What Is Branding?

Morgan Branding Guide to What Is Branding & Brand Strategy

Branding is what your business needs to break through the clutter and grab your ideal customer’s attention. It’s what transforms first-time buyers into lifetime customers and turns an indifferent audience into brand evangelists. In this article, we’re going to explore what branding is and how your business can reap its benefits in the most effective way. If you want your business to succeed, branding is non-negotiable: It’s what you need to stand out, make an impact and take it to the next level.

What Is Branding in Simple Terms?

Branding is a complex marketing practice that not only requires skill, but also an understanding of your company’s values. Some people think branding has to do with logos and slogans like Nike’s “Just do it.” But there are so many more parts of the process. Branding is your business persona, yes it is a logo, a slogan, colour and typeface used on your marketing materials and a lot more besides.

Here are just a few components that makeup branding:

• Logo
• Colours used
• Typeface used
• Ethos
• Mission statement
• Identity
• Tone of voice
• Images used
• much more!

A successful branding process should be able to convey your brand values, your businesses brand identity and be instantly recognisable as your business.

To put it another way, think about your favourite brand of clothing – got one? Now think about what it is that makes them stand out for you, is it the quality of their clothing, the price, their ethos perhaps or even is it their commitment to a cause such as employee rights or another cause? This is all part of a brand’s identity, it encompasses everything that a business does, stands for and hopes to achieve.

Why Is Branding so Important?

Your brand is one of the most important aspects of your business. It’s what sets you apart from other companies, and it’s how people identify with your company. Your branding should be consistent across all platforms-social media, website content, advertisements, etc.-to ensure that customers know what to expect when they’re interacting with you.

Branding can change how people perceive your brand, it can drive new business, increase brand value. A unique brand can have a huge impact on your bottom line by giving you a competitive advantage over your rivals. In eCommerce, where new companies (and therefore, new competitors) are springing up every day, an established brand can be an invaluable asset.

An international, multi-product business will be much more challenging and resource-heavy than a local business. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, so its cost can wildly differ from case to case.

Creating a strong brand strategy can create a tribe of loyal customers without even noticing it happening, humans are very visual beings and respond first to how something looks to us and decide before even reading anything or hearing anything if it appeals to us. So investment in brand identity as part of your marketing strategies is a must, but it also must align with the rest of your visual identity and brand personality.

Creating a Brand Identity

The goal of a brand is to make the brand memorable and appealing to the consumer. Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Ferrari, Apple and Facebook are examples of firms with brand equity. If done right, a brand results in an increase in sales not only for the specific product being sold but also for other products sold by the same company. A good brand engenders trust in the consumer and, after having a good experience with one product, the consumer is more likely to try another product related to the same brand.

As branding goes beyond just how something looks and leans into how people feel about your brand and how it resonates with them creating a brand is not as easy as you might think. For instance, we all know the Apple logo, but do you buy Apple products based on just their logo? Or do you base it on their entire brand – what they stand for, why they make their products and the quality of the item?

Apple is a perfect example of branding done right, why? Well, most people know that there are superior products on the market and know that the iPhone for example is not the best or most up to date when it comes to its features, yet will buy the product over any of its competitors. This in part all comes down to its branding and how the company is perceived.

When creating your brand identity you need to consider the following aspects:

• How do you want your products/services to be perceived?
• What is your target audience/customer base?
• What is your brand voice going to be (i:e ethical stances or quality products etc).

Once you know what you want your brand to stand for, what it is going to look like in terms of colour choices and graphics your brand experience is more than halfway there! There is so much more to creating a brand identity that is needs a whole blog post of its own so we won’t go into too much depth with it here!

Conclusion

A brand is the perceived image of the product you sell, and branding is the strategy to create that image. We hope this article helped you have a clearer idea of what branding means. If you have any comments or suggestions to improve the article, please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments below. 

Need further advice? Get in touch with us here at Morgan Branding we have a fully dedicated team ready to help you and your business get ahead online. You can get in touch via our contact page or get social with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn! 

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