In this blog post, we’ll cover in detail complete branding as well as tactics that will help you and your business grow, earn more money, and be perceived in the right way.
What’s branding and what isn’t? Why is it important? Where do people go wrong when they identify design with branding? These questions will be answered below. So let’s start…
1. What’s a Brand?
A brand is a sum of all the impressions, both rational and emotional, about a company collected through interaction with it. The more positive the brand is, the more valuable it’s in the market. When we say brand, which ones come to your mind first? Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Visa, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Marlboro, Disney, Zara, Mercedes-Benz, etc.
In case you don’t know, this is a world of great brands. We are born with them, we consume them, and we die with them. We always come back to them and they never disappoint us. They are easily accessible, always of the same quality, and beautiful in design and packaging. We differentiate them from the competition and recommend them to friends. They trigger positive emotions in us.
2. What’s Branding?
Branding is the process of creating a brand. It’s a set of activities and strategies that help a brand to be perceived in the right way, logically and emotionally. Branding is a mixture of design, language, identity, and experience. In a world where there’s a great competition of similar products, branding helps you beat the competition. This is why we always choose one brand while ignoring other products of the same quality.
Whether a business is using traditional marketing, digital marketing, or both, branding principles apply in any era. It helps you create a mental image of your brand in the mind of the customers. Branding has a clear role: to help the company send a clear message, establish trust and credibility, gain uniqueness, identity, emotional connection and loyalty, initiate a buying action, and make a difference compared to the competition.
3. The Holy Trinity of Branding: Purpose, Vision, and Mission
#1. Purpose – answers the question Why?
Every successful organization has a purpose. It’s the basic branding component that should answer these questions: Why does a company exist? Why was it founded? What’s the main reason for having a brand? If business was to disappear tomorrow, would it leave a trace behind? The answer to the question Why? makes it easier for you to set out your mission and vision.
#2. – answers the questions What? or Where?
The statement about vision should provide you with an answer to what you want to achieve in the future and where you see your brand in 2, 5, or 10 years from today. This issue is a matter of branding. The vision focuses on the future, it shows you the direction the company should go in the future. An effective vision should give you a clear and unambiguous picture, describe the future, be realistic and achievable, follow the organizational culture and values, and presuppose a time when it will come to fruition.
#3. Mission – answers the question How?
The mission deals with practical issues. It focuses on the present and turning the vision into reality. An effective mission tells you what goals to accomplish, in what way, with what tools, and how long it will take.
4. The Target Group
Branding strategies can help you find the ideal target group and how to address it in the right way. One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to try to please everyone. The one that’s good for everyone isn’t usually good for anyone. The significantly higher cost of advertising is another reason why you need to focus only on the target group. For example , if an athlete that’s eating healthy sees an advertisement with a burger in the lead role, it’s a waste of money because they aren’t interested in it. However, if they see a message about a new natural protein shake, it’s a cleverly used advertising budget.
So, you start with the questions: Who needs your product? Where do your customers live? Are they males or females? How old are they? What are they doing? What competing brands do they consume? On which online platforms are they most active?
5. Brand Positioning
Positioning is the process by which you tell the market how your product or service differs from others. The goal is to create a uniquely positive, complete impression in the minds of consumers. Then, it becomes clear to the customer what your brand represents, what it is and what it isn’t. If the positioning is done properly, it should create in the consumer’s mind a desire for the product as something unique. As a result of this process, you get a positioning statement. It’s an internal statement, a slogan, around which you develop a marketing strategy.
6. Fighting for Customers’ Trust
Would you believe a person who thinks one thing, says something else and does a completely different thing? Certainly not and it would be even harder to buy from it. We buy mostly from people we trust. They built trust over the years. Every time, they deliver on their promise, they never lie, and they don’t cheat. Companies also need to build and deserve trust. Branding helps you do that. It’s necessary for them to think, say and do the same. All organizational units, ie owners, management, employees, suppliers, and distributors must function as a whole. If not, the customer’s intuition will sense it.
7. Brand Name
Naming a business is one of the most important and complex items in the branding process. Before you create a logo, slogan, and website, you need to make a name for the business. Of course, when creating a website, you need to think of hosting it somewhere. If you decide to create a website using MySQL database, of course, as a component in the LAMP stack of open-source web application software, you should opt for MySQL hosting to follow the process. Your MySQL host is usually localhost. Here you can see the proposed plans based on speed, uptime, features, support reputation, and reliability popularity. Now, back to the brand name…
It should be easy to remember, draw attention, represent the business in the right way, communicate values, and sound pretty. Naming a business and create a unique brand web address. All other elements may change over time (logo, font, color, etc.) but the name remains the same in all cases except when doing a complete rebranding.
8. Branding and Visual Brand Identity
Who would you rather start a business relationship with: a man in a suit or someone who’s dressed as a homeless person? Of course, with the man in the suit. This is how the human brain works, we judge a book based on its cover. This is one of the reasons why a brand should look polished. One brand’s visual identity is made up of logo, images, font, colors, and creative design. With these elements, the brand stimulates the customer’s visual sense. For instance, a good logo is easy to remember, attracts attention, produces the desired emotion, and is unique.
Visual identity helps the brand look believable and instill confidence. It’s usually created after identifying the elements we have listed above. Before you start designing, it’s essential that you know the target group. For instance, let’s stress how fonts are significant. If you’re creating a brand for the younger population, you certainly won’t use “adult” fonts. Also, you won’t use pink if the brand is aimed at the male straight population. The visual identity should communicate the values and culture that the company nurtures.
Remember that you have only one shot at impressing your customers on the first time they purchase your products, so having creatively designed and customized packaging will certainly work to your advantage. A well-packaged product builds anticipation in customers and gives the impression that the product is just as great as the packaging is.
9. Brand Values
Brand values represent the heart of the brand. These are the principles that lie beneath the surface of a logo, slogan, design, etc. and shape every aspect of the business (message, appearance, and character). The company should trust these values and strive for them. However, just putting a brand value on paper won’t make it stronger. The company needs to constantly work on values and make efforts. It may be possible to improving your branding values.
Branding has the basic task of making these values an integral part of the brand. When setting brand values, it’s necessary to answer the following questions: What do you stand for? What do you value most? What do you most believe in? Brand values dictate the direction of action and choices you make. Because of this, some customers associate with one brand and ignore others.
10. The Voice of the Brand
Every time a brand makes an advertisement, refreshes a website with new content, writes a blog, designs a catalog, or posts on social networks, it uses its voice to communicate. It’s the tone and style of writing that you communicate with and connect with your target group. When you know who you’re talking to, ie. your target group, you can easily adjust the voice. Certainly, you won’t treat teenagers the same way as adults.
11. Slogan
A slogan is a sound phrase or a small group of words that are effectively combined to help customers identify a company or product. Just as the logo visually represents the brand, the slogan does it sonically. The goal of the slogan is to leave the key message of the brand in the mind of the customer. A good slogan is short, easy to remember, contains a key benefit, separates the brand from the competition, and arouses a positive feeling.
12. Consistency With the Brand
With this strategy, the company tries to communicate messages that are indistinguishable and don’t differ from the deep values of the brand, visual identity, and voice. Always try to use the same colors, logo, design, font, tone of voice, values, images, etc. It’s necessary to be consistent in all places where the company is in contact with customers: on the website, application, social media, business cards, email, flyers, catalogs, t-shirts, pencils, etc. Consistency raises brand awareness, helps the customer create a clear picture of what the brand represents, authenticity, and emotional connection.
13. Brand Story
The story is a complete picture made up of tiny but true fragments, feelings, circumstances, history, and interpretations of real events. Why do you need a brand story? Just as every person has his own life story, so do brands. The story makes a person authentic and it’s part of its identity. When people hear someone’s story, they feel empathy, identify, and relate. This is why brands need it.
However, it’s not enough to just have a story. No one wants to listen to an inauthentic, uninteresting, long, and false story. This is where most brands make mistakes. A story is needed to win the heart and the head, to be easily remembered, to be interesting, draw attention, emotionally connect with the listener, to be substantiated by facts, and easily communicable from mouth to mouth.
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