Branding is a logo, colors, fonts. Branding is only for large companies. Branding is expensive. This is the top myths about branding that I have heard (and most likely voiced myself) every entrepreneur. Why these are really myths and why small businesses need branding, we tell you in this article brand strategy consulting services.
What is branding?
Branding is not just about which logo you will order for yourself or which corporate colors you will choose. Visual design is just the beginning.
Branding is the whole process of creating a brand. And the brand, in turn — is about what associations the business causes among customers. These are answers to the questions of who you are, how consumers understand your business and what experience they get from interacting with you. Or, as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said: “A brand is what they say about you when you are not in the room.”
How can this work? For example, there are several service stations in the city. But only one of them claims to work with Subaru, and uses the distinctive elements of this brand in its design. Where will Subaru owners go to repair and maintain their cars?
What does branding consist of?
Branding has internal and external elements. Internal ones help you understand in which direction to move when creating external ones. And external ones help customers identify the business among others in the same niche. Let’s look at what they include.
Internal elements
Business idea and values
What you are doing your business for. For example, you open an accounting company to help small businesses and remove the headache from taxes and reports from owners who have a million tasks and a limited resource.
Target audience
Who do you work for, who are your clients. For example, you open a store of healthy sweets for people who love desserts and can not deny themselves a candy, but at the same time want to take care of their health, look good and feel better.
The promise or positioning of the business
What you want to broadcast to the audience in order to stand out in the market and convey the value of your business. For example, you have a law firm and you are engaged in automobile disputes. Your task is to inform the audience that family, corporate or tax disputes are not for you. You are car lawyers and help only in disputes that have arisen on the road.
Business reputation
The difference between the promise of a business and what consumers get in fact. This is the very user experience of customers from interacting with you. For example, in one of the shoe stores they sell low-quality shoes under the guise of handmade shoes. When customers find out about this, associations with such a store become negative, because there was a fact of fraud. And even if the store no longer allows such situations, the trail of an unscrupulous seller will last for a long time. Or vice versa. You choose a window repairman, and several friends recommend the same company to you. This is already a positive reputation that works for the benefit of business.
Why do I need branding?
Why is all this work being carried out and so many elements are coming together? Branding has a lot of tasks that we have collected into 4 large groups. Branding helps business:
- Be holistic
Look everywhere in the same style. Communicate with consumers with one voice. Translate the same values at different stages of interaction. This makes it easier to work with advertising channels, because you will already have a foundation for the visual, for the texts, and for the meanings that you need to convey.
In addition, a holistic brand causes less doubts among potential customers on the way to purchase. Imagine that you need legal services. You found the “Ivan Ivanov Law Firm”on Google. We studied their website, remembered the name and logo. And when we came to them at the address indicated on the website, we saw on the sign “Pravo Law Company ” with a completely different logo.
What thoughts will immediately arise? Most likely, the “Ivan Ivanov Law Company” is no longer here. And when it turns out later that the company simply forgot to change the information on the site, it is unlikely that this will add confidence to it in your eyes. After all, you must agree, a company that first says one thing, and then another, looks doubtful.
- Be different and stand out
The English blog Marketing Donut published statistics that 80% of consumers agree to buy only 5 times. Imagine how much information passes through a person’s brain before he chooses where to buy. Therefore, it is very important for a business that a potential client remembers it.
One women’s clothing store used an interesting technique for this — it put a large pink car right in the trading floor, making it part of the visual style. There were many more similar stores nearby in the shopping center. But it was this one that the girls remembered and, even if they did not go right away, then they definitely wanted to come back to take a photo.
