Intro to Branding
This is your guide to branding.
Here you will learn what branding is, why it is beneficial, and how to be prepared to establish a brand identity for your business.
What is branding?
Branding is a vital part of business growth. A brand helps create a unique identity by defining and establishing visual and non-visual elements that help a business differentiate amongst competitors, helping them stand out and make a memorable impression.
Branding enables businesses to engage with their target audience by creating an emotional connection through a variety of brand elements, such as a logo. Each element of a brand helps a business establish easier recognition, customer loyalty, increased interest, and a desired perception.
94% of consumers affirm that a logo holds high importance in fostering brand recognition.
75% of consumers judge a company’s credibility based on its logo design.
60% of customers avoid companies with unattractive logos.
59% of consumers prefer purchasing products from brands they can easily identify.
EVERY BUSINESS STARTS SOMEWHERE!
Why brand my business?
Every business starts somewhere. Successful businesses learn overtime the importance of establishing a strategic brand identity that targets consumers, represents their products and values, is sustainably recognizable, and has memorability. With the ability for bigger businesses to consistently invest in marketing, it can be intimidating for a small business owner to believe there is any ability to compete with these well-known and beloved brands. But don’t forget, successful businesses had to start somewhere!
Every business, no matter what size, has the potential to find success! What does success look like to you? Below are some potential benefits of establishing your brand:
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It’s important to become memorable in the short-term, but modern brand strategies help to create sustainable recognition for the long-term as well.
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A well-executed brand identity creates consumer interest and communicates trust – trust that your service/products are quality.
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With trust and recognition, customers are more likely to becomes faithful and loyal customers, despite your what competitors have to offer.
Growth Benefits
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It is no secret that appealing products on the shelf are more likely to be purchased than others. Businesses that invest in brand value are 4x more likely to have an impact on their bottom-line versus those that don’t and are 50% more likely to make a significant impact on short-term metrics.
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With the help of a brand guideline, businesses not only save time and money, but are more likely to improve sales and key performance indicators thanks to their consistency of asset usage.
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The stronger and more influential a business's brand recognition, the lower the level of sensitivity customers have towards their products/services.
Essentially, branding allows businesses to set reasonable prices when their products/services are more desirable.
Financial Benefits
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One of the biggest reasons businesses fail is due to a lack of uniqueness and personality. By investing in a clear identity, they support the health and long-term well-being of their business, highlighting what makes their business better than others.
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A solid brand can provide business owner's peace of mind knowing that their business is not just surviving, it is thriving!
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As a business owner, having a clear identity builds pride, ownership, excitement, and can even open opportunities to network.
Personal Benefits
Branding helps prevent business failure
Businesses fail when they either lack uniqueness or fail to socialize their uniqueness. Businesses that offer services too similar to others, especially in highly saturated markets, will not meet consumer demand. The result of this can be devasting. Not only could this leave potential clients with the wrong impression, but it can force owners to lower costs and most likely ends with complete business closure. This may seem easily avoidable, but it can be difficult to overcome when limited by cost/resources.
Branding helps highlight a business’s uniqueness and personality, but it is up to the owner(s) to identify what makes them more desirable than other businesses. Bottom line, business owners seeking out help with their brand identity should always be able to answer one question:
Why do consumers want what I have to offer over my competitors, and is my uniqueness clear to potential clients?
Before jumping into a brand project, if this question can’t be answered, it may be time to re-evaluate the business purpose and/or marketing strategies.
Do you know Apple’s story?
Apple’s first year was not an immediate success, but they showed ground-breaking appeal through their innovative design by providing the world with a new approach to personal technology - the world’s first color-technology computer. Steve Jobs hired designer Rob Janoff in 1977 to re-brand Apple with a better and cleaner representation of the product they had to offer. This rebrand turned the tides and was pivotal to the growth of Apple, proving that consumers are attracted to unique brands that represent unique products.
Brand Identity
Visual Identity
VS
The separation of brand identity and visual identity is a vital concept that sets the foundation for intentional design.
Brand Identity
A brand identity is the holistic perception your consumers have of your business. Essentially, your brand is the culture of who you are, what you do, and how you appear; your brand is a representation of how your products, services, and perception make your consumers feel.
Brand Story
Brand Name
Services/Products
Tone of Voice
Visual Identity
Social Presence
Visual Identity
Founded on the brand identity, the visual identity is the physical representation of your brand and expresses your business’s personality through logos, colors, fonts, and other visual.
Logo
Colors
Typography
Icons/Graphics
Print Materials
Social Appearance
Web/App Design
The logo is at the core of the brand because it is the result of all things brand identity and visual identity.