What is a brand? And how important is Brand?

How Important is Branding to the Marketing Strategy for Your Company?

What is a brand? And how important is Brand? Our last article discussed why building your marketing strategy begins with excellent logo design. Following on from that, this second article looks at the importance of branding to your marketing strategy.

Building your brand is vital in getting your company out there and known to the public. It’s a word casually and commonly thrown around in marketing speak. But it’s worth taking a step back and taking a moment to define the term.

What is a brand?

Brand noun

A name, term, sign, symbol, design, or a combination of these. Which differentiates goods or services as belonging to one organization rather than another.  A brand not only identifies a company but elicits an emotional response from a potential customer. 

So while your logo is a visual representation of your company. Your brand goes one step further by creating an emotional and psychological response in the mind of a potential customer. Connecting them with your company. This psychological response comes not only from the product or service. That a customer buys directly but also the service they receive, your reputation and what kind of a company you’re perceived to be.

Great branding: A few examples

Starbucks has worked hard to create a brand identity. Which connects the company positively in the minds of millions of people all over the world. The Starbucks brand is young yet professional. One which offers rapid service but also a high-quality product. The company has worked hard in recent years to build an ethical image. Emphasizing that a large proportion of its coffee beans are Fairtrade. This perception is helped along by the green company colour and smiling female form on its logo.

Global business Nike has created a brand identity that is recognized everywhere from the high street in Britain. To the barrios of South America. Their simple logo and catchy slogan “Just Do It” contribute to their easily identifiable brand, but it’s also their incessant promotional work and sponsorship of sportspeople and sporting events that make Nike the number one brand that people think of when it comes to sport.

Google’s success as a search engine was so convincing that is it not only the world’s number one search provider but “to google” has practically become a verb in its own right, even if the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t recognise it. As Google’s services have grown its brand has developed to create a reputation for this company as cutting-edge technologically but with high usability for people of all technical abilities. The visual simplicity of Google’s services gives the company a great reputation for being cool, contemporary and uncomplicated.

Building brand loyalty for SMEs

Building a brand identity is vital for small and medium-sized businesses which require an edge in the highly competitive marketplace of the modern global economy. A successful brand not only identifies your product or service with your company but vitally, your brand inspires confidence in a customer convincing them that yours is the only or the best product. A successful brand gives your company credibility and reputation. As all businesses know, reputation is everything so it is vital that the brand identity you build is the right one. And finally, when a customer buys again from a brand they know and love, it confirms and concretes consumer loyalty, ensuring that person keeps on coming back.

To recap then, creating a brand identity for your company is vital for SMEs in:

• Convincing your customers that you are the best and  only company who can deliver
• Reinforcing your reputation and credibility
• Building up consumer loyalty

Choosing a brand strategist for your company

Marketing is a key part of your company’s growth strategy and it makes sense and it makes sense to choose a company or individual who can handle your marketing and branding needs and deliver results. Creating a brand sounds simple, but building one up takes time, thought and market insight. Choose a professional like Rak Design who can show you examples of previous branding work and explain the process. As your logo is a crucial element of your brand, read our article on Why Building Your Marketing Strategy Begins With Excellent Logo Design and look out for the next article in this series on corporate identity.