What Branding Means And How To Build A Long-Lasting Brand

Branding allows businesses to leverage a particular design and voice to market their products and services. It takes hard work to implement but when done right it can make all the difference in standing out from your competition. 

Additionally, you’ll be able to build a devoted customer base.

Now, let’s take a closer look at what branding signifies.

Brand vs. Branding

Interestingly, a brand is not the same as branding although they’re related.

A brand is what builds relationships with customers. Ultimately, a brand is how your customers perceive your business. 

Branding on the other hand involves actions such as podcasting, blogging, and social interactions with your customers that ultimately help define your brand

How To Implement branding?

As we all know, having a successful brand means much more than just having a powerful logo and a memorable name.

We must also determine how we will introduce our brand to the rest of the world, and this is where our brand implementation plan comes into play.

Brand Positioning

Let’s start with the positioning of the brand.

This is the process of making our brand stick in our cusotmers’ minds.

Deemed as more than a catchphrase or a flashy logo, brand positioning is an effective strategy in distinguishing our company apart from competitors.

A brand is said to be effectively positioned when the consumer perceives it to be pleasant, valued, and trustworthy. 

As a result of these three qualities, our customers build a place for us in their minds.

Apple is an excellent example of a well-positioned brand. It’s the brand for you if you value exclusivity, luxury, and elegance.

Brand Identity

Our brand identity is our company’s secret sauce that distinguishes us from the competition, much like our personal identity that determines who we are.

Take a look at our logo. This is what gives our company its own identity and it could do the same for yours as well.

A strong brand identity delivers consumer loyalty, brand awareness, customer trust, and long-term success.

One example of a well-established firm with a strong brand identity is Coca-Cola. We all know that it has a long-standing branding experience under its belt

Because of that, customers are likely to associate Coca-Cola with several things when they hear the company’s name.

It could be the company’s red emblem, a polar bear, or the “Share a Coke” campaign.

Advertising

Did you know that the typical person is bombarded with over 5000 advertisements every day?

A 30-second commercial, a catchy tune, and a good slogan make up what we call advertising.

But it isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be!

Advertising is a type of branding in which a product or service is promoted to a specific set of individuals.

It is one of the oldest methods of persuading a target audience to purchase, sell, or do anything that would potentially earn one’s business.

Although this type of advertising can prove to be effective, it can also lead to negative results, especially for new brands. For example, let’s say you start a t-shirt company today and started using Facebook ads to market your t-shirts.

How many sales do you think you’d get? Using Facebook ads in the early days may have yielded a lot of sales for some but at some point, these sales stopped.

On the other hand, think back to when you last purchased a t-shirt from your favorite store. This is the power of an established brand.

Sponsorships/Partnerships

A brand partnership can be a powerful marketing tactic with long-term effects.

Take into account podcasting. Although we’re past the early podcasting days, we believe there’s still ample opportunity for businesses to reach new audiences.

You can either start a podcast for your business or be a guest on a relevant podcast in your niche. For example, if you sell business coaching services for web designers you can reach out to podcast hosts in the business or website niche.

Create a unique URL and track your results. Often, you won’t see results immediately unless you’re in a popular podcast. However, as long as the podcast stands, your business has the opportunity of being discovered by new listeners.

Additionally, you can do partnerships with influencers in a relevant niche. Taking the earlier example, as a business coach you can ask Youtube influencers for vouchers for your service. To do this successfully, you have to have a good product or service.

Why?

Influencers won’t promote products or services they don’t believe in, even if they’re willing to avoid doing this. Aim to partner with influencers who’d genuinely promote your product or service to their audience.

Packaging Design

Packing is a diverse, dynamic, and creative industry.

A simple box, a poly mailer, a mailer bag, or a tube are all great possibilities.

Identification, protection, marketing, and transportation are all responsibilities that product boxes work with.

A typical store’s shelves contain tens of thousands of different items. Department stores, mass merchandisers, and other retail marketing locations are all areas where things come to life, and consumers are drawn in by our packaging design.

To stand out, your packaging must attract customers and educate them on your product’s benefits in less than a minute. Additionally, your packaging must engage customers on an emotional level. 

As you can probably tell, your packaging’s design shouldn’t be taken lightly as this can make or break your branding strategy, hurting your overall sales.

In-Store Experience

Do retailers have any hope of competing for in-store sales with the inevitable rise of e-commerce?

Yes! If they can show how their physical stores are different.

In practice, the utilization of physical locations provides customers with a memorable, tactile and sensory experience as well as access to knowledge that is impossible to mimic online.

Customers can easily fill out an online form with their customization requests, but won’t see the finished product until it arrives.

In-store, customers may tell the business their wants and feel more confident that they’ll be met – this type of interaction is unlike a form or a live chat option.

While e-commerce has shifted the way most people purchase their products, physical stores will be able to provide a unique experience where customers can use their physical senses (i.e. touch, smell, hear, etc.)

Workspace Experience

The visual parts of our brand are represented by workplace branding.

It’s a big first step in creating a fun work environment for all employees.

Given the prominence of social media nowadays, a well-designed visual workplace can quickly become a succession of “selfie moments” – places where individuals will be excited and happy to pose for a digital photo and instantly share it with the world.

It might be a more subtle, artistic portrayal of your organization’s past or even a future goal that matches our mission or beliefs, or it could be a more direct and literal reflection of our emblem. 

Art and design elements can serve as visual reminders of those goals and the contributions they can make, with tangible backdrops for various personal interactions.

Branding to your customers should be just as important to your employees as they help execute your company’s overall goals.

Customer Service

We’re ignoring the most critical part of our brand’s story if we don’t invest in customer service.

Branding means creating a sequence of phases in your customer’s journey. From the beginning of a potential buyer’s contemplation, all the way to receiving a working product or service.

Every interaction you have with your customers sends a statement about your brand, whether subtle or grand. You may brand yourself extensively in the way you meet consumers, engage with them, follow up, encourage repeat business, and market your items.

Each positive interaction produces a distinct impression that leads to a desire to conduct business with you.

Pricing strategy 

Finally, there’s the pricing strategy.

Because it is a source of meaning and identity, pricing is crucial to brand equity as other differentiators.

A good pricing strategy can improve brand equity, but a bad one can have the opposite effect.

Premium pricing and competitive pricing are some of the available pricing techniques that you can leverage for your business. Take time to understand the value your product or service is offering. 

If you’ve implemented branding for your business, chances are you can charge more than most competitors. At the minimum, you shouldn’t be competing to offer the lowest price since your business has a trustworthy brand image.

Take the time to research your market and price your products/services that match the value your business provides.

Benefits of Branding

Branding is arguably the number one tactic that can make or break most businesses.

Here’s why…

Increases Business Value

Even if a brand is initially well-established, it will need to be constantly rebranded to stay competitive for decades.

Rebranding attracts new customers and offers you an advantage over your competitors.

Customers are also more likely to invest in your product if you have a consistently well-established brand.

A consistent brand strengthens your company’s overall worth by confirming your market position, attracting higher-quality customers with higher retention rates, and elevating the perceived value of your products or services.

Generate New Customers

People enjoy telling others about their favorite brands.

People wear, consume, listen to, and talk about the brands they like. On the other hand, we can’t tell someone about a brand we don’t recall.

A good brand website strategy, such as backlinks, is also essential for generating referrals or viral traffic.

One of the most apparent reasons for a company’s branding is to help it become more well-known and reach out to as many potential customers as it can.

People will automatically notify our business if it has good branding, much more so than if it doesn’t.

In reality, a company with a lack of consistent branding is unlikely to stick in someone’s mind.

Build Trust

Consumers remember brands they like — and don’t like — because brands relatively tell them what they can expect from a product.

We undoubtedly know which company we’d trust more if we had to select between one with clear, professional-looking branding and one that doesn’t.

Branding allows you to demonstrate to potential customers that we are a well-established and trustworthy company. This can let the consumers know more about what they can expect from our business.

This is an integral investment in your company’s future, and potential customers will notice that you put in the effort to build your brand.

Start Building a Conscious Brand

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of what branding means and how to use this for your business. 

Branding is the actions your business takes to ultimately build a brand.

As you implement branding for your conscious business, remember to think about the impact you want your company to make on your community and the world. Deliver this message consistently, and before you know it you’ll have loyal customers and make a bigger impact on a sustainable future.