “Before someone sees my work, the cards need to give a great impression of who I am as an artist. It’s important to me that potential customers and art collectors […] who receive the card know and understand that as an artist the little details are really important to me.

Design by Noa: the beauty of geometry

With her branding and digital studio, London-based designer Noha Saab-Modad specializes in creating the visual identity of new businesses for both print and online. For her client NJ Architecture, her objective was to express the uniqueness and creativity of the brand.  The distinctive monogram type design in Silver Foil, logo placement, asymmetrical line art and print finishing reflect the modern and nonconformist design of the architect. A beautiful black and white design and a great conversation starter – it’s sure to catch the attention of potential clients!

Noha Saab Modad NJ business cards with geometric black and white design

Oriana Donati: revealing personalities

When French costume designer Oriana Donati’s work slowed down due to the coronavirus pandemic, she decided to make the most of her skills by creating her own clothing brand. Focusing on tailor-made, she draws inspiration from historical costumes, performing arts and cinema to create unique pieces that reflect the personality of her clients.

Oriana Doriati business cards with geometric black and white design

Oriana’s bespoke designs are just as distinctive as each wearer. So she wanted to create a simple and elegant business card design that reflected this. Something that would enhance the creativity of her work. She chose the soft and matte finish of Super Business Cards with rounded corners to combine elegance and originality.

For an extra touch of sophistication, Oriana added a geometric Gold Foil finish to her cards so they would glint in the light. On the other side of her business cards, the designer added one of her creations, a historical dress design from 1860 revisited with contemporary materials, a perfect way to define her work: the alliance between history, extravagance and modernity.

Midori Arquitectura: playing with light

Midori Arquitectura is an architecture and interior design practice based in Barcelona, Spain. The company’s love for geometric design and clean shapes is reflected in a clever business card design using Raised Spot Gloss. They see Business Cards in black and white – and gloss.

Their design plays with light and creates a multisensory experience, that’s both visual and tactile. With these clever black and white geometric designs, Midori Arquitectura wants to surprise and intrigue potential clients and it works: “the result is quite surprising, very clear and bold. Everybody compliments them!

Minimalist black and white design for Midori Arquitectura business cards

Ready to create bold black and white Business Cards? Explore our range of Business Card sizes, papers and finishes to design a card that reflects your brand.

Where do great brand names come from? (Spoiler: it’s not from a business name generator.) Sometimes it’s a lightbulb moment, and at other times good old strategic thinking does the job. Here’s how to choose a business name that reflects your brand identity and values.

Why is your business name important?

Whether you’re a creative business, a commercial start-up or a professional service, your company name is a major component of your new brand. It will stand for everything that you do, and you’ll build your company’s identity around it.

You need a unique and catchy business name, so that you’re distinct from your competitors and customers will remember you. And it needs to be the right fit for you. A brand name should reflect your values, your way of doing business and the personalities of the people working at the heart of the company – usually the business owners.

Company business cards

How to come up with a brand name

For some small businesses and startups, an obvious name comes to mind immediately. For others, a few business name ideas need to be tried out before the perfect one becomes clear.

Naming a business isn’t a decision you should rush (no clicking a company name generator!), and it’s one you should get as much feedback on as possible – even if not all the answers are what you want to hear. You might not want to go as far as opening up the discussion publicly on social media, but it’s worth asking for comments from a range of people you admire and respect, both inside and outside the company.

Studio Syllabe colorful business cards
Studio Syllable

In the startup days of a small business, you’re likely to go through various changes in perspective as you develop – and that’s a good thing – as it means you’re growing. Give yourself the freedom to name and rename the brand over a period of several weeks, trying different business name ideas on for size.

Choosing a business name: themes & word association

To come up with successful branding, you need to develop your company name ideas in harmony with your business as a whole. Great designs and clever wordplay can still fall flat if they feel bolted on or at odds with the personality of a company. A strong brand identity will always have authenticity at its heart.

  • Brand values & themes

During your naming process, keep your values and philosophy in mind. Do you stand for freshness, tradition, edginess, reassurance? Make a short list of brand values you associate with your people and products, and check your potential brand names against it to make sure you’re on track.

  • Word association

Word association isn’t an exact science, but it can be really helpful for choosing between potential company name ideas. Every word has its own set of associations. These vary a bit between individuals, but there’s usually a common connection that most people will make, such as the association of ‘pet’ with warm and fuzzy ideas such as  ‘love’, ‘play’, and ‘home’. So when you reach a decision, also think about some of the associations of that word or phrase.

Association can happen through rhyme as well as meaning, when words suggest other things they sound like or rhyme with. For example, if you have a brand that’s all about speedy, easy service, you might think twice about the name ‘Glow’ because of the rhyming connection with ‘slow’ ‘low’ ‘woah’ and ‘no’.

Choosing a business name: phonetic factors

There’s an interesting link between phonetics and marketing (PDF download). We know that as well as carrying an overall meaning, good business names contain extra layers of influence in their phonemes – this is a fancy term for the sounds that make up words.

Although consumers might not be consciously aware of it, they’re making decisions based on the parts of a name as well as the whole. For example, according to linguists at Stanford University, the ‘o’ sound, as in ‘gosh’, carries associations of heaviness and largeness, whereas the ‘i’ sound as in ‘wish’ suggests something light, lively and sharp. Other phonetic factors for businesses include the length of your business name ideas, and the easiness of their pronunciation.

  • Keep it short & sweet

If you take a look at our article 7 great brand names and why, you’ll notice that all of these catchy business names are short and punchy, both in the length of the word and the time it takes to say it. Keeping it small and perfectly formed is a good idea for a couple of reasons – it’s likely to be memorable, and having fewer characters, it would fit neatly into a range of spaces, making it easier to work with graphically and across different formats.

  • Consider alternate spellings

Alternate spellings are a popular way to make brand names unique and help them to stand out (think ‘Tumblr’ and ‘Reddit’). But before you get creative with the spelling of an everyday word or phrase, make sure it’s going to be easy for people to pronounce when they see it for the first time. Otherwise, you’re putting a stumbling block in the way of anyone who wants to recommend you to a friend, talk about you in a presentation or even remember your name.

Choosing a business name: consistency & branding

Brand identity is an important concept to understand when you create a business name. It means all of the ‘obvious bits’ of your company’s presence – the parts that are visible to the public, such as graphics, shop fronts, product names, logos, website and social media accounts. It’s not the whole story of your brand, but it’s a key part, especially as you start out as a new company.

As we mentioned earlier in this article, it’s really important for your brand image to be authentic, and that means tying all the different parts of the brand identity together so they work as a whole. Your company name is a big part of this process and plays a huge role in defining your brand strategy.

When looking for good business names, bear in mind other aspects of your brand identity, such as:

  • Logo design
  • Product names and ranges
  • Marketing channels including social media
  • Domain name you’ll use for your website

Make sure the brand name feels connected and appropriate in a range of different settings and scenarios, online and offline, from marketing to the general public to pitching for investment or speaking at a conference.

Kumo yama brand mockup by Em Stokes

Finally – ask your gut. Remember, you’re going to live with this business name every day and so are the people on your team, so take a moment to notice your emotional or ‘gut feel’ reaction. Does it make you happy, energized and ready to do great things?

Make sure your brand name looks excellent in print. Once you’ve picked a winner, why not give it a road test with a set of Business Cards?

You’ve designed it. Refined it. Crafted it. Now make sure you present your jewelry or pins with just as much creativity. How? A well-designed backer card can put the spotlight on your product, while helping your brand get some shine too. Whether you go for Gold Foil, rounded corners, MiniCards or Luxe, MOO Business Cards adapt to make ideal backing cards. As our customers are proving.

Need backing cards for your pins or earrings? Get some 24k gold inspiration with these backing card designs from our creative community.

1) Jeweled by Joshelyn: showcasing earrings in style

In the midst of the pandemic, making jewelry became a therapeutic outlet for Joshelyn. Physically she couldn’t be near friends or family but she could still send some joy their way. What started as an act of self-care, quickly became a bona fide brand: Jeweled by Joshelyn.  

Earrings backing cards by Jeweled by Joshelyn

Each pair of statement earrings are made by hand, using natural materials. And, yes, how they’re presented has been given the same attention to detail. Earring backing cards perfectly complement the natural colors of the clay-based creations, while illustrated care cards take the unboxing experience to the next level. A treat for eyes, as well as ears.

2) The Greenhouse: minimalist multi-taskers

Nancy Wilson is the CEO and founder of jewelry and accessories boutique, The Greenhouse. She describes herself as a merchant & maker and now her branding is multi-talented too. Hoping to stretch her new biz budget, Nancy was looking for a single card that could be used in various ways, across the customer journey. Sounds a tricky one? But after discovering MOO’s Printfinity option, the only limit was Nancy’s imagination (pretty much limitless then.)

The Greenhouse Trends earring backing cards

First up (and most unsurprisingly), the Business Cards work brilliantly as… business cards. But with just two perfectly measured hole punches, they also become show-stopping earring backing cards. That still not enough for you? Fine. A little design tweak and, ta-da, the backing cards transform into irresistible offer handouts with promo codes. And that’s just for starters who knows what else they’ll be used for as the business grows! We can’t wait to see (and wear) what comes next.

The Greenhouse Trends earring backer cards

3) Snailspiration: you’ve got snail

Graphic designer and illustrator Emma Annunziato began creating greeting cards when she was just 12 years old. Yup, 12! Skip 13 years later and her love for our slimy mollusc friends and her Snail Mail Cards business are still going strong. And, for a brand inspired by one of the slowest creatures around, things have been moving pretty fast. Snailspiration has expanded from greeting cards, to include shirts, stickers, pins, and more. 

Snailspiration enamel pin backing cards

Her colorful enamel pins, featuring Sheila the snail, made the perfect addition to a jacket, hat or backpack. But, before they could make their slithery way to customers, Emma had to create an equally perfect enamel pin backing card. She went for MOO’s Square Business Cards with Super paper and a matte finish. The bright and bold backer cards match the illustration style of the character; framing the design and creating the perfect home for the cute snail pins.

4) Yeung Love: adorably eco-friendly

Yeunglove grew from its founder’s love of digital illustration, product design and handmade goods. Janine is an interior designer by day and online shop owner by night, and uses her brand as a platform to explore color, experiment with different materials and indulge in plenty of cuteness along the way.

For her moody (but lovely!) cloud pins, she created custom backing cards using MOO-sized Cotton Business Cards: “I chose this option because they are 100% recycled and I love the tactile feel and texture of the paper. I think they work beautifully as backing cards for my enamel pins!

Yeung Love pin backer cards

To design her pins’ back cards, Janine used a color palette featuring her signature pinks and blues, with bold, playful shapes and a few unique accents. It creates a backdrop that complements (but never detracts from) the pins. “I also included a little note on the back of the card that describes the paper stock, a fun graphic element that lets everyone know the cards are tree-free!.” Lovely. It’s enough to make even the moodiest of clouds feel a bit brighter.

5) Kathy Ramirez: style inspiration

Kathy designed this series of pin backing cards for social impact company The Giving Keys as part of their Statement Pin project. “I gravitate towards editorial, minimalistic design, and fashion was also a big influence for the pin back cards. I looked at statement pieces our audience wears when deciding on the designs and settled on a concept illustrating ways to wear ‘The Statement Pin’.” 

Kathy Ramirez backing cards for pins

Thanks to Printfinity, she was able to print three different designs in the same order: “This trio of card designs served as an elegant and simple packaging solution for the product, effectively communicating the products intended use.” Simplicity at its best.

6) Minta Miller: 100% positive vibes

Despite a full-time job in higher education, nothing is off limits for creative multitasker, Minta Miller. Every spare moment in her Texan home is used to develop her craft – working with clay, making molds for casting, trying her hand at textiles and resins and more. 

Minta believes in the magic of making things from scratch. All her pieces are handmade from A to Z. Most of her pieces are inspired by the human body, from hand mirrors to eyes to “plant dudes” and lip pins. With her pin line, Minta wanted to offer a range of colorful, positive and relatable designs with fun and inspirational messaging such as “Speak No Evil” on lips or the “Eye Thrive” pin.

Minta Miller back cards for pins

For her bright lapel pins, the versatile artist prints her own designs on a special plastic sheet and tops the pins with a hard resin herself. She designed her pin backing cards in a variety of bold and energizing colors, to pack her products with positive vibes down to the smallest detail. 

Ready to create your very own backer cards? Explore our range of Business Card sizes, papers and finishes to make a backing card that reflects your brand.

American artist and founder of Wild Sassaby, Jardan Paige Doneghy, explores the idea of girlhood, her southern roots, and her colorful paintings that convey inspiring messages.

We met Jardan Paige Doneghy to talk about her artistic journey, how she translates her interest in heritage and female empowerment into bold, graphic paintings – and the way quarantine influenced her work.

Jardan Paige Doneghy, founder of Wild Sassaby art

Tell us a bit more about yourself. How did your interest in abstract art begin?

My love of abstract art began as a child. My mother was also an abstract artist and we would create art together for as long as I can remember. The name “Wild Sassaby” was inspired by my first painting that I created alongside her when I was just about six years old. 28 years later, we were quarantined in that same house together (now an art studio) and the art brand as we know it today was born.

Your paintings are bold and powerful. What topics are you exploring, and how do you translate them into graphic paintings?

The goal of my art is to inspire bold and confident living, for those who may not have grown up in a flourishing environment. It’s important for us to be inspired by the messages and imagery around us. Wild Sassaby strives to serve as one of those positive messages through its innovative use of color, contrast and shapes.

Wild Sassaby graphic paintings

Did you face any challenges in your journey as a Black contemporary artist?

Yes, of course. The first challenge was my own confidence. Coming from the corporate world, it was a daunting thought to take a leap of faith and go all-in on my art – especially as someone who was unknown and had not sold a single painting publicly. I actually put in my notice to quit my corporate advertising job of nine years the same day that Wild Sassaby launched to the world. In order to inspire bold confidence, I had to live it myself.

How did quarantine influence your work as a painter?

Quarantine helped me to sit down and dig deep into who I was, what I cared about, and discover new ways to serve society. I realized that I could serve others through creating messages of strength and positivity – all from my small art studio in Kentucky. It allowed me the time to slow down and truly create something I could be proud of forever, even if I never sold one painting.

Wild Sassaby colorful art

What do you want people to feel when they see your paintings?

When people see Wild Sassaby, I want them to feel motivated to dream bigger and not only visualize but realize that anything is possible. Each painting comes with a message of encouragement that serves as a consistent reminder to each collector.

Did you face any difficulties figuring out how to attract a wider audience for your art? How did you approach your promotion strategy?

These days, it can be very difficult to launch a new business, given the world of social media is saturated with so many messages and products. I went the grassroots route and tapped into networks who I knew resonated with the brand’s purpose. This meant writing messages in Facebook groups and building relationships with art pages on Instagram who catered to audiences with similar backgrounds and ambitions.

Wild Sassaby graphic painting

How do you use MOO to promote your colorful paintings?

MOO has always set the standard for print design. I was thoroughly impressed with the sample Business Cards that were ordered for the initial brand launch. Given positive feedback from customers, we quickly ordered Thank You Cards, Stickers and box labels as well. The combination of all these products helped to establish a strong brand identity for Wild Sassaby.

Wild Sassaby postcards by MOO

Any projects coming up you’re looking forward to?

I’m excited to announce that due to the wide demand for more originals, we recently launched our second collection, “Still Dreaming”. This collection still pulls from the energy and aesthetic of our first collection “Quarantine Dreams”. The new collection features eight original paintings and two limited edition print batches, signed and numbered.

What piece of advice would you give to young artists trying to find their own style?

The best advice I can give for young artists trying to find their own style is “get your hands dirty!” Throw it all out there and see what sticks. Try everything that’s in your mind and see what feels good. If it feels good, you’re more likely to keep going. Show up every day, and see how far you’ll go!

Elevate your packaging with MOO’s custom Postcards and Round Stickers.