If you've been in business for five, 10, 15 years or longer, chances are what you're doing now is better and different than what you were doing when you started out. If you're at all focused on getting better at what you do, that should be the case. And it's certainly the case for me in my career and in my craft with Ramblin Jackson. And I'm excited to share that right now. We are rebranding. We are enhancing our brand. We're designing a new website. We're updating our SEO. And I'm going through this process that I've helped design as a client now, and it's really exciting.
So in today's episode, I'm going to share with you, what is branding? Everyone has their own definition. I'm going to share mine. Why we're rebranding. And the shocking, weird science behind color. So check out today's episode to see some behind the scenes of what it's like when we're doing some of what we do normally for our clients here at Ramblin Jackson.
My name is Jack Jostes and welcome to The Landscapers Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing. This show is all about helping lawn and landscape contractors increase your profit by attracting the right customers through sales and marketing so you can enjoy a better lifestyle. And a big part of what we do is the agency Ramblin Jackson. And I'm going to share some behind the scenes of what we're working on right now.
Happy 11th Birthday, Ramblin Jackson!
Right now it is August 2020, and it is Ramblin Jackson's 11th birthday. Last year, we celebrated our 10th anniversary with a big party, and I made a blog post about the top 10 business books that helped me get to this point. So you can check that out at landscapersguide.com/ten.
And today, I wanted to share with you that, you know, I really feel like what we're doing is better than ever. We have the best team. We have really defined and refined a process that we guide our clients through, where we produce their websites and their branding and their SEO, and our clients are getting these tremendous results. And I realized recently, after some of our site launches, that the work we're doing for our clients is way better than landscapersguide.com. And I feel like what we have is out-of-date.
So that's what really led me to want to enhance and refresh our branding. We're not going to completely rebrand. We're not making it unrecognizable or anything, but that's a little bit about it. And I think it's good. I'm glad that we've reached this level. And I haven't really been thrilled with our branding for a while because, I thought it was good, and now the gap between what we're capable of doing and the work we're producing out in the marketplace, there's a big gap and it's time to actually hunker down and do this project.
What Is "Branding?"
So first I wanted to clarify what is branding? And in my book, Get FOUND Online, The Local Business Owner's Guide to Digital Marketing, we follow the Foundation of Digital Marketing. And the foundation is branding. And in my book, I write that branding is identifying and communicating your company's core values to distinguish your business from others. Branding is way more than just colors and fonts and things that go into visual identity. That's where most people stop.
The Experience You Deliver To Your Customers Is Your Brand
But to me, branding is way deeper. It's about what kind of experience your customers and do your employees actually have working with you. And it's an extension of you, the business owner, leading and setting the vision and who you are. And for me, I started Ramblin Jackson 11 years ago, I was 23. And I've learned, and I've grown so much from the time that I've started. And the brand has changed.
The History of Ramblin Jackson's Logo and Branding
And I didn't really put a lot of thought into the branding when I had the logo created. It was created by Joe Longstreet, my buddy in college, who does phenomenal ad work and is just a really interesting guy. Check him out at joelongstreet.com.
And he's like, "Hey, you're in Colorado. We're going to go with this western vibe." They called me Ramblin Jack when I worked at a dairy farm. I did door to door sales as a milkman back in the eighties. No, not back in the eighties. It was like 2008, right when the recession hit. It was an awesome time, seriously, to do door-to-door sales because it was hard. But I was successful at it. And I learned I didn't want to sell milk. I wanted to do marketing and help people with their sales.
And so Joe created this logo and I love it. It's great. We're going to continue with the horseshoe and we're going to be modifying the font a little bit. But the branding again, is really all about the experience that you want people to have. And that is what will distinguish you from whether you're a lawn and landscape company, or in my case, a marketing agency. It's the way that you really treat people as part of producing the work that is your brand. So we're not really rebranding. We're really just refreshing the brand, refreshing the visual identity.
Why Are We Updating Our Branding?
One of the main reasons is that we've just matured. And what we're doing now is different and better and stronger. And the actual website, I found to be hard to read. We had picked fonts. The last time I was working on this, I told our designer, who I've worked very closely with now for six or seven years, to pour some whiskey on it. That was the design instruction I gave her when she was working on it. I wanted it more western, pour whiskey on it. I don't even drink anymore. I quit drinking. I've lost count, I think it was three years ago.
Somebody commented that the direction of the marketing this time is a bit more sober. It is. It's more serious. It's still going to be fun and western and kind of weird, because that hasn't gone away, but I want it to be legible. And I feel like sometimes the font and all the wood and all the different things on our website we're competing with people actually comprehending and reading the information. Because I have a lot of people who are like "Jack, I don't really like your videos, but I love reading the transcript of them." And that's totally cool. I want to help those people who are more readers than video watchers.
Do Humans Perceive Color The Same?
So the third thing that I wanted to share with you is the shocking truth about color, which is that color is perceived by different people's brains, differently. I was working with a client recently who wanted what they would call true red. And we were running all these colors by them. And eventually I told them, listen, you need to go print this color with the printer that you're going to work with and see if you perceive this to be the true red that you want. Because other people are going to perceive it differently. It's a scientific fact that color is perceived differently.
And case in point, at the Ramblin Jackson team meeting, just the other day, we were reviewing the logo and branding options from our designer. And I they're like, "Hey Jack, you emailed me one color code. But now in the meeting, you're saying the other." And I admitted in the meeting, I actually couldn't perceive the difference between the two. And what was funny was that I asked other people and there was a lot of disagreement about the colors because everyone was perceiving it differently.
I was surprised by some research about how people perceive color:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120209-do-we-all-see-the-same-colours
https://www.colorpsychology.org/why-men-and-women-see-color-differently/
So ultimately, I whittled it down to a couple colors that I like, and I just needed to make a decision. I listened to the feedback from my team, but I needed to decide. That's my job as the leader. And if you work with us, if you work with Ramblin Jackson, we will guide you through a process. We'll make it easy. It's not always easy to do branding. It can be uncomfortable to upgrade your logo or some of these things that have been part of you for a while. But if it's time, you'll know when it's time to do it, and we'd love to help you with that. And we invite you to collaborate in our process.
I'm excited to go through this process, partly because I created it. But we're like a fine oiled machine. And our project manager is managing this project, not me. And we're just cruising through. I'm really excited to introduce the new branding to you guys at the end of September.
Schedule A Marketing Strategy Meeting With Our Team To Start Your Branding Conversation
And if your company, if you're not feeling like your current web presence is matching what you are capable of, of the skills that you have now, of the value that you deliver to the marketplace, we'd love to talk with you.
We offer a marketing strategy meeting where we'll talk with you about these things. We'll look at it and give you feedback and ask you questions that no other marketing company is going to ask you. We're going to ask you really deep questions about your brand, like really your brand. Like why should I really buy from you, for real? And what are your values? And help you create a web presence that will generate the kinds of results that you probably didn't even realize were possible.
So if you'd like to learn more about that, just book a call with us at meetjacknow.com. And I'll look forward to seeing you in future episodes. And stay tuned when we revealed the new logo and website and upgraded SEO. I'm excited. We're going to be unstoppable. And talk to you guys soon. Have an awesome weekend.