Any good digital marketer understands the power of persuasion. After all, marketers are in the business of strategically convincing others to buy into a product or company. And a great logo design is one of the most powerful tools of persuasion available to a digital marketing agency. The right logo tells the viewer, “You can trust us. We’re serious. We know what we’re doing.” But for digital marketers, a poor logo begs the question: if you can’t sell yourself, why should I trust you to help me sell my business?
Pulling off a great digital marketing logo is easier said than done. This one design carries a lot of responsibility: it must be professional, avoid cliches, capture the core values of your business, convey that which makes your service stand out from the crowd and look visually appealing—all while remaining as simple as possible.
It might seem daunting, but remember, you’re not the first company to undertake the logo design process. What better place to start than by learning from the successes of other digital marketing brands? Here, we walk you through our favorite digital marketing logos and give you some ideas for creating your own.
Common features of digital marketing logos
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The digital marketing industry lends itself to a number of common themes that often find expression in logo design concepts. These include:
By themselves, common concepts like these can lead to generic logos that fail to separate one digital marketing brand from another. But they are also inescapable as core ideas that define digital marketing as an industry. For example, you could go with a vintage logo for the sake of novelty, but an old-fashioned aesthetic is also bound to make you look more like a farming brand than a tech-savvy digital marketing firm.
On some level, designers must engage with some of these common concepts in their design. The key to success is in how uniquely these concepts are implemented and in what subtle ways you communicate how this brand is different.
For more insight on this, let’s take a look at some digital marketing logos that have successfully reinvented these common concepts and managed to make them speak for their brands.
Hi-tech digital marketing logos
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It should be no surprise that digital marketers operate first and foremost in the digital sphere. They are the lighthouse for brands who might otherwise drown amidst the noise and torrents of information on the internet. Because the internet is young and the rules are still being written, establishing your brand as a digital leader through a hi-tech logo can give your potential customers confidence that you will help them navigate through this uncertain future.
Brands have plenty of options for conveying technological themes through design. Hard intersecting lines and polygonal nodes remind us of hardwiring and circuitry in computers. Neon colors remind us of the unnatural light our devices give off. And sans serif fonts provide the unadorned, geometrically precise writing that we are unable to create without computer assistance.
The drawback with going too far in the hi-tech direction is that the brand might be mistaken at a glance for software or other generic tech companies, but brands like True North get around this with symbolism—in their case, carrying metrics in the upward direction (more on this in the following section).
Abstract symbols for digital marketing logos
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Digital marketing is a complex business. Between social media management, content production, email marketing and more—digital marketing brands have their hands in many pots, and it can be tough to distill every aspect of your exceptional services into a single logo.
This is where symbols come in. A symbol is a powerful communication device that allows designers to simplify ideas through easily understood shapes. It all depends on what core values you want to emphasize, and to figure this out, consider which aspects of your service you see as a cut above the competition.
The targetgroup design above, for example, marries strategic thinking with attainable goals through a bullseye/lightbulb combo icon. Web Growth Pros, meanwhile, transforms their first initial into an abstract graph line to suggest that their digital marketing efforts will carry metrics up and to the right. An abstract symbol can also represent the sheer diversity in services, as Penta Marketing’s multiple shapes and colors do.
Though abstract designs can get messy by virtue of being abstract, the key to a successful logomark is to decide on a focused idea and keep the icon simple.
Typographic digital marketing logos
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As sellers, digital marketers are known for their way with words. In logo design, bold typography can be the most striking way to highlight what you have to say.
On one level, typographic logos have the benefit of putting the brand name front and center. They can also give a contemporary nod to classic advertising. For example, larger-than-life typography can resemble billboard ads that traditional marketers know so well. And yet, typographic logos also take advantage of bright colors and heavy sans serifs to mirror the display fonts used for headlines on digital publications.
Though these logos are reduced to text alone, they feel attention-grabbing in their starkness and daring in their minimalism, which is perfect for brands looking to set themselves apart as fearless and bold.
Animal mascot digital marketing logos
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Although the digital sphere seems like the last place you’d expect to find woodland critters, animal mascots are ubiquitous in digital marketing logos. Mascots are useful not only because they make a brand friendly and approachable, but they can represent certain traits you want to imitate.
In the digital marketing world, you might be tempted to attribute the popularity of chimps and owls to the success of brands like Hootsuite and Mailchimp. But they are also animals we associate with intelligence and wisdom, traits you definitely want to embody if you’re in the business of strategy and brand direction.
Of course, these specific animals are not your only option. Indigo uses a bluebird to convey serenity and elegance while also making a subtle reference to the traditional role birds have played in reliably delivering messages. Bear Fox’s mascots, meanwhile, feel stoic and proud, traits that are bound to steady any digital marketing company against the tides of change on the internet.
Whatever animal you decide to use for your brand, be sure it has characteristics that make sense to highlight in the context of digital marketing—for example, reliance, intelligence, curiosity and leadership.
Offbeat and adventurous digital marketing logos
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In many ways, digital marketing is the new kid on the block. While traditional marketing has had a long history to establish best practices and procedures, digital marketing is still in the process of writing its own. That means there is plenty of room for innovation and industry shakeup, and this sense of adventure can be a digital marketer’s greatest branding asset.
For this reason, new digital marketing companies can afford to demonstrate that their practice is unconventional, revolutionary and not afraid to break the rules with an offbeat logo.
Logos like these stand out from the digital marketing herd with illustrative imagery, humorous concepts and quirky mascots. While the risk is that it might be hard to understand at glance what the business actually does, the payoff is generating amusement and intrigue that can tease viewers into wanting to find out more themselves. It all depends on who these viewers are—digital marketers whose target audience skews younger or less corporate can get away with making their logo more informal and unique.
Just be sure to rigorously test a logo like this beforehand or your offbeat logo might find itself too far out of step for audiences to catch its rhythm.
Launch your business with a dynamite digital marketing logo
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A great digital marketing logo is the key to pitching yourself as a business before you even say a word. It’s often the first thing people see when they interact with your brand, and you can’t afford to make a bad first impression.
Hopefully the logos we’ve shown here will give you some ideas for your own design project, and you can always count on a great designer to take those ideas to the next level. Once you have a strong logo, there’ll be nothing to stop you from carrying other brands to their own success.