Branding 101: What Is Branding?

Are you looking for a perfect answer to the common question, “What Is Branding?” You need to understand branding because it is a very important aspect of business and marketing. A good understanding of branding will help you to know how to brand your business and as a result, your visibility will increase.

In addition, it will help boost awareness of the products you sell or services you offer. Before answering the question, “what is branding?”, it is important to understand that, without a product or service to sell, there’s nothing to brand.

Therefore, we shall proceed to understand the term, “Product.” That’s what we’ll talk about next. Let’s give that a shot.

Defining Product In Branding

What is a product? In Branding, what is branded are called products. Without products, there’s nothing to brand and therefore, branding will not exist.

Going by the definition of Kotler & Keller (2015)

“A product is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a want or need, including physical goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas”

In other words, a product can be anything from a range of services to physical products for sale.

Hence, examples of products in branding will include barbing, courses, car washing and even laundry, food, a toothbrush, a book, water, and so on. In simple terms, a product is any service or physical item that can be offered for sale.

Understanding your product is very important in branding. If you can package the needs of people properly, you can target and sell products to them in a unique fashion.

For example, water is a free resource for humanity. But, it’s now a product all because people have packaged it, commercialised it, and offered it to meet the needs of people.

Today, water is sold in sachets, glasses and plastic bottles.

Therefore, having understood what a product is, our example of water is vital to what we’ll talk about next. Keep reading.

Product Differentiation

Knowing that water is the same everywhere. It’s a transparent liquid, right? Hence, companies who package water for sale need to convince people to purchase their own bottled water or their sachet water instead of another out there.

How do you think they’ll successfully do this?

It is by creating a Brand.

Right now, let’s proceed to examine what a brand is.

What Is A Brand?

According to the American Marketing Association,

“A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers”

In broader terms, a brand is a set of values, beliefs, and attitudes that define who you are as a company, product, or organization. Brands are often associated with logos, colours, slogans, and other visual elements. It is to distinguish you from competitors and the competition.

However, brands also exist beyond these things. They can be found in the way employees behave, the way customers interact with your business and even the way your competitors do business.

Have you now grasped what a brand is? Okay, next, we’ll take you on a journey to discover what branding is in detail.

Branding Defined

According to Oberlo,

“Branding is the process of creating a strong, positive perception of a company, its products or services in the customer’s mind by combining such elements as logo, design, mission statement, and a consistent theme throughout all marketing communications.”

Branding is a very vital marketing strategy. It is done by creating a unique identity for a company, product, service, or organisation.

It involves thinking about how people will perceive your business, products, services, or organization.

Furthermore, banding uses all of the information gathered from the target audience or unique buyer persona, to develop a strategy for communicating those perceptions to others.

Right now, we would talk about the importance of branding for your company or business.

Importance Of Branding

Think of a business with no uniqueness, acceptance or recognition, would you buy such a product?

The true answer is: No.

That’s where the importance of branding comes to the fore. Branding your business, or products helps you position yourself for visibility, awareness and patronage.

Statistics state that 77% of consumers buy from brands that share the same values as they do.

This shows how important branding is to the progress and success of your business.

At this point, we’d proceed to itemize and discuss some importance of branding.

Top 5 Importances Of Branding

Recognition & Distinction

Branding helps to improve recognition, visibility and distinction. Good branding is why a consumer or customer will be able to pinpoint your uniqueness, values and characteristics over that of another company or competitor.

This begins with your logo, brand name, values and other important elements in branding you need to pay attention to.

Strong Company Culture

Branding goes beyond visibility and creating awareness. What do people say about you? For example, do you have a culture of always receiving and welcoming customers into your organization in a unique way? Over time, customers quickly identify your brand for such good culture.

When customers talk about your brand, it will one of the reasons why other potential customers would want to do business with you.

Consequently, you too wouldn’t want to disappoint them and lose customers. You surely want people to experience what you’ve projected and sustained about your brand. That way, you’d maintain a strong company culture.

Customer Loyalty

Naturally, maintaining a strong company culture leads to customer loyalty. If you’re loyal to your customers, the return you’d get is their trust.

In addition, that’s a strong way to market yourself. Bring customers on board to share their wonderful business experiences with you. It’ll bring in more customers who would buy your products, and return to buy another day. That will continue cyclically, as long as you don’t compromise your branding values.

Attracts High-Paying Clients

The one reason why some clients will reach out to you is the uniqueness of your brand when compared to existing competitors.

High-paying clients want the best hand in their business. These kinds of clients want products in bulk and are looking for the best place to meet their demands.

Therefore, from your visual designs to the culture and value of your brand projects, you are either going to be attracting high-paying clients or sending them off to your competitors.

Get the best branding services from BendingWaters today, if you want your brand to attract clients – high-paying clients.

Sales Generation

Putting all of these together, and branding your business – product or service – properly, will help to increase your sales. Branding has been proven over the years of adoption, to have helped to generate sales and improve the ROI of many businesses and companies.

In case you’ve not been benefitting from the goodies branding has brought to many businesses, you should get started today.

Finally, in this article, we want to examine three vital things to take note of when preparing to launch your brand or brand your product or service.

Brand Strategy

A brand strategy is a plan that helps you define your brand and its purpose. It also enables you to determine who your customers are, what they value, and what they expect from your brand.

Brand Identity

To develop a brand identity, you need to think about how your company will be perceived by others. You should consider things such as your logo, colours, fonts, taglines, slogans, and other visual elements.

Brand Marketing

Within your brand strategy, come up with a plan that outlines how your business will use its brand to communicate with customers. It needs to include everything from creating a logo to developing a website.

In conclusion, branding is an important aspect of business and marketing. If you want to grow your small business, increase your visibility and awareness, and attract high-paying clients, you need to brand your business.

All you need is the best branding services to position your brand for excellence in the presence of overwhelming competition. Contact BendingWaters today for your branding needs and you’re one step closer to achieving the success you desire for your business or company.