Long before you launch an ad campaign or develop your marketing strategy, you must first have a solid brand identity. To keep it simple, your brand identity is your personality. This will be the way in which consumers identify your business. This is important in separating you from your competitors. Although it’s a popular word, it is still a hard concept for many to grasp what it really means.
Branding is creating an identity that will make your company more appealing than your competition. It will aid in convincing your consumers that your business is the only one out there that can satisfy their needs and desires. Many people identify a brand with their logo and name, but it goes beyond the surface. Branding is an overall experience.
If you have ever watched the Apprentice, or Celebrity Apprentice, branding is a big part of most of the projects and can be the sole reason for a team’s loss.
When developing your brand, you must assess what it is you promise to deliver. This includes the overall style of your business. Are you catering to type A personalities or to people who are more laid back and edgy?
It is important to define your own brand; if you don’t, then the reality is that someone else will define you. This causes a loss of control that many companies never return from. If you aren’t interested in fading behind the shadows of your competitors, it is important to take your branding strategy seriously. By raising your value from commodity to brand you are likely to get customers who are willing to pay more for your services.
The most important aspect of branding is what it does to the memory of your consumers. A brand that is fully developed will push your company to the front of your consumers’ minds and make you infinitely more identifiable. If they remember you, it is more likely that they become return customers. A loyal customer is a good customer and these are the customers that are going to be responsible for the bulk of your revenue over the long term. These customers not only come back for more, they take on the evangelist role and begin to attempt to convert their friends.
There are brands that we recognize instantly as household names. Pepsi and Coca Cola are major players in the soft drink industry, and we recognize them due to brilliant ad campaigns and recognizable logos and branding materials. These are two companies that have been around forever, and aren’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future because of the solid marketing strategies and brand building techniques they’ve employed over the years.
Apple is another big player when it comes to the branding world. They are currently one of the most popular and profitable companies in the world because they did what nobody else could; they made computing “cool” through their brilliant use of design and minimalism. Even their former CEO Steve Jobs was branded as a bit of a brilliant eccentric who wore the same outfit to work everyday – his trademark jeans and black turtleneck.
When you hear the words “Eat Fresh,” I am sure that Subway comes to mind. That is because they have successfully been the number one brand in the U.S. amongst sandwich chains. When you think sub, your mind instantly imagines Subway. That’s not to say that it’s the best sub in the world, but they’re certainly in the position they are because of their branding efforts.
When it comes to branding it starts and ends with your strategy. A cool logo or a catchy tagline gets you nowhere without the proper strategy to put it in front of the masses. Clever companies put their logo or tagline on anything and everything but utilizing companies like US Imprints to deliver their message on anything from beach balls to t-shirts.
Before you go crazy printing thousands of pieces of corporate schwag, just make sure that your logo and branding identity are closely related to the core values of your company and that they preach the message that you want heard. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go “Think Outside the Bun.”
Article contributed by Jenna Smith