Branding
What You Need to Know About Building a Personal Brand and Growing Your Small Business Using Social Media Marketing and Offline Guerrilla Tactics
Copyright 2020
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Table of Contents
Introduction
One meaning of the word branding is the action of marking something, usually cattle, with a hot iron. Ancient Egyptians were the first people to use branding to distinguish cattle from each other, making them less likely to be stolen. While this may seem irrelevant to the marketing-related branding we know of today, it's actually not that different. As time went on, branding became a way for businesses to distinguish themselves from each other in the eyes of consumers.
The simplest way to describe it is by looking at how each business creates a name and design that shows its uniqueness in this vast market. It's not hard to see why branding is a vital process in the lifespan of any business, especially when you see market behemoths like Apple and Google pouring a lot of money into that department.
Branding can be viewed as a promise that a company makes to the consumer, telling them the value or solution they get if they buy its products or use its services. Naturally, different brands cater to different audiences, which allows for a wide range of products and services to prosper. This also means that it's almost impossible for one brand to have it all, whether it's innovation, experience, high value, high quality, or many other brand-defining features.
Branding requires a proper strategy that allows you to contact your potential and existing customers by using the right messages and interactions. The platforms you use for advertising are important to form the right messages. This can translate to what's known as brand equity, allowing a more popular brand to charge more than other brands for a similar product.
The emotional attachment of consumers is a key element in providing value to a company, and since the marketing environment is constantly in a state of change, keeping up with your customers isn't a luxury. Whether you're selling sports apparel or electronics, finding a balance of quality and emotional attachment is essential for your brand to grow.
There is no shortage of branding techniques, but what makes this book different is its comprehensive approach aided by new and updated information to such a complex topic. The book was designed to help new business owners and marketers to not only understand the subject clearly but also to implement it with the least number of hiccups along the way. To ensure that branding can be properly incorporated into any marketing strategy, the latest trends and tools are considered.
Branding isn't just about changing or shaping how consumers perceive your brand, but also how the whole market interacts with it, increasing brand awareness and the overall value of the company. The best recognition a brand gets is when the logo becomes the brand's most recognized element. Whether the logo appears on a physical or digital publication, it should be powerful enough to make a strong impression on the audience the first time.
You'll be able to use branding to increase business value directly since it can establish a leveraged position in the market. This can be easily seen in investment opportunities, as investors will always prefer to go with a company with a favorable public image in the marketplace. As a brand, you should always be looking for growth opportunities, so cementing your position as an established brand in the industry will be very beneficial in the long run.
Good brands can spread between consumers like wildfire. It's not hard to see why brands like Apple are known by almost everyone in the world. Referral business entails new customers acting based on the familiarity and good impressions of other people; once a brand can be seen by the public as something they can trust, a surge of new customers is bound to happen. Once a brand has a favorable position in the industry, the company need not spend as much money on advertising as its competitors. Word of mouth can be an advantageous tool to increase the number of customers as the brand continues to grow. There is no better advertising than the one you don't have to do yourself.
Your employees are also affected by branding, which should help you improve the smoothness and efficiency of the company's operations. Since branding is directly intertwined with the core values of the company, employees who believe in the brand's message will be prouder and more productive because they'll actually feel that they're a part of something bigger than themselves. It's not uncommon for the most successful brands to send the right messages to their employees through various means to give them a sense of belonging in the company.
Customers, employees, shareholders, potential investors, and even distributors should all be on the same page when it comes to an understanding of the brand's message. This reputation is essential to the growth of any brand, ensuring that it has a lot of room to further its relationships with all the elements within the market. No one would want to work for a brand that doesn't represent their personal interests or values.
This book will guide you through the various steps of branding, in addition to explaining how these processes affect your business. Branding is a wide marketing topic, with no one definite strategy that can work for all companies. The book provides a comprehensive overview of the various elements involved in branding, in addition to specifications for implementing the proper strategies to reach the desired results.
PART ONE: Knowing Your Brand
Chapter One: Branding, and Why It's Important
The term "branding" is, unfortunately, used incorrectly in different cases. You might hear people using it when they're explaining logos, slogans, identity design, or even advertising. But you need to understand that this misconception is what makes a lot of businesses, especially small businesses, fail and stray from their purpose. Before I explain to you what branding is, you should first understand what branding isn't. Branding doesn't refer to your products, even though many people say a brand is product A vs. product B. Some people might tell you that a brand is an impression that your product makes, but that only works if you're in the business of selling impressions, and that's not what you're doing, is it? Many people associate brands with logos, and that's incorrect too. A logo is a great tool for any business, and it should be your symbol for the business, but again it's not the brand. So, I want you to read on and understand what branding really is and why you need it for your business.