Why do you even need a brand?

If your product or service is unknown, it doesn’t really matter if it’s any good or not. Even if it’s the best product in the world, it just won't sell. Look at it from the point of view of a consumer. Imagine you’re shopping in the supermarket when you come across two new types of cake. You haven’t tried either but they both look pretty good and you’re sure your guests, friends and family would like it. The only problem is that you have to choose between a brand you’re familiar with, Brand A and Product X. Now, despite the fact that you haven’t done a taste test and that the brand is undoubtedly more expensive, most people would go for Brand A anyway, especially if they have people coming over. And, as you can see from that example, price is not the deciding factor when you have a brand that people know and trust. This of course means you can charge more for a brand than you can for a product without the fear of losing sales. Also, having a brand makes it easier for you to introduce new products to your line. By leveraging your brand’s credibility and popularity, you’re not forced into doing an expensive launch campaign like an unknown Product X would have to do every time.

So, instead of simply launching a product, why not develop a brand around the product and launch that? The difference here is that your brand is the perception consumers have about your business and branding is anything that promotes that perception such your brand logo, typeface, content, communication and so on. Through these things, you can define who you are, what you stand for and let customers know what they can expect when they do business with you. In fact, on this point, your brand promise is vitally important and if you get potential customers excited about something you say you’re going to do, you’d better deliver on it. And, one of the ways to achieve this is through consistency. Customers want the same good experience they had with your brand the first time – every time. That’s why your Starbucks Vanilla Latte tastes the same in Seattle as it does in Seoul and as it does in Sydney.

So, it’s pretty obvious that being a brand carries with it many benefits and these are wide ranging from better brand recognition to customers becoming loyal to your brand, heightened credibility and the ease with which you can add a new product to your brand’s portfolio. Let’s break that down and look at things in a little more detail:

Brand recognition is essential in building your presence. Ultimately it’s a measure of how well customers can remember your brand and what you sell. For example, there are many colas on the market but in terms of brand recognition. Coca-Cola stands head and shoulders above the rest. Even if you don’t drink Coca-Cola, You’ll know its distinctive, red colour, bottle shape and handwriting style logo. What’s more, they consistently use these elements to reinforce their brand regardless of what activity they’re undertaking. So, whether their brand elements are being used to sponsor the Olympics or the World Cup, are being used on an electronic sign or even stuck to the side of a blimp, they are always the same. It’s highly unlikely that you could confuse Coca-Cola with any of the brands that try to emulate it.

Building customer loyalty relies on your customers having a good experience with your brand. It’s of great benefit to you though as it stands to reason that customers who are loyal to your brand are going to buy from you more often, will sign up to your social sites and will be more willing to try any new products that you bring into your range. Loyal customers will also provide good ‘word of mouth’ which remains one of the most effective yet difficult to harness marketing tactics in the world.

Your brand needs credibility to stand any chance of challenging against competitors but there’s no quick fix and you’ll need to use a number of tactics to achieve it. You see, you never fully know what levels of proof people require to believe in your brand. For some, your advertising and content will be enough to convince them. For others, nothing short of a full, in person presentation, with slideshow, product demo and enough time for questions will do. Unless they’re buying in the millions from you, these are not the customers you want to spend your time and money chasing.

Regarding easily introducing new products to your brand’s portfolio, you can leverage on your brand’s existing equity to create excitement around anything new from you. Current customers will take an interest and people who don’t currently buy from you may be attracted to your brand by the new offering. If we go back to our example of Coca-Cola, they rode on the coattails of their existing product to introduce Cherry Coke, Vanilla Coke, Coke Zero and all the variants that went on from there.

How to Create a Brand?

When you’re looking to take your first steps towards becoming a brand, you need to do a lot of research. First of all you’ll need to investigate the market and see how and where your business fits into it. You’ll also need to see what your competitors are up to but where you really need to do a deep dive in your research is when getting information on your potential customers. You need to know everything about these people and what makes them tick. What motivates them? What influences their buying decisions? The trick here is that once we get to know who we are targeting inside out, we can start to build a personality around your brand that will resonate with them. Then, we can tailor messages that are designed to engage with them and make them open to doing business with you.

Now, your brand needs to be launched and for that, it’s best to use a multi-pronged approach for your marketing, at first anyway. Later on, you can figure out what’s working and what isn’t and rearrange your strategy to make it more effective. Right now though, to give your brand a fighting chance it’s best to spread with marketing across a number of channels.

Ready to get stated?

At Branding IQ, we can build your brand from the floor up or refresh one you already have and provide you with content that will generate a loyal following and an inbound marketing plan that will boost your sales from warm leads. So, if you’d like to see how this could be the answer you’ve been looking for, get in touch at brandingiq.rocks.