The Importance of Branding for Your Business

What is Branding?

“Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon.

Branding is about creating an identity for yourself. But what is this identity we are talking about? Is it to just create logos and collaterals for your business? Or does it have a much deeper meaning?

Branding is defined as a process that gives meaning to a business and its products by creating a certain perception in the consumer’s minds. Branding helps to define your core values and sets up a level of trust and loyalty with your customers. For instance, when a customer buys your product or services, they know that they will receive what they expected and nothing less. Therefore, branding builds relationships with your audience.

Contrary to common perception, you do not need to spend millions to create your brand image. What you need is research and creativity. You need to present your business or product to the right audience and for that you will need in-depth analysis of the data including sales and audience responses that you may have collected over time.

Creativity is perhaps the most important factor that comes to play when building a brand. As your brand is a reflection of the core values and principles of your business, you need to make the best efforts when it comes to creativity. The more creative your approach is towards branding, the more interested your customers will be.

Creativity is not limited to logo designs, collaterals, advertisements, posts, etc., but also in conveying the right message for your brand. The idea is to hit the right sentiments with your brand and subsequent awareness campaigns.

How Branding Benefits Your Business

Branding helps to set you apart from your competitors and offers you the following major benefits:

Recognition

Branding is an effective way to create an identity for your business. And that is usually done with the help of distinct colors and designs. Your logo, for instance, is a representation of your business, core values and ideas. Your customers will be able to recognize your logo and associate it with your brand and making it stand out among others. Thus, branding helps to create a unique identity for your business. This is one of the most important purpose of branding – to bring recognition to your business. So now when customers see your logo, they recognize your brand and make a purchase. This recognition brings familiarity and it is very important to gain the trust of your customers.

Customer Loyalty

It is important that you have good products but it is equally important to have the right branding to lead customers to your products. But when the customer buys your product over and over again, that’s jackpot! When customers prefer your brand over others, you have what is called in branding jargon, customer loyalty.

You start making profits when you successfully develop customer loyalty. Once the customer feels an attachment to a particular brand, they are sure to return back for more. Customer loyalty is extremely important for your business. Several of the biggest brands you can think of today owe their growth to customer loyalty. That is the power of branding.

Credibility

What makes a buyer return to make a purchase? It is nothing but the belief that your product or service will give the same result as it had done last time based on trust. Unless you gain the trust of your customers, you will not be able to thrive in the marketplace. Your credibility should be the highest priority for you. Branding helps you to establish your credibility. Why would a new customer purchase your goods and services?  This is where branding comes into play. Branding establishes your business as a credible service provider and helps to set you up as a well-established business. The credibility you gain from branding helps you to stay ahead of the competition.

Brand Equity

Generic products may just work as well as the branded ones. For example, jeans, shoes, medicines, etc. However, customers tend to purchase products from well-known brands over generic ones. Branding helps to generate brand equity which refers to the premium that a business generates on his products with has a brand value as compared to another which has no such recognition. Branding, therefore, creates brand equity by making your products more recognizable and alluring for the buyer. In effect brand equity is a broad term that encompasses brand loyalty and brand awareness along with a perception of quality.

Talent Retention

If you are wondering what does talent have to do with branding, then the answer is almost everything. What makes you a brand? Certainly not just the paraphernalia but also the people who work in your company. Because they are the ones who are producing top notch quality products.

Branding works in both ways as people usually like to be associated with a brand and it benefits your business as well. Branding helps the people working in your company to remain motivated as well as attract new talent.

The Takeaway

Branding is, therefore, an extremely important part of your marketing as it creates a place and position for your product in the marketplace. As a small business you do not need to spend a fortune on branding but use creativity and research to position your product in the right way. Branding gives you recognition and helps you to gain the trust of your customers. And trust is crucial to have a relationship with your customers so that you can gain their loyalty and finally lead to higher sales. The right branding can turn your business into a highly profitable one.