Welcome to this post on Effective ways to brand your business successfully, via Afrokonnect. As a business owner, you will be finding ways on how to establish your business, differentiate it from your competitors and promote your business’s ideology?
The answer to all your problems is called Branding. Companies such as Coca-Cola and Nike don’t sell products contrary to what everyone thinks but they sell their ideologies and experiences to their customers;
They are familiar with the customers’ needs and expectations when making a purchase from their brand. So, they ensure that the customers’ expectations are fulfilled hence being able to control their purchasing experience.
What is a Brand?
Once we talk about a brand, it simply means identity. A brand is the identity that a company possesses which makes it stand out from its competitors. Businesses with a brand are tasked with only one goal, earning a space in the customers’ mind once making a purchase hence becoming their preferred choice.
Having a brand can also help in promoting your company’s ideology and vision. A brand can also entail the experience a customer has once he/she makes a purchase from your organization.
What is Branding?
As the name entails, Branding is the process of creating an identity for your business/organization. Branding involves many processes namely:
- Creating a Logo
- Having a tagline
- Visual design, Etc.
Branding can be found everywhere from billboards, magazines to flyers and commercial Ads. Companies with strong identity depend on their names to entice customers to pick and patronize their brand’s products over other,
For Example: Coca-Cola is one of the biggest brands worldwide and has been dishing out various products; this is all possible due to its recognizable logo which is a red artwork mixed with white.
This has enabled the company stand the test of time and its consistency has resulted in a worldwide patronage for all its products. Note: Branding and Marketing might look similar but are entirely different as branding is the existing identity of a business while marketing entails strategies to ensure that a business’s objectives is met.
Importance of Branding to a business
As I have said numerous times, branding helps your business by providing it with an identity and with the right marketing can entice customers to your brand’s products and influence their purchasing decisions. Here are some of the importance of branding to a business:
1) It can influence a customer’s purchasing decision:
Having a strong brand for your business is a very important asset as it most times influences the customers’ on what products they should purchase.
According to a survey conducted by Razorfish (2021), it stated that over 82% of the users it surveyed stated that they buy products from brands that have a great mission and over 67% of them also stated that by patronizing those brands – it makes them a better person.
2) Creates an identity for your business:
Having a brand and establishing it properly helps your business to grow at a tremendous rate because of one thing – it provides your business with an identity. Having an identity for your business is useful in various ways as it allows the customers’ to relate & connect with your brand aside from products and services that your business offers.
3) Helps people to remember your business:
Once your business has an identity, it is very easy for customers to have your brand in their thoughts when making a purchase and such incidents helps to differentiate your brand from your competitors.
4) Helps in the advertising and marketing of your brand:
Once your brand has an identity such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Adidas, Apple, Etc. Making of adverts to promote your business won’t be necessary as the brand’s identity is enough to market the brand without any additional fees which can be used to improve the brand’s productivity.
How to effectively brand your business
1) Identify your target audience:
You can’t create a business to be patronized by humans in all works of life; You must have a target audience so when branding your business, you must target your audience and ensure that your brand meets their expectation.
For example: If you are targeting a younger audience, you should be aware that your brand needs to be modern and bold in order to meet their expectations. Note: A lot of data will be needed to break into your target market.
2) Create goals for your brand:
Your brand can’t exist without a goal so ensure that you create goals that are feasible and establish strategies that will help your brand achieve its goals. Establishing feasible goals for your brand can help you (The business owner) to measure the success rate of your brand.
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3) Outline the benefits of your brand:
It is almost certain that your brand isn’t the only brand in your industry you are focusing so you have to outline certain traits that differentiate your brand from your other competitors. You have to strive hard to ensure that there is a peculiar characteristic or benefit of your brand that others don’t possess; this can go a long way in creating a very strong brand.
The peculiar benefit may range from a special product feature to an excellent customer service. You must also ensure that you portray to your audience how your brand offers value and how it is unique to others.
4) Create a brand logo and tagline:
This can only be done by a design firm or a creative graphic designer. The logo is your brand’s primary business card so you must ensure that you invest heavily into creating a memorable logo. Your tagline must also represent your business in all its marketing materials.
5) Conduct research to understand your customer’s expectation from your brand.
6) Research Competitor brands within your industry:
You must not research on your customers alone but on rival brands to understand how they are keeping their customers and how you can entice their customers to your brand’s ideology.
7) Improve your brand’s visibility on the internet:
According to a research by Junto-digital, it was discovered that over 75% of internet users don’t click past the first page when looking for a business in a particular industry. That’s where the majority of the audience comes from – so it important to improve your brand’s ranking in relevant search results to improve patronage.
Conclusion
As you can see from my above points, creating a successful brand isn’t something overwhelming or expensive. The major activities involved with branding includes: OBJECTIVES, APPEARANCE, VALUES, TONE, and IDENTITY.
For business owners with a slim budget, it is important to scale up your budget once your brand starts to grow and earn a reasonable income. Thanks for reading and we hope to see you another time on Afrokonnect.ng.
