Branding isn’t just for big businesses. It’a a promise to your cutomers. It’s what others think of you and what you think about yourself and your company. They’re many reasons to brand your business—to protect the identity of your business by ensuring the world knows who you are, for example; a restaurant serving upscale food in an elegant setting will clearly be able to identify themselves as part of this specific breed—but branding isn’t all about pretty packaging and memorable slogans like “Upscale Casual Dining.”
Brands are much more than that—snappy designs and witty one-liners can certainly help reinforce the image you’ve set up for yourself but they aren’t enough in themselves; they must also pay attention to details like color palette, font choice, and imagery to make sure those feelings of quality come through loud and clear every time someone interacts with them. So let’s make sure we’re on the same page when it comes down to it: branding is much more than just a logo; it’s much more than just catchy taglines or marketing slogans [or even Pinterest boards]…it’s everything.
Branding is more than a logo
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Branding is more than a logo. A brand is your company’s reputation and identity, made up of all the factors that customers associate with you.
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Your logo is part of your overall brand identity, but it’s not the whole story. Your branding strategy should outline how you want to be perceived by customers and prospects—and how different audiences will experience that perception in different ways.
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Logo design can be crucial to creating an effective brand, but it isn’t the only factor that makes up a strong visual identity system or helps build out a strong visual language across various touchpoints (including web design).
Branding is about what others think about you
Branding is about what others think about you. It’s the set of associations that people make with your company, product or service and your reputation as a brand. Branding is important because it helps create a unique identity for you and your business in the mind of the consumer, allowing you to stand out from other players in the market.
Here’s what branding does for you:
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It helps consumers find you more easily
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It creates consistency across all touchpoints so customers know what to expect from every interaction with your brand (online or offline)
Branding is about your market decisions
Branding is about the decisions you make about your market, your customers and your employees.
Branding is about your employees
So, you have a great brand. You have a beautiful logo and an engaging tagline. You’re using the right colors, fonts, and imagery on your website and in your ads. Now what?
Branding is about your employees. It’s really hard to get people excited about a business if they don’t feel as though they know or identify with its employees—or vice versa!
When I say “your employees are your brand ambassadors,” I mean it literally: people will always judge your company by their interactions with the people who work there. If someone has a good experience working with you (and by extension interacting with other team members), then that person will be more likely to recommend you—and talk about how great he or she thinks your company is!
Branding is about your customers’ experience
There is a lot of confusion around branding and it is easy to get caught up in the hype. Branding is not about your logo, your product or even your advertising.
It’s about the experience people have with you and how they talk about that experience when you are not in the room.
So let’s break it down:
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Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room. So if someone asks me of my thoughts on Apple, I might say something like “Apple makes beautiful products but they are overpriced and I hate their ads!” This would be an example of something that could be said about Apple’s brand (i.e., overpriced).
Branding is about consistency
Consistency is key to a strong brand. In addition to being consistent in the way your logo looks and feels, you also need to be consistent with what you say, how you say it and how it’s delivered. Consistency is about more than just the logo; it’s about your employees, customers and marketing efforts as well. It’s important that every outlet for public communication looks like it belongs under one umbrella–as if all these pieces were created by the same company (which they should be). And that doesn’t mean there can’t be unexpected twists here or there–just make sure they’re not jarring enough that they confuse customers or make them think they’re looking at someone else’s work.
Every company has a brand, though not all companies have thought through and crafted their brand
Every company has a brand, though not all companies have thought through and crafted their brand. In fact, most businesses don’t take the time to develop a cohesive brand message that reflects their values. This is unfortunate because brands are the foundation of your business. They determine what people think about you, how they will treat you and whether or not they choose to work with you in the future.
To build your brand effectively:
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Think about what others think about your company when it comes to:
• What your market decisions are like (do customers associate you with innovation?)
• Who works for/with you (are employees happy?)
• How customers experience working with/for you (do they feel empowered?)
Conclusion
In today’s environment, it is imperative to understand the importance of branding. A company can be successful without a brand, but it will be much more difficult and take much longer to achieve success. Conversely, a great brand can propel a company forward in the early stages of their existence. A great example of this is Apple Computer. Apple has always had a strong brand, which was especially important when they were introducing new products into an established market that were perceived as not being able to compete with the established brands
