What Is Branding? Do You Know Why Branding Can Make Or Break Your Business?

Branding is everything you do that creates an impression of your business in the minds of others. Good branding is deliberate. When a professionally designed logo is created for you, it not only makes you more memorable in the minds of your customers, it “positions” you as being a certain kind of company with a specific benefit for your customers.

"The image lies behind the actions of every individual. It accounts for the growth of every cause."
— Kenneth Boulding; The Image, Knowledge in Life & Society

You put this “mark” on business cards, signs, brochures, web sites, pens – wherever... You may choose a very specific color scheme or typeface in all your materials. You might decide that a character or mascot is an effective way to build your brand.

Slogans and commercial jingles are forms of branding. It is not limited to visual materials, but to everything that helps people recall a person, business, or product. Some famous people are even considered brands. Michael Jordan, Cher, Tiger Woods, and Donald Trump all enjoy the status of “being the brand”. All these elements work together to tell people who you are and that you are different from others who do what you do.

Your potential clients learn a great deal about you from you looking at your brand.

Some branding happens unintentionally. A great example is the “Spam” brand. For many decades Spam was a name for a salty canned meat product produced by Hormel. Today “Spam” is synonymous with unwanted e-mail. No matter what Hormel may do legally to try and protect its brand, it has to contend with the ubiquitous negative association of its brand with a daily electronic annoyance.

This can also work for you. Think Kleenex. Think Nike.

	Stand Out From The Crowd Make Yourself Memorable You Are Unique Let Your Business Shine

Perhaps you have heard of the phrase “mind share”. When someone needs your services or products, where do you rank in that person’s memory? Does your name or the name of your business come quickly to mind?

If they go online or to the phone book to find you, will they recognize you instantly? Branding creates a “memory hook” for your customers to quickly recall you and your business as the ones to call. It is a shortcut. When shopping for athletic shoes, you don’t care about 4th quarter market performance. You’re not interested in how many retailers carry the product, or how many varieties of product there are. You just see that “swoosh”. You think, “Just Do It.”, you see Michael Jordan on the poster and off you go with that Nike feeling that you could do anything in your new cross trainers.

Branding Builds Trust
Trust Makes It Easier
To Decide To Buy

To build trust you must  establish a relationship over time. It’s impossible for most business owners to have a deep meaningful relationship with every customer for the life of their business. That’s where branding comes in.

It provides a shortcut to the most important factors to building a relationship - congruity and consistency.

When done properly, a logo identity and other branding pieces accurately represent some vital, core essence aspect of a business or product. If the true essence of the business is captured, people intuitively and subconsciously feel a “fit” that comes from the match.

They sense that the business, the people who represent it, and the claims and promises the business makes are in accord. Communication that authentically represents your business is congruity. This congruity builds trust. The opposite effect is a business that represents itself in one way and behaves in a totally different way from its claims. This disconnect destroys trust and repels business.

Consistency entails representing the same message over and over through time.  Smart marketers know that the relationship a customer builds with a brand happens on the installment plan.

The key is to keep as many components of the brand the same in all representations of the company or product. What happens to your opinion of a company when you get a business card with one logo and color scheme, then go to their website and see something completely different? It erodes trust. We decide that the business is inconsistent in its identity, so they will likely be inconsistent in meeting our needs as a customer.

Why is building a brand so important to growing your business? Branding is the fastest way to communicate authentically who you are and establish a relationship with clients by building trust over time.