Why Branding and Identity are Important for Your Business
Back in the day, branding used to bring to mind the image of a traditionally dressed rancher ready to press a hot iron rod bearing his mark onto his cattle. The modern-day process of branding is not as painful. However, it follows the same basic process of marking something your own and letting it be identified as yours.
Identity normally refers to the papers or cards we carry in our wallets, showing who we are. In the world of business, identity is important because just like we deal with people, nobody really wants to associate with an unknown entity.
Consequently, it’s crucial that you brand your business in the right manner and give it a unique identity. Remember that even the biggest businesses turn to brand identity experts, and with good reason.
What is the Importance of Building Brand Identity?
You already know of various brands that have dominated different industries. They all follow one simple principle – create an original brand and stick by it come hail or storm. When you market your business using a certain identity, people will use it to recognize your business. This is how you gain eyeballs and become popular in your chosen market.
If you work with brand identity experts, you get an opportunity to build a strong foundation, which then gives your business the ability to sail to success.
What’s the Difference Between a Logo and a Brand?
Most people do not understand the difference between a logo and a brand. While they are closely related, a logo is essentially just a symbol that represents your business. A brand, on the other hand, is all about your character as a business; it’s about who you are.
A logo can be meaningless without a brand because it does not represent anything of significance on its own. However, a logo is crucial because it serves as a very important identifying factor and helps remind consumers of your products and services. Besides, a well-designed logo helps improve brand recognition, build trust, and differentiate your business from its competitors.
Brand identity encompasses all tangible elements that a business might use to portray itself in the desired manner. Beyond logos, it also extends to website design, digital marketing, print ads, radio ads, employee uniforms, the stationery you use, and more.
7 Benefits of Building a Strong Brand Identity
Creating a strong brand identity ensures that your target audience can recognize your brand with ease. When you have a well-defined brand identity, it guides you in making a variety of business-related decisions that deliver consistent experiences to your customers and all other stakeholders.
1. The Differentiating Factor
Brand identity gives your business the ability to develop a unique position and clearly distinguish itself from its competition. This differentiation not only helps you formulate the positioning of your business, but also helps you build a loyal customer base.
2. Create Awareness
Since your brand identity reflects in all your marketing material, it can work wonders in increasing awareness about your products or services. This additional exposure results in more probable customers finding out about your brand, and what follows is a boost in sales. Fortunately, there are different ways to increase brand awareness.
3. Build a Personality
Brand identity works in visually depicting the values that your business brings to the table, thereby giving you the ability to carve out a unique personality. By getting the identity right, you’re able to set your brand’s tone, which you may then use to evoke feelings in your target audience. What’s important is that you need to create an identity that effectively communicates your overall message and also promotes your goals.
4. Convert Prospective Customers to Loyal Customers
Your brand identity works as an extension of your brand across all mediums, be it a website, an online ad, a print ad, a billboard, or an ad on TV. A brand that its target audience views with credibility is typically better placed than its competition when it comes to turning brand impressions into loyal customers.
Bear in mind that it takes no more than five to seven impressions for a consumer to start recognizing your brand. With a strong brand identity, you get the means to start building long-term relationships from the word go. While your customers come back for more, they may also turn into brand ambassadors.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the cost of acquiring new customers is significantly higher than that of retaining existing ones. The result of creating a strong brand identity is an increase in repeat customers, and this is plain to see when you look at the bottom line. Besides, when your brand identity is effective in communicating your brand’s values, it can motivate your customers to support your business.
5. Get a Higher Lifetime Value
Lifetime value refers to the average revenue that you expect to generate through a customer over the course of your entire relationship.
Once you create a unique brand image, you lay the groundwork for building strong relationships with your target audience. If it feels that you share its values (or vice-versa), there’s a good chance that it will find itself attracted to your brand, choosing it over its competitors.
If you manage to keep the emotional connection going, there’s an increased possibility of building long-term relationships. When this happens, you may expect an increase in customer loyalty as well as higher lifetime value (LTV).
It’s easy for brands to be two-dimensional, owing to which many end up looking superficial. In today’s world, if you’re thinking about long-term success, you need to offer highly immersive experiences.
Remember that while people might buy your products or services, they’re actually spending money on your brand. Consequently, the brand identity you create should be in line with your mission and values at every stage.
6. Provide Consistency
Once you build a strong brand identity, you get the ability to remain consistent in all your marketing campaigns and material. Most branding experts opine that much of a brand’s marketing material should be consistent in design and style. Simply relying on just one font is something that may help further the cause. Consistency goes a long way in creating a brand that’s easy to recognize. The end result is usually your target audience recognizing your brand and its offerings even in a sea of competition.
7. Make Advertising More Effective
Anyone wondering why brand identity is important should know that it can help improve the results of advertising efforts by leaps and bounds. While it’s true that businesses rely heavily on advertising, ignoring branding is not the way to go. This is because the effects of advertising improve significantly when you work on developing a strong brand first.
Consider this – you want an advertising agency to create an ad campaign that provides a cohesive representation of what your business stands for, its identity, and its values. However, you have not taken the time or put in the required effort to create a strong brand. If this is the case, there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on opportunities that could otherwise come your way. Branding, after all, helps your target audience connect with your business in a way that advertisements cannot.
When your advertising campaigns become an extension of your branding, the unified package typically has the desired effect on its target audience.
The Effect of Brand Identity on Revenue
A strong brand identity results in increased brand awareness and recognition. This usually leads to word-of-mouth recommendations from people who’ve interacted with your brand. However, what happens if your brand does not deliver a memorable experience? In this case, the chances of your target audience referring your brand to others remain slim. While recommendations typically come with an increase in revenue, the reverse may hold true as well.
The brand identity you create can also have an effect on how you choose to price your products or services. Apple is a great example in case, given that it has used its strong brand identity to successfully maintain its high price points and sizable market share. While several mobile phone manufacturers are now at par with Apple when it comes to technology, people don’t mind paying more for Apple products mainly because of the brand identity it has managed to create.
Why is Brand Identity Important for Employees?
Looking at how important business image or identity is from an employee’s point of view gives you the ability to attract and retain the best talent. This is because branding provides great value behind the scenes as well.
Businesses that have strong branding find it easier to make their employees feel more involved and part of a team. Employees who work with strong brands often look at their employment as being more than just a job, and usually don’t mind going that extra mile to further the cause of their business.
While businesses need to attract new customers, the same should also hold true when it comes to hiring and retaining employees. Businesses may consider breathing life into their office spaces by taking their branding indoors, and they could also think about investing in branded merchandise for their employees.
If you manage to create a sense of unity and motivate your employees by turning to branding, you might not only see a boost in morale but also in overall productivity.
Recruitment and employee retention teams can reap the benefits of strong brand identity. This is mainly because people are attracted to, and prefer staying loyal to, businesses that have similar values. When this happens, you may expect to see a reduction in hiring and training costs.
Scores of employees choose to remain with employers who share similar values even if they can earn more money by working for competitors that don’t. Besides, there’s a good chance that someone might switch jobs if offered one by a business that has an excellent brand identity. In a similar vein, if your business has a strong brand identity, you may expect to attract and retain the best talent from your industry.
How to Create a Strong Brand Identity?
Once you create a strong identity, your business stands out from its competition, attracts its target audience, and grows organically. Getting to this stage requires coming up with a cohesive branding strategy that incorporates various elements such as your logo, colors, and voice. Overall, creating and maintaining a strong brand identity involves:
Carrying out an in-depth brand audit
Determining your unique value proposition and coming up with suitable messaging
Developing various creative elements to support your branding exercise
Implementing strategies to build a strong brand identity
Analyzing and refining your branding strategies
While it’s important to know how to create brand identity, you need to realize that brands tend to evolve over time based on the changing requirements of their target audiences. This is why businesses need to monitor their branding efforts regularly, and also prepare to make need-based adjustments.
Why Hire Brand Identity Experts
The benefit of involving professional branding and identity experts in the growth of your business is that it will stand on solid ground and be in a better position to compete well with others in the same realm. There are scores of businesses across industries, and since yours is not the only one, it is important to be unique and stand out in the crowd.
The best way to achieve desired goals is through effective branding, which can only come about when you decide to work with brand identity experts. Once you choose the right team, you can put your digital branding woes to rest and concentrate on what you do best.
CONCLUSION
If you want your business to turn into a household name, the kind of name consumers think about when they are interested in the goods and services you sell, you need to partner with a reputable brand identity agency. By doing this, you get access to branding and identity experts who help transform your ideas into a professional brand that will not only attract consumers but will keep them coming back for more.
Remember that business is all about what consumers think about you. With proper branding and identity measures set in place, there is no doubt that your target audience will view yours as a professional business.
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