As someone who has been working in marketing for more than fifteen years, I’ve seen my fair share of industry successes and failures. Marketing is just the same as other industries, it has its worst practices and skewed misconceptions.

One of the most common mistakes in marketing—and a simple way to tell whether your marketing professional truly knows what he or she is doing—is logo development.

To be clear, I’m not talking about the behavioral science that lies behind graphic design. That’s something I’ll let our Director of Creative Services rant about. I’m simply speaking from a basic, Marketing 101, communications perspective.

Far too often, with organizations large and small, the basics of the marketing message are forgotten or neglected. As an industry, we speak constantly of value propositions, tag lines and elevator pitches—to this day I’ve never pitched to anyone in an elevator—but what about simply explaining what you do in five words or less?

As the title of this article states, is your logo broken? If your logo is without a simple industry positioning statement, you’ve made one of the most common and junior mistakes in marketing. After all, if someone doesn’t know what you do based on your logo—think of your business cards, letterhead and other marketing collateral—how on earth do you expect to market your company successfully?

Your industry positioning statement ties directly to target demographics, vertical markets and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Without it, you are suffering from what I call “The Nike Syndrome”––thinking that if the biggest brands in the world can do it, so can you.

Simply stated, if your company is named “XYZ” and your logo simply states your name, how are your potential clients to know what you do? You could be anything from a restaurant to a computer company, no one would ever know.

Further complicating the issue is the overabundance of clever made-up names, technical terms purposely misspelled, or the ever-popular Latin, Greek, or Oriental terms (I’m guilty as charged). With these confusing company names, you’ll further muddy your message. Why would potential clients hire you if they don’t know what you can do for them?

Thus my advice—before you create your next marketing plan, site redesign, or national ad campaign—is this: If your company creates “Asian Fusion Food,” then your company logo should read “XYZ Asian Fusion Food.”

If you follow my advice, then your logo won’t be broken. It will be whole and will clearly state what your company does and what your company can do for your prospective clients.