The Branded World We Live in
Imagine finding yourself in a grocery store where none of the products have any visible branding. Everything is nameless, the items are completely indistinguishable from their neighbors (and competitors) on the shelf. The tomato sauces all look the same. Ten types of tortilla chips with no recognizable differences stare blankly back at you as you try to choose which bag is best with no help at all. You know you need to stock up on soda, but can’t tell which kind is the one you like. It’s a total crapshoot.
This nightmarish grocery store would be a major problem for customers and companies alike. Think about it, nearly every product you own, from your clothing to your car, is branded. Brand recognition is a fundamental part of any modern shopping experience, it has been for a while now.
A brand can quickly become your company’s most cherished strategic and financial asset, improving product recognition, customer relations, as well as enabling you to remain relevant in a constantly evolving marketplace. Sadly, many business owners either bypass or botch the meaningful development of their brand. Whether this is due to ignorance or out of choice is irrelevant–failure to develop a solid brand will negatively affect the long-term performance of any product or service. Period.
Your brand is the face of your company. Is it memorable? Does it represent you, the reason you started your business and the people who work hard to make it all happen? If you or your company are trying to create a new brand or adapt an existing brand, then you’ve come to the right place.
This blog will briefly touch upon some of the most important aspects of branding, and hopefully, give you a few ideas about how you can improve your brand.
The Power of Loyalty.
As consumers, we want a painless purchasing experience every time. If we buy a product and it disappoints us, it’s considered a waste of money. And nobody likes wasting money. Thus, It’s more efficient for us to consistently buy the products we already know and enjoy rather than testing and evaluating new options. Once we have a good experience with a brand, we recognize the brand moving forward. And when we continuously have good experiences with the brand, we begin to trust it. If the brand has our trust, then we will choose it over its competitors time and time again. In this way, good branding creates a loyal customer base.
This loyalty reduces the need for a company to spend exorbitant amounts of money on marketing, as well as dramatically increases the amount of cross-product/service sales made.
Loyal customers, It turns out, hardly have to be marketed to at all. Good branding also creates a steady influx of new customers, because loyal customers are excited to share a trusted product with their friends and family. Word of mouth advertising is, and will always be, the most effective form of advertising. Additionally, companies with strong brands have lower employee turnover, meaning they have a stronger sense of internal loyalty, too.
The Art of Branding.
We live in a buyers market, every product or service you could ever offer is (probably) already being sold. Potential customers have more access to information than ever before, and they will compare your business to your competitors. If your company lacks character or is indistinguishable from the crowd, you’ll lose the customer’s interest at an alarming rate.
Survival in the modern marketplace necessitates clear and concise communication with your prospective customers. A thoughtful brand has the ability to communicate important information, like what the company values, without giving the customer a chance to ask any questions. In this way, companies have the opportunity to immediately make an impact on potential customers without asking the customer for anything in return other than a moment of attention. Quality branding proves that the company cares about its customers. That they understand what problem the customer expects the product to address, and that the product can deliver a solution time after time.
The largest, most influential industry in the modern world, the technology industry, has highlighted the importance of branding for years. And it’s worked to great effect. At any coffee shop you can probably spot a patron fully kitted with Apple products. They might have a Macbook laptop to work on, Iphone for personal communications, Ipad for entertainment, Airpods for listening to music, and an Apple Watch to top it all off. If the most successful companies in the world have labored to build their brands over the years, then shouldn’t you?
Building Your Brand.
Your brand is your promise. When you put your brand on a product, you are promising your customers that the company sponsors the product. By continuously upholding this promise your brand will become trusted and gain recognition. The integrity of your brand must be maintained in order for branding to have a real effect. In other words, don’t make promises you can’t keep. That would be, as we say, “bad for the brand.”
Investing in your company’s brand is investing in market differentiation, consumer retention, and lead generation simultaneously. A successful brand automatically reminds its customers that it has fulfilled its promise in the past, and will continue to do so faithfully in the future.
A quality brand is simple and to the point, perhaps even self-explanatory in some sense. The process of developing the brand requires a lot of creativity, introspection, and an open mind. In order to develop a successful brand, it’s crucial to clarify what your business’s core principles are and then outwardly express those principles in the most attractive and honest way possible.
You don’t have time to sit down with every potential customer and tell you and your business’s story, explain to them how you’re different from your competitors, and reassure them throughout the product’s/service’s life. That’s why a well-cultivated brand is so important–It does the hard work for you.
