To brand or not to brand?

Here’s a question I’ve been asked recently – ‘what happens if I don’t have a brand?’

Phew! It’s a great question, so here are just a few reasons to invest time, effort and resources in creating, developing and owning the management of your brand:

• Your brand is a shorthand for your business (what you sell – your bundle of products, services, attributes, benefits).
• Having a brand strategy clarifies who the brand is (personality) and what it stands for (purpose and values). It defines who the brand wants to attract and why, the value the business delivers to your target audience and what makes it meaningfully different (positioning and value proposition).
• Once this is clear, it’s important to develop branding that represents the business – this includes the visual elements that get recognised and remembered over time. For example, brand logo, colours, icons or symbols, imagery and style. And equally important is the brand voice – how the brand talks (and listens) to customers, employees, suppliers and stakeholders.
• With a clear understanding of your brand and branding, it gets easier to develop brand messaging that attracts customers, creates affinity, differentiates from competitors and helps your business stand out.
• Managing your brand well provides your framework for evolving new products and services, initiating changes (in response to inevitable change), staying in tune with the times and communicating consistently and staying true to what matters.

So, what happens if you don’t have a brand:

• You lose the ability to take control of how your business is represented and how it communicates. Although you can’t control how people respond or their perceptions – you can influence, take initiatives, inform and build relationships.
• If you don’t take ownership and develop your brand, others will step in and do it for you. Competitors and customers will define the position of your business in the market – and you may not like it.
• Without a brand to build, any investment in promotions is wasted, because it’s not contributing to creating recognition of a key business asset.
• Without a brand that is recognised and trusted, it’s hard to charge a premium for services and products.
• And it’s hard to create brand loyalty and repeat purchases.
• Great brands make more money over time.
• Even greater brands align with their audience to fulfil a social purpose and change for good.

So, my answer to the question is ‘why wouldn’t you want to build a brand for your business?’

This is a quick summary, so please do let me know what I’ve missed…

#brand #branding #brandstrategy