What is Branding

Branding is the process of creating a strong, positive perception of your company and its product in your customer’s mind.

 

What Is Branding?

3 points that should be noted in this definition of product branding are:

• Branding is to be unique. A unique branding results in the product being more recognized and differentiated in the pool of competition.
• To give an identity.
• Assigning characteristics and properties within and outside an offering
• Your voice is big, you not only need to be good at getting found – you need to have a differentiator.

Once a brand finds that differentiator, it becomes their calling card. It’s how everyone recognizes them and the first thing everyone judges them by. So it needs to be consistent. No matter which channels your customers choose to interact with your brand – your website, blog, email, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever tomorrow’s technology may bring – they should all demonstrate the unique experience that your brand represents.

Creating Your Brand Strategy

A brand strategy is a long-term plan for developing a successful brand presence in order to achieve specific goals.

First, let’s clear up the biggest misconception about brand strategy:

Your brand is not your product, your logo, your website, or your name. In truth, your brand is far more encompassing — it defines the visceral and frequently intangible aspects of your company identity.

A well thought out and defined brand identity should be the backbone of any successful company, particularly for online enterprises that typically lack the physical brand components of brick-and-mortar stores. It’s that hard-to-pin-down feeling that separates powerhouse and mediocre brands from each other, and a big part of that hard-to-pin-down feeling comes from brand consistency.

The Importance of Brand Consistency

Here are some of the basic elements that should remain the same for all your online content, whether it’s your website, email, social media, or some other platform, so that your audience can have the same experience, no matter where they go like we see in world’s best names.

LOGO
A logo is arguably the most memorable piece of a brand’s collateral. Even if someone can’t quite recall your brand name, they’re likely to remember that visual cue associated with it. For example, when you think of Nike, can you see the swish? If you hear McDonald’s, does the image of those Golden Arches flood into your mind? What about Michelin? We know you remember the tire man!

COLORS
You know branding is done well when seeing certain colours immediately calls to mind a particular brand – even when those brands’ names are nowhere nearby. A good colour scheme can go a long way.

TONE AND VOICE
What does your brand sound like? Are you irreverent? Silly? Professional? Academic? All of the above? This may actually fluctuate somewhat between channels. Emails may be more formal, and social media may be more casual. That’s totally fine!

IMAGES
The images you share, regardless of the platform, should take into account all of the above points. This means they should reflect the tone your brand has set out for itself, follow a colour palette and include your brand’s logo. It’s simply not enough to haphazardly add images to your content and hope they look good. Instead, you should be methodical in your selection to guarantee that your visual identity is just as strong as your written one. Would cartoons or graphics suit your brand, or are you better off using high-quality photos?

DOMAIN NAMES
This one seems simple right? But you’d be surprised how often domain name selection can go wrong. Your domain name should be well aligned with the brand itself, and it needs to be easy for your customers to find. Great domain names are intuitive, they’re short and they help your customer to get access to the information about you they’re looking for immediately.

Remember, in spite of all your best efforts as a company to shape your brand identity to fit a certain mould, you need to understand how your audience and customers perceive your brand will ultimately determine how successful your efforts are. At the end of the day, it’s consumers that build brands- not companies

Taking some extra time to really concentrate on the quality of the material you’re sending out will go a long way to make sure that potential customers have meaningful interactions with it.

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