Branding

Branding is what makes your business stand out in a crowded space.

Branding is a lot more than logos and colors, your brand is the entire identity of your business. Your brand is what gives your business personality.

When you think about the most well known companies out there, companies like Coke, Apple and Nike, you’d be forgiven for thinking they sell soda, computers and sneakers, respectively. But that’s not really the case, is it?

Coca cola sells happiness. Apple sells cool, and Nike sells victory.

That’s why these brands stand out. Because you’re not really buying cola or a laptop. You’re buying a feeling.

According to Jeff Bezos, “your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room”.

When it comes to your company’s brand, it pays to be unique. A great brand doesn’t need to cost you millions of dollars. What it does require is a lot of creativity and research, but it’s totally worth doing for the following reasons:

Reasons you should be branding.

Branding is often the deciding factor for why customers choose one company over another.

Humans by nature are uncomfortable with uncertainty. Not knowing enough about an outcome that we’re invested in creates anxiety. The more you have riding on any particular outcome, the greater the anxiety. The entire insurance industry is built on this.

One of the best ways to create certainty in the minds of your clients is through branding. Branding is your reputation. It’s the quality you provide, it’s your fair pricing, your customer service, your willingness to go the extra mile. It’s everything good and bad that comes to mind when a customer thinks about your brand. And when faced with uncertainty, it’s the strong brand that will prevail.

Branding makes your business more memorable.

Everywhere we look, we’re bombarded with constant marketing messages every single day. We ignore most of them because if we didn’t, we’d never get anything done. But we do remember some of them, don’t we? In fact, most of us have a few favorites that we share and watch over and over.

Which ones are those?

Are they the ones that made you laugh? Made you cry? Made you feel certain about an outcome?

To quote Maya Angelou:

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

What feelings, if any does your brand convey about your offerings? Does your brand convey a feeling of certainty? Are you competing with brands that do?

Being memorable helps your business build trust and loyalty

The key to any relationship is trust.

The key to trust is consistency. I trust the sun will rise tomorrow, I trust that in Yellowstone, Old Faithful will gush every 60-90 minutes, and I trust that cheesecake will be delicious. Why? Because I’ve never had a cheesecake that I didn’t love.

How do you build trust with a customer?

It’s not by just providing quality goods and services. There are many great local companies out there, doing that that that no one’s ever heard of. You build trust by going the extra mile and associating those those positive results with your brand.

Is your brand memorable?

Building trust and loyalty allows your business to stay ahead of competitors.

By doing the leg work and taking the time and energy to build a strong brand, you’re creating the marketing equivalent of a mighty castle on a hill, surround by a great moat. Solid branding puts you in a position from which it’s easy to success and hard for your competitors to dislodge you.

Are you competing against strong brands?

Advertising is expensive. And sending traffic to a website with weak branding is tantamount to throwing your money away because customers rarely fill out a form, place an order, make a call, or convert in any other way on the first visit. Without good branding to captivate and compel them to return, it’s very unlikely that customer will ever return.