If you are running or managing a newly-established business, you should focus on investing in your brand: time and money.
This doesn’t just apply to large companies: branding is one of the main elements that help a small or medium-sized business thrive in the long term.
Would you like to know why you should be investing in your brand? Read on as we reveal not one, but five excellent reasons for this.
1. It Helps Create a More Credible, Trusted, Professional Look
Branding is, first and foremost, what sets you apart from your competitors.
No matter what specific industry or niche you operate in, the chances are that the competition you are facing is fierce.
To beat your rivals and establish yourself as a reliable, convincing, and expert entity, you should work on creating your brand identity.
Think about it as your very own “digital business card” that is going to be displayed across all your channels – including your website, your social media accounts, your emails, and more.
Convey the look and feel of a solid, professional, knowledgeable brand, and customers will flock to you.
2. It Allows You to Build Authentic Connections and Relationships
Another essential aspect of investing in your brand is its ability to entice an emotional response in your audience.
Branding can also be seen as telling a story – your story, the story of your customers, and the story of you and them together.
To be effective, memorable, and persuasive, the storytelling that is borne out of your brand identity needs to include relatable facts, easily attainable goals, and unique values and messages.
A great way to create a real bond with your audience through branding is by writing a compelling “About Us” section on your website, for example.
Mission & Vision
Similarly, you might want to produce other documents such as a “brand manifesto”, or articulate what your brand mission and vision are.
Whatever you decide to do, keep in mind that it has to always be consistent across all your different channels, as well as true to your company and customers.
Consistency is key in branding, as it will act as a reinforcing element to keep telling your story in the same, effective, and coherent way regardless of which medium you are using.
To ensure consistency, remember to select and use the same color palette, font type, logo, and imagery style.
3. It Enables You to Cement Your Brand Strategy
Brand identity and brand strategy are, of course, not the same thing – but they are, nonetheless, strictly connected.
Let’s take a quick look at what a brand identity includes:
- Brand mission: where does your company aim to be five, ten, or twenty years from now?
- Brand vision: how is your company planning to change the world (or your customers, at least)?
- Brand tone of voice: how is your company going to communicate to its audience (are you going to be witty and informal, or professional and authoritative?).
- Brand visuals: which images, logo, colors, and fonts are you going to be consistently using to differentiate your company from the others? How is your audience going to visually tell your company apart and recognize it amongst its competitors?
To create a brand strategy, you are going to need to know the answers to all the questions above. This means, in turn, that you are going to need to create and curate a bulletproof brand identity to establish your future strategy – and steer your company towards success.
Essentially, a brand identity is the core of any brand strategy – which, in turn, helps you pave the way to a thriving future.
4. It Allows You to Set Your Own (Premium) Price
I’m sure you know the concept about people not buying actual products, but rather buying the brand they see?
What this means is that consumers don’t generally wake up one morning thinking: “I really, absolutely must buy that Peloton bike.” They more likely think something along the lines of: “Wow, that Peloton bike looks so cool. The people who use it look happy, fit, and healthy – they are clearly enjoying working out on their Peloton. They all live in awesome houses and have amazing lives. I want to be like them. I’m going to buy a Peloton!”
This line of reasoning – very simplified in our example, of course – is what ultimately convinces a consumer to pay a premium price for a product or service.
After all, you could get any old exercise bike on Amazon for less than $100, but does that also come with an all-inclusive-awesome-lifestyle? Nope – that’s what Peloton is for.
If you sell yourself – not your products – well and convincingly enough, then you really can aim to set any kind of price that you like. And if you’re good at it, you’ll see that people will come to you and buy your products even though they are much more expensive than your competitors’.
5. Investing In your Brand Reduces Your Marketing Costs
Once you have established a solid brand identity and have won the trust – and purchase – of a customer, it will be so much easier to keep selling more products or services in the future, both to the same customer and others.
The bottom line? You will be able to save heavily on marketing activities, because your product or service will, essentially, sell itself thanks to the rock-solid brand identity that you have built.
By knowing exactly what your customers like, want, and expect from you, you will be able to develop more targeted and successful marketing campaigns and strategies, which will both save you and make you more money.
Ready to Invest in Branding?
Investing in branding should be a no-brainer for any company, whether big or small.
Branding helps businesses establish their unique selling points, create meaningful connections with their customers, slash marketing costs, and command premium prices.
If you need any more help, inspiration, or advice on branding, make sure you contact our team today.
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