Branding is a powerful thing.
Branding can be the difference between having one customer and tens or even hundreds of loyal customers. Branding is what sets you apart from your competitors, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Branding takes time and effort to nurture, grow and maintain for it to thrive.
In this article, we will talk about how branding can help your business reach more and keep more customers for less money by focusing on four key points: brand strategy, building brand awareness, brand consistency, and how proper branding can help with all three.”
What is branding and why is it important?
What is branding?
It’s the aftershave you wear, the type of phone you carry, and your car logo. Branding is important because it defines who you are as a business. Your brand can make or break your company; if people like what they see, chances are they’ll come back for more!
So what is branding? In a nutshell, it’s the art of telling your story to your customers. But as with any good story, some twists and turns will help you create something worth sharing. Read on for those secrets!
Why is it important?
Because if you don’t have a strong brand, then your customers won’t know what they’re getting when they do business with you. In my blog post, I’ll go over how to build a compelling and memorable brand that will make your small business stand out from everyone else.
The most important thing about branding is knowing who your target customer base is and understanding their needs so you can tailor messages for them. Once you’ve nailed down exactly who this person or group of people are, then it’s time to start thinking about what makes them special and unique – which leads us to our next point: differentiation.
Branding strategies for small businesses
Are you a startup or is your business rebranding?
The first step is to create a brand name. This should be something uniquely recognizable for your company’s products so that people know exactly what branding you are talking about when they search.
The second step is to design a logo, which should have the same definite look as the name of your company. The final step is to select colors that will complement both the logo and logo font. There are many color combinations (monochromatic or rainbow) available; experiment with different ones until you find one that you like! For reference examples of naming brands, see Nike, PepsiCo Inc., Apple Inc., United Airlines Company.
With all these steps complete it’s time to make some noise! There are many ways in which companies
Who are you?
It’s hard to have an effective business strategy without knowing who you are. So, the key question would be “who are your customers?” If your answer is “everybody,” then you might want to consider another approach because trying to appeal to everybody usually isn’t enough.
For example, if your customer base includes blue-collar workers, then branding yourself in a way that appeals to that population will work for them; however, you’ll need something different if it’s high-powered executives that makeup about 10% of the workforce (this means service providers like doctors and lawyers). For best results with marketing communications (public relations), you’ll want branding efforts to create cohesive relationships between all touch points.
Great! So you have a touchpoint with your customers – what qualities do those touchpoints share? For example, if your store is bright and cheery, does the web storefront reflect that same level of energy and excitement by posting a picture of a smiling salesperson on its About Page? If both sides are trying to shout “pick me!” then it’s not going to happen.
Customers want consistency. They want an experience that begins from the front door, proceeds through shopping in various departments and ends up at the checkout line with employees wishing them goodbye. These days people can get anything they need to be delivered right to their doorstep – so enticing potential clients might be more difficult than it used to be.
How branding allows you to reach more customers.
Brand resonance.
Consumers may experience brand resonance as a state of fluid attention to and interaction with the subject that is initiated by repeated exposures to the advertising message and leads to the conscious recollection of the brand’s unique positioning, features, quality, and price. Brand advocates. A person who endorses (either verbally or through other nonverbal involvement) and/or purchases a particular product or company
Many customers want to be associated with a particular brand and will buy and/or re-share the products to connect themselves to that company. Social media has allowed these customers not only to build perceptions of the brand but also become advocates for the brand.
Brand advocates
Typically share their loved experience about the product with their friends and family – this creates an awesome ROI. They wear your tee, they wear your lipstick, so people associate them as being much like you already by looking at how much they love your stuff! Plus since they advertise on social media it is often easy for brands to find trending content which lets companies adjust real quick in the market place too!
The importance of consistency in your branding strategy
It’s important to have consistency in your branding strategy because it helps you to align all the different elements of your brand and unify them into a recognizable and unified whole. Having a brand guidelines or style guide is one way to help accomplish that, but consistency can also be achieved with other design techniques such as organizing content from side to side on a website rather than up-and-down or horizontally instead of vertically, for example. If you want your site visitors to feel like they’re always in the same customer journey when they arrive at any given web page, you’ll need to make sure each page matches not only the colors and logo but also fonts, icons, photos styles/orientations, use of white space etc
The idea of branding is to make your products or company recognizable. This might seem easy enough at first, but what are the possibilities when you have six different logos? It’s quite confusing for a customer – they don’t know which “brand” they’re dealing with without ogling closely at the logo, and five others will still confuse them if their attention was only on that one.
This isn’t just an image problem – it can happen with anything that makes up your brand, including naming conventions and color schemes. Your Etsy shop may be trendy now, but over time trends change–do you want to part ways with your name? What about if your favorite shade of red becomes passé next year? You’ve seen how
How to develop a brand identity for yourself or your company
Generally people would use a branding agency to improve brand messaging, logos, and create their company’s identity.
Almost any company can identify their brand by answering the following questions: who are you, what do you do? Who is your customer? Where are you based? What can you produce or offer your customers? How does it make them feel (emotionally)? Why should they buy from them rather than someone else (USP)? What problems will it solve for them? Where else can they get these sorts of products or services; how does yours compare with theirs?).
By outsourcing these vital components; you save valuable time and keep stress levels lower in the process. A greater concern, however, is that many freelancers lack the experience needed in corporate branding strategy along with creative services like brand messaging or media planning. They may not be “expert” enough to produce quality work within an agreed timeframe which most importantly; doesn’t clash with your company
Why do you need a logo, slogan, and color scheme when developing your brand identity
Branding is about representation and awareness.
Your logo, slogan, and color scheme all work together to create the brand that you represent in public, through digital marketing and/or customer interaction. Logos are more than just a symbol that looks pretty. They are the foundation of your company’s reputation- they create visual brand recognition which encourages people to buy from you because they feel at ease with what your company represents. Colors are powerful mood influencers- sometimes subconsciously influencing readers how to feel about your brand based on the colors used in print ads, logos or social media posts. Slogans also need some thought put into them- it establishes the tone for messages you want customers to take away from interactions with your business insofar as how serious
Logo
Logos create brand recognition, colors create feelings, and slogans set the tone. When these 3 things are combined into one design they cross over into another realm that takes advertising to a new level.
A logo is an identity like Apple’s apple with the bite taken out, Coca-Cola’s use of bright bold colors in their logo. A slogan is what your company stands for; Nike’s “Just do it” or Red Bull has “Red bull gives you wings”. It can tell people why your company exists or what makes you different from anyone else which causes them to want to buy from you. And lastly, you have color schemes that accompany all the other factors in logos, slogans, and text that aren’t just impact
Let us help you create an incredible online presence that will keep customers coming back to buy from YOU. Contact Adept Creative Today.
