Branding is often the deciding factor when consumers make a purchasing decision. If you have poor or no branding, there’s an extremely good chance that your competitors have greater market share and sales.
Your brand is one of the most important assets of your company. It establishes trust in the minds of new clients or customers, supports your advertising and marketing efforts, and helps promote great employee morale.
Read on to learn more about why branding is so important and how you can immediately start building and optimizing your brand.
The Importance of Branding
Studies have shown that consumers who feel connected to a brand spend twice as much money as those who do not. Consider the Apple iPhone—it often retails for as much as $1,300.
There are significantly less expensive cell phones on the market that are just as good—yet people will line up for several city blocks to purchase a new iPhone on the day it drops.
That’s the power of branding.
Your branding gives your business an identity and allows people to connect emotionally and psychologically with it.
When they see your advertising or marketing materials—they pay attention. When you make a social media post, your audience will flock to their phones to engage and share it with their friends.
What is Brand Definition?
There are a few terms that you will hear when you start working on growing your brand:
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness defines how familiar your target audience and the general public are with your brand. If you have high brand awareness, people will often refer to you as “trending” or “popular.” It means people are talking about you on social media, the internet, and offline.
If your target audience isn’t aware that your brand exists, how can they consider purchasing from you? This is why working on growing your brand is so important. You need to continually get your brand out there in front of the eyes of people who are most likely to buy your products or services.
Brand Recognition
Companies with great brand recognition have customers who can identify their brand without seeing the business name. For example, if someone were to hum the iconic Mcdonald’s jingle, there’s a great chance that everyone within earshot would recognize it.
The logo, jingle, tagline, advertising, and packaging of a brand all combine to create a strong brand that people remember and identify with whenever they see or hear it.
Brand Identity
The identity of your brand conveys the personality of your business. For example, if your company actively promotes and supports various social causes, that would be part of your brand identity. You’d wind up attracting customers in life who care about the same causes as you do.
Your brand identity is comprised of your morals and values and how you communicate that across multiple channels. When your customers patronize your business, it makes them feel like they’re connecting with you on a level above and beyond your company name.
Brand Extension
A brand extension is when you offer a new product or service in an industry or market you’re not currently in. For example, the company LG sells many different products such as: computers, washing machines, and televisions.
What’s great about brand extensions is that when you move into a new market, you’re able to leverage your existing brand, goodwill, brand awareness, and equity to diversify your product lines and increase revenue.
Brand Trust
Brand trust is simply how well people trust your brand. For example, does your company deliver upon the promises made by your marketing materials? Do your employees and sales reps go the extra mile to take care of your customers?
If people don’t feel confident doing business with you, you’re going to struggle with increasing sales. Your online reputation can positively or negatively influence brand trust. If you have lots of negative reviews, there’s a good chance that it’s going to affect you negatively.
However, having lots of negative reviews isn’t necessarily bad. Provided that you respond to those reviews in a constructive manner where you seek to resolve the issue and make your customers happy, prospective buyers will see that and realize that nobody’s perfect—and if something were to go wrong, you’d take care of them.
Start Building Your Brand Today
Witmer Group will help you build and grow your brand. We’ve helped countless businesses large and small define their brand identity over the years. Contact us today to get started, or click below to learn more about the value of having a strong brand.