Is branding really that important? Think again.
Several people often neglect the words “branding” and even in today’s standard, many business do not fully understand the term and how much of a great and important factor branding can affect your business sales.
For starters, what is branding? Branding by definition, is a method of marketing practice where a company creates and develops a name, symbol, logo, design, etc that will be easily distinguishable as belonging to that particular company. This then later on helps all of us as consumers and to the world in distinguishing these with several other products in the market place.
Branding is really not given a lot of priority even today for many start-ups, small to medium sized and even large corporations. However, we can take a look at some of the world’s greatest brands and how they have subtly impacted and played a strong and vital role unconsciously within our human consumer minds. As a whole, a brand is an extended true representation of a company in regards to their business and how they wish to be perceived amongst the world and the marketplace.
In many cases, branding plays a significant vital role as they would be the main driving factors and absolutely critical for a business. Because they intentionally or unintentionally have the power to drive new businesses, create more awareness and how people perceive a particular brand.
Before moving on, let’s take a look at the current top most valuable brands listed in the world today.
Image taken from (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-most-valuable-brands-in-the-world/)
Let’s take a look at how branding can affect your business sales in three simple ways as explained further below.
- Branding Sets Your Business Apart
Marketing and or brand positioning is very crucial to a business. This would then later on determine the vital parts for the business’s growth, brand visibility and awareness. By coming up with a branding strategy, your business helps to be segregated out uniquely and hopefully memorable amongst the consumers.
To put it simply, the more control markets have on the positioning and perception of their brand, the more they can choose to play with the pricing of the brands products. One such example would be Apple and how they choose to distinguish themselves from the rest by being a “premium” smartphone maker by selling marked up prices than competitors.
When it comes to capturing the attention of the consumers with your brand image, this gets a tad bit complicated. Your product needs to be relevant in the ever increasing global competition. Moreover, it needs to have a place and to finally stand out. One such internationally acclaimed brand that has proved itself worthy is Nike. The relevance and the use of the slogan which was adapted, reached out internationally with its easy to reach/connect terminologies.
Moreover, Nike has utilised their marketing stints wisely by collaborating exclusive deals with celebrities like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant to represent and heighten their brand image further. By doing so, this then carved out a unique marketing positioning for Nike and the brand value increases tremendously alongside the desirability too.
2. Branding Instils Trust
This is a very common, or if you could phrase it, more philosophical approach; consumers will only recommend brands that they trust. Of course initially the brand has to reach or exceed the consumers expectations. However, the end result is the most valuable purchase brands can make with their consumers and that is the trust. A carefully constructed brand will have strict policies and branding strategies. These would all result in the end products to be extremely consistent in top quality and credibility.
Similar to how relationships work, the trust and credibility works and increases over time and a strong unbreakable channel is built from your brand to your consumers. Therefore, this then results everything back to the branding scene. All these good customer interactions, experiences is all boiled down back to the branding. Hence, usually this is the reason why credibility of a business/product/service is often foreseen and dictated by its branding.
3. Branding Builds & Maintains Loyalty
This is with basis to the previous point. There’s often a saying you might’ve come across which goes “It’s cheaper to get past customers to purchase again than it is to find new customers.” Not only this might be true, it is actually proven to be cost effective (more affordable) and totally way more easier to achieve this target due to the already established trust scene in the first place.
By having your brand to be built around the basis of consistent brand trust and loyalty, it will not only help you brand/business to be the main driving factor for baseline revenues but also transform your existing customers into advocated for your brand. Yes of course there are several hundred ways and experts who are solely hired and help responsible for the advertising and the marketing of a brand.
These are highly effective strategies, no doubt by enabling your brand/business to generate more exposure in return to more leads and revenue. However, imagine a scenario where an unexpected and outstanding word-of-mouth strategy advocating for your brand within their own reach of network takes place. Remember, all of these would be done FOC. Priceless!
Hopefully now you will have a clear understanding on how branding greatly impacts on business and how it can affect your sales.
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