Your brand is your corporate identity. And to understand branding, it is important to know what brands are.
We see them everywhere all the time. Brand names are in our wardrobes, our garage, our fridge, and on our desks. Why did we buy those brands, and how can you make people buy into your brand?
Consumers connect with the idea or image of a specific product or service by identifying the name, logo, slogan, or design of the company that owns the idea or image.
Branding is when that idea or image is marketed so that it is recognizable by more and more people, and identified with a certain service or product when there are many other companies offering the same service or product.
"In a very competitive world, in which the difference between products and services diminishes, branding becomes one of the most important differentiators between competing companies," said Werner Baumgartner, managing partner at White Oryx, based in Dubai.
"Branding done properly not only creates a presence in the mind of the consumer or customer, but also leads to a preference in the mind of responsive consumers/customers over other competing products that either consciously or subconsciously will influence the purchase decision in a positive way for the brand. Branding can also help to achieve a price premium if the branding is based on a premium product positioning," he added.
Branding helps build brand recognition and a good reputation - a set of standards the company should strive to maintain.
In recent decades, branding has become an important part of Internet commerce, as it allows companies to build their reputations as well as expand beyond the original product and service.
Branding helps drive marketing successes, even for companies who have no reputation. Big brands are always built around strategies that focus on customer trust and loyalty. Some of the biggest mistakes are made when companies, for various reasons, chip away at their products, hoping their customers won't notice. Customers always find out, eventually, and they don't like it when they do.
"Be honest and true to what your product really does. You may trick people into buying your product by creating amazing expectations but you will never get repurchased and get terrible word-of-mouth," said Simone Caprodossi, consumer insight senior manager at Procter and Gamble in the UAE.
Another branding must-do is: Be Simple.
"The best communication ideas are extremely easy to understand and can be visualized in an image and explained in very few words," said Caprodossi.
Many marketers fail to appreciate the economics of losing a customer. Several surveys have documented that it typically costs five times or more to replace the sales of a lost customer. It costs as much as 15 times more to replace the lost profits of a lost customer.
Most leadership teams choose "trustworthy" as the most important brand personality attribute when positioning their brands. Why? People need to trust the brands they use. They want to know what to expect. They don't want any surprises, at least not bad ones.
But before they buy your brand, people need to be talking about it. With tens of thousands of inventions conceived each year, turning an innovative new product into a consumer staple isn't easy. It requires creativity, ingenuity, and persistence to break into a market and convince consumers they need something that never existed before.
In order to make a new product something consumers can't live without, it needs to serve a purpose in your customer's life. Defining that purpose depends on your individual product's functionality.
Finding the perfect words to describe an innovative product through video or more traditional forms of branding can be time consuming. Make sure to allocate enough time before a product launch to allow for a thorough thought process, remembering that you have to build consumer understanding from nothing.
According to Caprodossi, speaking to the target market will help develop your brand to attract that market to buy your brand. "Talk to the right audience. Design your product with a target in mind and communicate to that target both in language and using the right communication channels," he said.
"Make sure your product is available and well distributed in stores while you invest in communication. Often great marketing ideas fail as shoppers don't find the advertised product in-store," he added.
Branding, at its best, transforms organizations so that they are capable of creating, nurturing and sustaining mutually profitable relationships with people.
© Zawya BusinessPulse 2013