Branding: Definition, Importance & Process

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Branding is one of the most important processes when running a small business.
• A strong brand is going to help your business relate to customers.
• An effective brand strategy will make your business stand out.
• When creating a brand, it’s important to look at the core of your business and build the brand around that.

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What Is a Brand?

Before explaining the branding process, you first have to understand what a brand is. A brand is a consistent set of features that makes a company unique from its competitors. One of the signs of a successful branding strategy is an easily recognized brand.

Have you ever wondered how some brands manage to stand out from the crowd? How do they create such a strong sense of brand? And why are some brands so difficult to imitate? The answer lies in the brand strategy.

Understanding Brand Strategy

A brand strategy is the central pillar of a brand’s identity. It is the foundation on which the rest of the brand’s identity relies. A brand strategy outlines all of the brand’s unique selling propositions. These are the things that make the brand different from its competitors.

As a business owner, your brand strategy should be simple yet effective. It should communicate your brand’s unique value proposition in a succinct manner. It should also have enough details to ensure that the brand doesn’t become diluted over time.

Think about some of the largest companies in the country. You can quickly recognize their brand based on just a few details. That’s because they went through the trouble of creating strong brands. How did they do that? By creating a visual identity through an intense branding process.

Keep in mind that you likely won’t pin down the perfect brand identity overnight. It will take a lot of brainstorming and strategic planning to develop the ideal brand. But with hard work and a committed approach to branding, you can present something unique and appealing to consumers.

What Is Branding?

Are you ready for some effective branding tips? For starters, think of your branding decisions as your company’s personality. It’s the way that you communicate who you are to the world and how people should understand you. In other words, it’s how you make people understand what your business is about.

A brand is your company’s reputation. It’s the way that people come to know who you are and what you’re about. Brands help to establish your company as an authority in your industry, and they are an important marketing tool.

In order to build a strong brand, you need to think about your company as if everyone already knew about it. You need to think about everything from your employees to the suppliers that work with you. That’s why it’s important for you to have a clear understanding of what your branding vision is and the benefits that it can have for your company.

At its core, branding is the process of developing a unique identity for a company. What’s more, it serves to distinguish itself from rivals and establish its position in the marketplace.

Branding is often seen as synonymous with advertising, but branding is much more than just advertising your company. It’s about creating a connection with your customers. You need to give them a reason to choose you over your competitors and build trust between you and your customers.

Branding isn’t just about a catchy name, slogan, or logo that people may associate with your company. It’s also about how you portray your company in all of its aspects, from the way you dress in the office to the way your employees speak with your customers.

What sets successful branding apart from mediocre branding is the connection you make with your customer base. A great brand is going to form a connection between a company and its target customers. Thankfully, the branding process has been well documented and can get implemented with a bit of effort.

The Importance of Branding

Your brand is the connection that you have with your customers. It’s the way that you portray your company to them and what they should expect from you in terms of quality, prices, and customer service.

This image of your company is what will be in the customer’s mind when they’re deciding whether to buy from you or not. This is why it’s important to think about your branding from the moment that your business is just getting off the ground.

Building your branding will take time, but it can happen in a few simple steps that you can begin right away. You will learn these steps momentarily. First, consider a few more key components of branding and how each affects your company and your potential customer base.

Branding Is a Deciding Factor

When interviewed in 2015, nearly 60% of shoppers stated that they prefer to buy from a brand that they know. With this data alone, it’s clear that consistent, strong branding creates loyal customers. And customers who are willing to make repeat purchases are the ideal customer.

In addition to that, though, over 20% of shoppers said they were willing to make purchases based on brand alone. This indicates that a well-thought-out brand creates conversions with potential customers.

Branding Creates an Identity for Your Business

Your brand identity is your company’s unique set of characteristics that make it recognizable from other companies. As a company, you have an image and a series of characteristics that make you unique from other brands.

Moreover, your brand image is how your target market perceives you. Your brand identity is the characteristic that sets you apart from other brands. Your brand image is how your target market perceives you.

Your brand identity is the characteristics that set you apart from other brands. Both your brand image and identity are important. In fact, they’re so important that they’re essential to building a successful company.

The problem is that many companies don’t understand what their brand identity is and what it isn’t. As a result, they end up spending a lot of time and money on something that doesn’t help them grow as a company. That’s why you need to learn the differences between your brand image and identity.

If you know the difference, you’ll be a lot more likely to make the right decisions in terms of how you build your brand and grow your company.

Branding Enhances Marketing and Advertisements

When you think of consistent branding, you probably think of that big, corporate company. The one with a well-developed marketing strategy and a slew of successful advertising campaigns. But there are plenty of smaller businesses that have discovered the secret to successful brand marketing.

Today, consumers have more options than ever when it comes to buying their favorite brands. But because there are so many different options, it can be challenging for marketers to stand out and capture the attention of consumers.

That’s where brand marketing and advertising comes into play. Stay consistent with the same strong branding standards and marketing efforts. In doing so, you can help consumers understand your brand. And you will stand out among your competitors.

The concept of branding refers to creating something instantly recognizable. By using branding to utilize specific design features, you can make marketing campaigns far more effective. When you see a Coca-Cola brand advertisement, you don’t have to be told that it’s an advertisement for the Coca-Cola brand.

You can’t overstate the importance of strong branding. This is especially true in an increasingly competitive market. One where consumers get bombarded with a wide array of marketing messages. A well-branded product can help you reach new customers, build your brand equity, and stand out from your competitors.

The Branding Process: How to Create a Brand

There are six key steps in the branding process. If you follow these steps, nearly any business can create a brand for itself. If you’re ready to get started, check out how to create a brand below.

Step 1: Define Your Target Audience

In order for branding to be effective, your brand has to create an emotional connection with your target audience. However, if you don’t know who your target audience is, that’s impossible to do. That’s why the first step to strong branding is determining who your target audience should be.

To determine your target audience, you’ll have to perform target market research. This is going to help you understand to whom your brand should ideally appeal. Through target market research, you can find out:

• Who your product serves
• Who your ideal customer is
• The purpose of your business

Defining these three things can help you create the perfect brand for your business.

Step 2: Write a Mission Statement

Your business may have a mission statement already. That’s great! Unfortunately, you’re going to have to disregard it. When you’re going through the branding process, you have to come up with a vision statement that matches your brand.

Your mission statement should be able to answer the following questions:

• Why did you create your business?
• What is your business passionate about?
• What is the purpose of your business?

Your company’s mission statement is the backbone of your brand. It’s going to convey to customers what your business is all about and why they should care about your brand. After you’ve carefully crafted a vision statement, you can start piecing your brand together around it.

Step 3: Identify Your Unique Values and Benefits

No matter what industry your company is participating in, you’re sure to have competition. A critical part of the branding process is determining what sets your business apart. To do that, you have to determine what makes it unique. The most unique part of your business should be your brand.

Strategic, strong branding is going to put your unique qualities, values, and benefits at the forefront of your brand. These are the areas to focus on while creating your brand.

Take a moment to compare your company to others. Determine how your company differs from the competition. This should be focused on how your business affects your customers and how it improves the entire customer experience. With hard work, you can effectively build customer loyalty. 

Step 4: Make Your Brand’s Visual Components

Now that you’ve spent some time focusing on your company, it’s time to start making some of your brand’s visual pieces. This may seem like a late step in the process, but it’s entirely necessary.

If you were to create your visual components prior to defining your brand, the two might never match completely. You should base all of your design choices on the work you’ve done so far.

In this step, you’ll be:

• Creating your logo
• Deciding on a color palette
• Determining your font
• Deciding on brand icons

As you decide on all of these things, you can also create a brand style guide. This ensures that anyone who chooses to represent your business uses your branding assets correctly.

Something to mention is that there are professional graphic designers that can assist with this step. Many of them have a good understanding of strong branding and can bring a unique experience to the table.

For example, many will be able to walk you through color psychology, which will determine the message that your brand conveys.

Step 5: Define Your Brand’s Voice

Now that you’ve completed the visual assets, you can begin to develop your brand’s voice. Brand voice is how you’d like your brand to be perceived on a written basis. Imagine your brand as a person.

How would they talk to you? What would their attitude be like? This voice is the way that your brand should come across in all written media. Remember, the key to strong branding is consistency.

Step 6: Roll Out Your Brand

You’ve done it! You’ve completed all of the steps in the branding process. The ultimate step is to roll your brand out. This means branding your business in every aspect. It is important that you integrate your brand with every single part of your business.

If you don’t, then you may not create the strong brand that you’d like to. Below you’ll find a checklist of places to integrate your brand into:

Social Media: All of your social media accounts need to have your brand on them. This makes your social media channels easily recognizable to your target audience.

Website: Your website needs updating to reflect your brand. In reality, your website should be a key component throughout the branding process.

Packaging: All forms of packaging need updating to reflect your brand.

Customer Service: Customer service interactions need to reflect your brand’s voice. This may mean creating an additional, written style guide, as well.

Now that you know what goes into creating a brand, consider the seven components of a brand strategy. You will need to know these if you hope to effectively put your strong branding efforts into action.

The 7 Components of a Brand Strategy

There are seven important components of a brand strategy that all brands should have. This comprehensive set of strategies is what drives your brand and helps your business connect with consumers. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Business Strategy: This is where you outline the value you provide to your customers and how you plan to do so. You have to think about the type of customers you want to attract, the channels through which you want to sell to them, and the cost of acquisition.

Product Strategy: A comprehensive strategy that details your services and what makes them special. You have to think about the target customers you want to attract, the benefits they should receive, and the price they should get charged.

Pricing Strategy: This is your company’s plan to price your products/services and the discounts you intend to offer. You have to think about the profit margin you want to make, the type of profits you want, and the customers you want to attract.

Distribution Strategy: Your plan to distribute your products and the channels through which you want to sell them. You have to think about the cost of distribution, the profit you want to make, and the channel capacity.

Market Strategy: An outline of your target customers. Also, the growth strategies, the pricing strategies, and the channels through which you plan to sell. You have to think about the market share you want to achieve, the growth rate you want, and the timing of the launch.

Channel Strategy: The channels through which you want to sell your products and the target customers you want to attract through them. You have to think about the channel strengths, the channel weaknesses, and the impact of regulation.

Summary

Are you ready to show the world what your business is all about? With a comprehensive brand strategy in place, you will attract consumers to your company. And the more you expose them to your marketing efforts, the easier it will become for customers to equate your brand identity with your business.To make the most of your digital marketing, be sure to download FreshBooks Accounting Software for Digital Marketing. With its powerful tools, FreshBooks enables a better understanding of financial reports. Plus, it helps ensure that you are compliant and accurate.