The Importance of Branding In 2022
Your company’s growth is heavily reliant on a strong branding strategy. A good brand can directly benefit your business.
But, before you can develop a great branding strategy, you must first understand what branding is, why it is essential, and how to use it to propel your organization forward. We’ll walk you through all you need to know about developing a powerful brand. You’ll be able to develop a new brand from scratch or rename an existing one.
What is branding?
According to the classic definition, a brand is a concept, name, symbol, or any other attribute that defines and separates a product or service from its competitors. The process of imbuing a product or service with the power of a brand is known as branding.
However, branding is much more than a logo or a color palette. Assuming that your branding is limited to a few visual elements can restrict your company’s growth and influence.
There are several definitions of branding available, but one of our favorites comes from our digital marketing experts at Silver Ant Marketing: “Branding is a gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.”
Branding is about how a company makes you feel. It’s all about how you see it, remember it, and eventually buy from it to become a loyal client.
In a single sentence, take your central idea and apply it to your company or product; that is, branding.
What Is the Importance of Branding?
Everything linked to your business and product is built on your branding, from your brand narrative to how you communicate with customers to the internal reporting decks your sales staff distributes every week.
Branding is the core of your company, the heart, and soul of what it stands for. You must take branding seriously from the start and maintain it at the forefront of your thoughts throughout your company’s successes and failures.
Now that we have explained what branding is let’s look at the benefits of branding and how it may help your business.
Branding encourages the creation of a memorable identity
When someone sees any visual asset from your company, whether a social media post, product packaging, an email, or a video ad, they will feel something. That “something” should ideally be good and memorable.
As customers contact your brand at various touchpoints, they will begin to form an identity in their thoughts, which may or may not remain. The difficulty is to create that identity ahead of time, knowing that the consumer would receive bits and pieces over time.
Their views, thoughts, and sentiments about your brand begin with awareness and move to preference and, finally, loyalty, as long as their perceived identity of your brand is favorable and memorable.
Employees are motivated, and corporate culture is improved by branding
Branding is important on both the outside and inside of your organization. A strong and trustworthy corporate culture is created when a brand identity becomes remembered and inviting to your customers.
Your employees and team members will experience a stronger connection and motivation if your brand is robust and has a solid basis. Clearly stated brand objectives and projections, in addition to core values and personality, will aid in the creation of a corporate culture that everyone on the team can be proud of.
Branding complements your marketing approach and increases revenue
A great brand serves as the foundation for your marketing approach, both aesthetically and through narrative. It directs the creation, promotion, and distribution of all marketing content and resources.
When your marketing is backed up by powerful and consistent branding, it connects more with your target audience and produces greater engagement, sales, sign-ups, customers, and loyalty.
Branding Terms You Should Know
Because branding is a complicated organism, many related concepts signify different things. Knowing these fundamental words can help you understand the concept involved in the art of branding.
They are as follows:
- Brand strategy
- Brand awareness
- Brand positioning
- Brand relevance
- Brand loyalty
- Brand equity
Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Brand Strategy
A brand strategy addresses everything your brand needs to exist, including how it is communicated and discussed, as well as the principles the team should follow as it expands.
Your brand strategy contributes to the first perception of potential consumers, the regularity of repeat customers, and long-term customers’ long-term loyalty. The brand strategy is often put out at the start of a brand’s journey before planned expansion or a redesign.
Here’s a brand strategy document template that you may customize for your own company. It will assist you in brainstorming and finalizing key components of your brand.
The projected growth is an essential component of a branding strategy for achieving ever-changing goals and objectives. A company’s brand will develop alongside it as it expands. Brand strategies that are ready for change and eventual pivot are the ones that will always win.
Brand Awareness
The initial stage of the consumer journey is brand awareness. It all comes down to how customers perceive the brand and its knowledge of its products.
As a business owner, it is your responsibility to develop a brand strategy noticed by your target customer and influences their everyday lives. In this manner, customers become aware of your brand while also developing a mental image.
Of course, you want to generate a favorable impression. So, for example, if someone asks, “Do you know of a decent firm that performs patio roofing?” They’ll remember you and the stuff you’ve provided. If you create a good impression, people will remember you.
Awareness and perception are equally crucial when communicating with clients and marketing your products and services. Every stage of the customer journey should be good, and if any consumer hurdles arise, your business should conquer them gracefully.
Brand Positioning
Brand positioning is all about how your company compares to the competition. It’s all about identifying your differentiators or the precise aspects of your brand that set it apart. Technically, it is about ‘positioning’ your brand at a certain place in your clients’ thinking.
These differences might be aspects of your specific products and services, or they can be about your brand’s beliefs and stories. They can also serve as a pricing point. The most effective discriminators are those that address both physical and emotional requirements.
Brand Relevance
Brand relevance is strongly related to differentiators and positioning, yet it extends beyond the mundane and into the world of emotions. When a brand is relevant, its target audience is emotionally connected to it, similar to a “gut feeling.”
Customers must feel linked to, understood by, heard by, and seen by your brand to be relevant. As a brand, how can you achieve this? You need to get to know your consumers on a more personal level.
Talk to your consumers, perform one-on-one discussions, focus groups, and user testing with varied groups of individuals to fully grasp what they require and how your brand can assist them in a method that seems natural, good, and fulfilling.
When it comes to execution, the visual and textual messages used to interact with customers are the most significant parts of a brand that assist develop relevance. Your research should serve as a guide for creating and distributing these items.
Brand Loyalty
Customers start preferring a brand when they notice that it works for them. They’ll use the brand once and, if they have a positive experience, they’ll likely choose it again when they need that product or service.
Studies show that 77% of consumers return to the same brands again. When a brand consistently satisfies its customers, they will turn loyal and won’t use another brand unless there’s a force majeure in play.
Brand loyalty is essential for a brand to grow exponentially. It’s what inspires customers to tell others about the brand and even become spokespersons or ambassadors.
Brand Equity
The perceived value of your brand in the eyes of your consumers is referred to as brand equity.
Brand equity is built via the collaborative efforts of brand awareness, perception, positioning, relevance, and loyalty. This degree of legacy cannot be attained overnight; it takes time and devotion to establish great brand equity.
In our piece on brand equity, we offered the example of how most of us say, “I’ll grab a band-aid for that,” when we require a plaster — or sticky bandage — for a cut or scrape. A band-aid is not a thing; it is the brand name Band-Aid. We use it as a noun that demonstrates the brand’s strong equity.
Some Branding Suggestions
Anyone may create a brand by following the procedures outlined above. However, not every brand can outperform the competition and become memorable and outstanding. We’re here to assist you in going the additional mile.
Here are some critical suggestions and best practices to keep in mind as a brand manager to help you expand your business and take your brand to the next level. These pointers will assist your team in staying on brand and working toward the same objective and vision.
Make a style guide for your brand
A brand style guide, often known as brand guidelines, is an internal document that describes and displays all of your company’s visual aspects. It might include, for example, your logo, typefaces, and color palettes, as well as usage instructions, dos and don’ts, and best practices.
Creating a brand style guide may assist your whole team — of any size — in easily working on visual materials together while being on-brand.
You may design your brand style guide in any format you like, as long as it is easy to distribute with your team. Most companies choose to create a PDF document and use both digital and printed copies of it.
Branded templates should be saved for future usage
Another wonderful method to keep your team on brand is to establish a collection of branded templates for various applications. As a result, if you need to develop something for external or internal communication, you can just change a pre-made template, and you’re ready to go.
Brand Design Tools are a fantastic way for creating branded templates. It’s AI-powered and will automatically grab your logo, fonts, and colors from your website and build a collection of branded templates for you, including letterheads, business cards, social posts, and more.
Brand equity may be measured
Consistently evaluating and assessing performance is critical for enhancing any company process, including branding. To determine if your brand is expanding in the right direction, you must assess brand equity. Is it true to its name? Is it significant? What is your brand’s perception among your client base?
When calculating brand equity, three major aspects must be considered:
- Financial Metrics
- Preference Metrics
- Strength Metrics
Combining the three will provide you with an accurate estimate of your brand equity.
When Should You Rebrand?
What if you already have a brand and want to expand? Is it time to rebrand, or should you stick with what you’ve got?
All brands will undergo rebranding at some time. In some circumstances, it’s little, and no one notices; in others, it’s a major problem and a media event.
But what causes a firm to need to rebrand in the first place? In our rebranding guide, we go over each of these scenarios in detail:
- Your firm joins forces with another brand.
- Another firm has purchased your company.
- Your firm has a new CEO.
- Your company’s image has weakened.
- You wish to target a different demographic.
- You’ve progressed beyond your basic assignment.
- Your brand must remain relevant.
Rebranding is like beginning again, and it might take some time to get it right. When you announce your rebranding, your consumer base may or may not appreciate it. You must pick whether to remain firm or listen to what they have to say.
SAM can help you take your branding to the next level!
You’ve come down here! Excellent work. How did you find our comprehensive branding guide? Do you think you have a better understanding of what branding is all about now?
One of our favorite subjects at SAM is branding. We like watching how businesses construct their Brand Kits and use the assets to generate their visual designs. That’s why we developed the SAM Brand Wizard, which makes it even easier to stay on-brand.
If you don’t already have a subscription with SAM, you can quickly set one up by visiting our website or any social media account and begin working on your branding right away!
