Branding

I am in love with this brand. That’s my favorite brand. I am glad this brand is opening its stores here. I miss purchasing from that brand.

Wow, great shoes, which brand? Hey, nice dress. Is that from Zara? That’s a unique watch model, which brand did you purchase it from?

All of us encounter such questions in our day to day lives, don’t we? So what makes us feel so connected with these products? What does it really imply? Are we talking about their businesses and products or are we relating it to the pleasant experiences we have had with the brand in the past? It is definitely the brand image and experiences that we all connect to.

So what is a brand?

A brand is an identity created by a particular company. And customers buy the products from a brand basis an individual’s perception of that particular brand. So, a brand is a result of who you are, what you want to be and what customers perceive you to be. Your brand is what makes you unique and stand out amongst all the others. Hence, it is important to build a strong and effective branding strategy that comprises all the brand elements.

Why is branding important?

Branding is a process of choosing the right mediums to create your brand and market that image to the right audience. You need to identify an image for your brand that can help you differentiate yourself in the competitive market. When you choose the right branding strategy, it helps you leave a particular image in the consumer’s mind. And basis this image, the consumers will either connect with your brand or like your brand.

A brand is an outlook of its brand name, logo, tagline, and design it chooses to relate with. The right brand strategy and communication channels will rightly help you communicate who you are, what you want to be, what you offer to the right audience. When creating a branding strategy, your communication has to be clear and concise, thus eradicating any kind of ambiguity your audience would otherwise have with your brand. So, branding is important for your marketing campaigns. Let’s talk about all the brand elements that are necessary for building a brand:

Brand logo

People tend to directly connect with your brand and build a perception of it. Creating the right brand logo is a must, for it is placed everywhere. It is a visual representation of your brand. Your logo has to clearly communicate what your brand is. It is important to choose the right colors for your brand. We have also seen that some logos have a powerful symbolic association linked to people’s memory. For example, customers can directly identify with logos of brands like McDonald’s, Coca Cola, Burger King, etc.

Brand message

What you communicate to your audience also makes a great impact on the customers. Your brand needs to have a voice and brand message must communicate the brand values to its audience. Brand messaging either inspires, motivates, convinces, persuades or discourages the customers to buy the product.  For example, Nike’s “Just do it”, Subway’s “Eat Fresh”; Levis’s “Quality never goes out of style”.

Brand tone

Brand’s tone helps deliver the brand’s message quality. It articulates a brand’s personality and set of values. The brand’s tone can be authentic, quirky, playful, motivational, sad, etc. The brand’s tone needs to be consistent in every message communicated by the brand. For example, Dove attempts to inspire and empower relationships with its customers. Its brand tone is empowering and uplifting.  On the other hand, Coca-Cola uses a positive and friendly brand tone. It always emphasizes on evoking happiness.

Brand position

The place you want to own in your target customer’s mind is what defines how you want to position your brand. You can also compare your positioning to other competitors and then discover if you want to be identified in a similar way. For example, BMW positions itself as a luxury car maker whereas Porsche positions itself as a sports car. 

One can also focus on customer experience to position a brand. For example, when Starbucks came, it wanted to make the whole experience of buying coffee a pleasant one.

Brand channels

A brand uses marketing channels to communicate and deliver its message. The kind of channel you choose for delivering your message also has a great impact on your brand’s identity. A brand can either choose to issue a press release, launch a campaign or use social media. A brand can also prefer advertising through television, magazines or newspapers. If a brand wants to communicate business goals, it will opt for more formal mediums like a press conference with business media. And if a brand wants to announce its next lifestyle product, it will resort to an announcement through an event.

Points for branding professionals to keep in mind

Branding Strategy is very crucial while building a brand. It can either make a brand or break a brand. Good branding can earn a good reputation. For instance, Ola’s #AbChalega campaign was featured on BBC because of its creative branding strategy.  Hence, branding professionals must be very careful in the process of branding. 

Below are a few important pointers that a branding professional must remember:

Clear thought process

One must have a clear refined thought process when building a brand. It is important to coincide your brand identity, brand message, brand positioning and brand channels with each other.

Clear communication

As a branding professional, you need to be clear with your communication. Using the right words and the right tone is very critical to building a brand’s image. For example, one cannot say the brand has invested in a business. A brand does not invest. It is the company or people in a company that invests in a business.

Clear method

A brand is a resemblance of continuous effort by everyone involved in the process. Since there are many people involved in the process of branding, it is essential to have a system in place to manage all the brand-related expectations in terms of products, services, design elements, etc. A smooth liaison between different departments is very effective for creating a brand.

Consistency

As they say ‘You can see results, only when you are consistent’. And this is indeed true even here. Maintaining consistency in how you use your logo, style of the content, brand messaging or tone is another important aspect of a good branding strategy.

If you are about to just start your business, it is essential to set the right brand identity of your company. And if you are already an established brand, then it is important to maintain the same image. There are various branding companies in India that can help your brand to establish a trusting relationship with your customers and develops recognition.

It augments the brand’s credibility. As per a survey, 65% of people feel connected to a brand since the brand makes them feel cared for and 64% of customers are brand loyal because they share the brand’s values. Hence, it is essential to have the right branding strategy to build a brand. 

A company thrives only when it has been branded in the right manner. The power of branding plays a crucial step in any business. Without strategic branding, we would not be able to differentiate a Starbucks from a Cafe Coffee Day. They would all be generic cafes in the eyes of customers.

The brand of a company can be its name, colour palette, slogan, tagline, visual identity, and most importantly, its logo. Studies have even shown that a consistent colour palette increases brand recognition by 80%. So, companies can create a brand identity by just using the same colour palette.

Elements of Branding 

It is important to have a strong branding strategy that will help guide your brand towards the direction of success. Here are a few elements of branding that must be taken into consideration while you plan your branding strategy. 

1. Define your brand

One of the first things that you must do is define what your brand stands for. The way you brand your company will create brand recognition, confidence, and trust. If you convey what your brand delivers, then customers will come to you with certain expectations. As a company, it becomes your duty to fulfill these expectations of your customers. 

When you define your brand, you make a promise to your customers. You can use slogans and taglines to convey these brand-defining messages. Take the example of Coca-Cola. When we see any visuals from the brand, we know exactly what their beverages are. We immediately remember the taste and feel of their products. The company has done a good job in defining its brand as the “real thing”. People still prefer to have Coca-Cola over a Pepsi because it delivers the customers’ expectations from the beverage. Their tagline “Taste the Feeling” still resonates with customers due to the power of branding. 

2. Identify your target audience

In order to formulate an effective branding strategy, you must identify your target audience. Knowing your target audience will not only help you create the right kind of content for your brand, but it will also help in effectively reaching customers who too may be interested in your product or service. 

A well-defined target audience will help you identify your customers’ demands. For example, if you are running a cosmetic brand, then knowing the current needs of the market can help you expand your business. If customers are looking for cruelty-free or vegan cosmetic products, then you can initiate a new product category that meets the needs of the customers. This way, you can increase your profits and at the same time, brand yourself as a company that engages in ethical product practices. 

3. Stand out from your competitors

Yet another important role of branding is knowing what differentiates your company from your competitors. You will need to ask yourself questions such as, “Which of my products and services are better than my competitors’?” or “What is my brand’s USP?” 

When you offer a product or service that is “branded” and well-known, then you can charge more for the said commodity. This is why companies such as Coca-Cola price their beverages at a higher price than other generic beverage companies. It is because there is a demand for Coca-Cola that stands out amongst its competitors. 

This demand is created due to the trust that grows amongst customers. They keep coming back because they already know the taste, feel, and experience of the beverage. Having a quality product or service is needed in order to stand out in the market. 

Importance of Branding 

1. Creates loyalty

Brand loyalty is created in the minds of customers because of good branding. With consistent branding, loyal customers become the local spokesperson for your company. If your company ever faces difficult times, these customers will support you by spreading positive messages about your establishment. They will bring in new customers and help increase the overall brand identity of your business. 

2. Clarifies brand identity and creates focus 

Another power of branding is that it helps position your company to win. Your company’s brand identity becomes like your statement of purpose because it describes who you are and what you promise to provide to your customers. Anything that does not align with your brand identity can be discarded or repositioned. This brand identity helps you and your organization stay on target and not move in circles. 

3. Branding will guide advertising and marketing

If you don’t have a well-defined brand identity, it will be almost impossible for you to know what to say to your customers. Branding helps companies recognize the language, tone, voice, and personality associated with the company. Without these elements, you may be advertising to no one in particular and seeing what works. But the problem is that marketing and advertising company is not cheap. Big budgeted firms shell out lakhs and crores of rupees on ads with no clear brand strategy or emotional trigger. This is hands down one of the biggest damages that companies face. 

With the power of branding, you can reach out to specific, niche customers who will be interested in your product or service. Put in the effort to understand your customers and their emotions. Use that to guide every single marketing strategy from thereon. The return on investment will show sooner than later. 

4. A compelling brand attracts top talent

Today’s job market is highly competitive. Several mid-size firms post job openings and receive very few or no applicants. Existing employees in these firms have to work twice as hard in order to achieve organizational goals. 

But there are often a few companies that never have any issues in finding the right candidates for job positions. These are well branded and highly credible companies in the market that everyone wants to be a part of. These companies always “win” and every applicant wants to be a part of a company that is reputed and is known for achieving big goals. Applicants will always be attracted to companies that do good work and look good on the resume. 

If you actively participate in branding your company as a highly reputable firm, then you will never face any issues in acquiring the best talents. Highly experienced and skilled applicants will flock towards your direction and help you grow your business. 

In Conclusion 

Now that you have understood the power of branding and the benefits of branding, you must understand that branding is more than just a marketing practice. It is a procedure that requires attention and discipline. You will have to give equal parts importance to leadership, planning, direction, communication, etc., in order to create a perfect branding strategy. So reach out to a branding company in India like ourselves and make the best of your business. 

The business world keeps on advancing year after year, so does the manner in which companies need to market themselves to stand out among the competition.

A company is merely a company without a strong brand value. You wouldn’t sustain for long in this era unless you build a powerful image for your company in the marketplace.

Why Branding?

Economic and technological development will continue to level up the competition in the market, it will become increasingly difficult and risky to depend on products and services only for a profitable business. That’s when branding comes in. To stand out in the market, businesses need to build a strong brand. 

Branding is a combination of the features that define a business. Along With a catchy name, attractive logo, and color schemes, there is a lot more that plays a major role while building a strong brand for your company.

The story that you have written for your brand, the language that is used for different social media platforms – even your captions matter, the product packaging, tone of the brand, website, and the list goes on. Every aspect plays a role in building a strong brand.

Customers today don’t just purchase a product, they expect an experience. Conducting surveys is an old school practice now to find out what your target audience wants. Companies today involve the customer in their product developments. 

This is a smart move of demonstration of letting them join your inventive procedure to engage them. Moreover, this methodology makes you look progressively dependable, trustworthy, and authentic.

There’s a difference between Branding and Marketing

Have you at any point pondered the contrast between branding and marketing? Yes everyone does, but you are not alone with this confusion. While the two are without a doubt associated, there are minute differences between the two. 

As an entrepreneur, it is essential that you understand branding and marketing both in extraordinary detail, with the goal that you can successfully use them together. The following is a more critical gander at the contrasts among branding and marketing.

Branding is the strategy you follow to meet your marketing goals.

Marketing is the process or the tools and ways a company uses to deliver the message of their brand.

Branding defines who you are and what your company is about. While marketing is the process of creating awareness about your brand and increasing credibility in the competitive marketplace. 

Marketing is the practice of getting people engaged with your business and branding is something that keeps them coming back to you.

Effective branding makes marketing easier for your company. Moreover, branding cannot stand alone. Branding without marketing doesn’t work for any business.

Latest Branding trends of 2020

1. Create your story

How, when and why did this company start?

Your audience wants to know your story. A story with facts, not fiction. 

Branding is not just about the logo of your company or the products and services you offer with great packaging. Storytelling is a part of branding. Invest some time in learning how to share your story. About the adventurous lifestyle, adversity your company has faced and aim in creating human connection by adding some emotional touch.

2. Be Bold!

Be bold while building brand guidelines or a strategy for your company. Take the risk with your image. People will remember the brands that stand out in the market for their boldness. It stays in their mind for a long time. This can be executed by using strong language, powerful artwork, or even bold colors. Break the norms and don’t be afraid to take a chance. 

Take the example of The Rolling Stone – An American monthly magazine about popular culture. This Brand is known well for the strong language they use and powerful artwork.   

 3. Brand Influencer 

Have you ever followed a brand or made a purchase because a well-known personality you admire has endorsed a product or service of that brand?

May be you started following Manyavar when Virat Kohli became the brand ambassador. 

Influencer marketing is no longer a newbie in this era. Every other brand uses influencers to reach out to a greater audience. It is one of the best practices to increase your followers, gain popularity and boost your sales.

Influencer Marketing is a form of word-of-mouth marketing. People tend to get influenced while making a decision for their purchase when someone else refers to them about it. 

A well-known influencer can help you increase your brand awareness, traffic, boost sales and engagement by leveraging their social media power. 

4. Immersive Technology

The impact of technology on branding is changing the market like never before. Companies now focus on giving a human-like experience to their customers with the help of Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence analyses consumer behavior and provides businesses with insights into their competitors, current performance, and resource allocation. Marketers can leverage these insights to create a better connection with their audience in the future and improve their performance.

Chatbots are the most commonly used AI platform by companies today. The introduction of chatbots has improved customer engagement. People can chat in real-time with 24*7 customer support.

5. Creative Customer Experiences

Customers start expecting more from you when your brand stands out from the rest. Branding is not just about selling, logo, and image. Creating an experience for the customers is a major role for your company. You can deliver the expected experience only if you understand the needs and behavior of your customers. 

Though your products may be great, your profits won’t last unless you nail your customer service. And this will let you stand different from your competitors.

Design the experience you want to give your customers by keeping in mind that they are your long term need. Give them a reason to come back.     

Importance of Branding in Marketing

1. Stand Apart from your Competitors 

The market out there is crowded. The competition for every company to stand out has reached the next level. Every business wants to present itself as a unique niche field. To beat your competitors, do everything that they do and differentiate yourself at the same time by filling up the void they leave.

For example – Differentiate your brand in terms of pricing, by focusing on a narrow niche. It can be innovation, convenience or by delivering extraordinary services. 

But sometimes take the chance and be quirky, weird, and bold. That’s what makes you different from your competitors.

People tend to connect better with brands that have a face. Show your audience YOU.

2. Products get recognized 

When your audience has a good relationship with your brand it gets easier to promote products.

Branding helps your company to build up an image in the marketplace and in addition,  boost the sales. Your brand becomes recognizable once you bring it to your audience’s notice. 

Moreover, arranging different occasions to announce the newly launched product can add a cherry to your cake. Advertising will lead the way. Different gadget companies like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Oneplus have established themselves because of the outstanding branding. 

Fundamentally, the more you bring your service in front of the crowd, the higher the odds of your service being known by the partners. There is a more prominent significance of brand recognition.

3. Generates Increased Revenue

  A brand is a valuable asset. Branding is an investment for companies.

Apart from the sales of products and services you offer, people perceive your brand because of your brand equity. Let’s take the global brand Apple for example. They have great leveraging power and through effective branding, they have gained huge brand equity. They rule the market at this time. They have the power to increase the prices of their products three times and their audience will still pay for it. 

Once your brand is positioned as a leader in the industry and marketplace, with great brand equity and customer loyalty, you will see a huge increase in market share. 

4. Branding increases employee productivity

People are willing to work for you when your brand is well established. This frees your company up to the top ability and furnishes you with the most qualified and skillful workers for your organization. When you have the most ideally equipped individuals for the activity, your organization’s profitability level will also increase.

Your employees need to stay motivated to work efficiently. When the brand is well-known and has the potential to fulfill the employee’s requirement, it will result in the growth of the business.   

5. Branding helps you connect with your customers emotionally

Creating strong emotions helps in building bonds between the customer and the business, which is definitely one of the best practices for building a brand. Brand intimacy results in the growth of the business to a great extent. 

The best practices to build a strong connection with the customers are listed below:

• Try fulfilling the needs of your customers beyond their expectations.
• Help customers become better and smarter through their products and services. As mentioned earlier, give them a reason to come back. 
• Give your customers a fun and gratifying experience. Get your customers to indulge in your brand.
• Create an identity and image for your brand that customers can resonate with, so they may feel connected with you. 
• Keep your messages simple and clear. A message that is relatable and can be easily understood.  

Always remember Branding is an actio.. Empower your business with branding and in the process, if you feel lost, always get help from professional branding managements and get your business back to life. 

There are various well-known brands in the market right now. What makes these brands memorable to their audience, how are these huge brands made? The journey from being an organization to a brand name isn’t a simple one. Brands are not made overnight. It is your clients who hold the ability to turn your products or services into a hot-selling brand! The key is communication. Your communication sets a precedent for your brand. So if brand communication is clear and hits the targeted audience in the correct place, you will achieve your organizational goals.

What is Brand Communication?

Brand Communication is one of the central activities of brand communication strategy and management and it is essential to have a healthy and purposeful discussion with partners. It is one of the promotional strategies utilized by brands to influence the clients’ opinions about the brand, the organization in general, and about the products and services that they offer. 

It is the act of conveying and delivering significant and focused messages relating to the brand, to its partners. This includes the blended utilization of traditional marketing channels, for example, newspapers and TV with the key strategy of social media. For instance, content promoting, blogs, and digital marketing. These are the four R’s of brand communication. 

Here are the effective tips of brand communication you must know and follow: 

1. Be real, genuine & honest

You need not bother about the celebrity brand ambassadors to advertise your brand if your clients become your brand advocates. If they’re the ones discussing your brand, imparting to their peers and spreading positive verbal exposure for your brand, who needs any other person? They are genuine and authentic specialists in brand promotion. In this way, it is your role to guarantee that all brand communication from your end is additionally certifiable and spontaneous. Try not to utilize automated answers nor react like a bot. A humanized, compassionate and true brand voice constructs a quick association with the crowd which is based on trust. Try not to cause your reactions to appear to be forced. Handle them with a human touch, consistently.

2. Don’t oversell

The minute a brand begins overselling, it begins to lose the trust of their audience. Keeping your marketing procedures subtle enough that they fit in splendidly, is the thing that you should watch out for. Brands will, in general, go over the edge with their ideas and neglect to put quality over quantity.

3. Be authentic

Since you’re a brand, not just an individual, being credible and dependable consistently pays off. Overcoming the gap between the brand and the customer comes to a great extent with trust and confidence. Authentic communication is consistently in demand. Individuals love to talk one-on-one and what could be better for your consumers than to interact with their loved brand! It is essential to depict that the eyes and ears of your brand are constantly open for feedback, just as for communication. The tone of your content shouldn’t sound unexpected and direct, but should rather have space for comfort and great relationship building.

4. Create engaging content

In case you’re making content for your audience, the least you can do is make your content engaging and interactive. Educational content is most often received by the audience without any feelings. Effective brand communication is powerful when communication occurs on both sides. Along these lines, making connections with content allows your customers to enjoy what you bring to the table.

A standard flow of such content expands commitment and gives the customers a reason to return. With only a little bit of tweaking here and there, one can transform their customary content into engaging and shareable content. By following this technique effectively, a brand may likewise land up with clients who become brand advocates.

5. Always focus on reliability

Individuals love simple and relatable content. The relatable content is amazingly sound for boosting up brand communication. The picture of the brand turns out to be all the more inviting, open and approachable. What’s more, a little attention ain’t that bad. Content other than straightforward brand promotions do incredibly well for such strategies.

6. Create a persona

After you have effectively figured out how to keep up a picture and make a personality, remember to keep it easygoing and have a ton of fun. Try not to restrict yourself to a specific sort of content. Be flexible and brimming with surprises because buyers love that! Adhering to a specific sort of content limits the huge pool of chances and material that you can work upon.

7. Create Conversions

At the point when a customer shares a positive experience, go further than saying ‘Thank you’. Give open-finished reactions and strike discussions that help your brand discover its humanized voice. Individuals love it when a brand takes the time to discuss with them – one on one. Regardless of whether it’s an enjoyment and fun-loving discussion, individuals will recall your brand more for how you affected them. When you arrive at that stature of having common ongoing and positive discussions with your clients, soon they will be the ones doing your advertising for you.

8. Expand your brand on multiple channels

In the world of social media, networking is most probably the best component that the web brings to the table. Sufficient for us, we can work with it in numerous manners. effective brand communication can be reinforced significantly if a brand is available on numerous channels. Brand communication is made viable just when you are dynamic in all the channels you are on. Social media life is like a blessing, particularly for any brand searching for effective communication.

9. Make content for customer fun 

In some cases, you should simply kick your feet up and unwind. The dull nature of the brand communication procedure, where you need to post continuously, can accidentally disturb the nature of the content and become upsetting and exhausting for the beneficiaries. The fun object can come in numerous ways, you should simply analyze and see what works directly for your brand.

10. Leverage customer-generated content 

Give close consideration to what your clients are sharing or saying in comments or forums about your brand. When you recognize what they need, act snappy, and give them what they need. Utilizing the client-created content isn’t as difficult as it appears. Share customer content and change your products/services/communication to give your audience precisely what they want. 

With the arrival of the digital age, the major focus is not on how to showcase your products to the buyer, but on how to advertise your item with your customers! With these 10 tips of collective promoting, an effective brand communication system will do some amazing things by focusing on its customers viably and effectively.

Focus on the following points: 

• If you need your audience anticipating your blog posts, you have to offer them something that delights them and adds some value to their lives. This will improve their trust in you since they will see that you aren’t simply determined to promote your services and products.
• Don’t be hesitant to attempt new ideas and ensure your posts spread different topics other than simply your organization or industry. Sharing extraordinary posts by other industry pioneers can be valuable as well. Fluctuate your content to ensure individuals don’t lose interest. 
• Helping individuals in social networks is one approach to make a presence in social media. If your brand is known for offering truly supportive guidance, it will give your brand connections everywhere. At the point when you focus around helping individuals as opposed to driving traffic, your business makes certain to develop all the more quickly.

Everybody is aware of the brand Coca Cola, they follow an amazing communication strategy which makes them the no. 1 brand.

Let us read in detail about the communication strategy which Coca Cola follows:

Coca-Cola was established by John Styth Pemberton in 1886. He may not have thought at the time, that Coca-Cola would be the moneymaker it is today. The organization is the world’s driving maker of beverages, working in more than 200 nations. The organization delivers over 500 beverage brands, with over 1.06 billion beverages consumed each day, throughout the world.

Coca-Cola has consistently invested energy towards keeping up a good client to organization relationship. They need their brand and products to be a part of people’s daily lives and they use social media life to make feelings and sentiments of association towards clients.

At present, the communication that is followed by the brand includes advertising, interactive/internet advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations,  sponsorship promotions and personal selling. Marketing is very important for this organization because its client base is so wide. So to do this effectively and bring aboard new clients, the organization utilizes influential advertising techniques. The slogans utilized in the Coca-Cola promotions are exceptionally appealing and relatable, they make a strong and permanent impact on the viewers.

The medium of advertising: 

Coca-Cola utilizes advertising to create a mindful approach towards their products,  among potential clients. They have various mediums of advertising that are shown the world over.

• Print media
• Point of purchase advertising
• Television commercial ads
• Outdoor advertising

The organization utilizes snappy or “cheerful” slogans to hit the target audience emotionally and urge them to purchase the product.

A final word

Responding immediately to client assistance questions is a part of your responsibility towards them. You should be on the same page as your clients and be prepared to help them consistently. Rather than simply producing official statements to promote your organization, communicate with your clients, and provide them with the best brand experience. Building brand value is an exceptionally long procedure and brand communication plays an essential role in it. 

We are a brand communication company, So let’s talk.