What is Branding and How it Can Benefit Your Business

Branding focuses on creating a unique identity for your business. It aims to create a positive perception of your business and an emotional connection between your customers and your brand. It also promotes customer loyalty and helps your business grow. Let’s explore a few familiar brand examples to understand how branding can benefit your business.

Creating a distinct identity for a business

A business identity is an integral part of branding your business. It’s the way customers and the public perceive your business. It combines words, colors, and taglines to help your company stand out from its competitors. The correct identity can make your business stand out and maintain its personality.

Developing a distinct identity for your business begins with identifying your brand’s voice. It includes verbal and visual elements, as well as audience research. Your voice should combine your audience and your products, and your message should be clear to them. You’ll also want to be consistent with your branding efforts, as consumers will look for consistency and brand recognition.

Creating a positive perception of a company

Branding is the process of creating a positive image of a company. The advertising messages a company delivers and the people around them affect people’s perception of a brand. Personal experiences and feedback also play an essential role. In branding, a company should make sure to listen to the perceptions of all of its customers.

A positive brand perception makes customers more confident to purchase products and services from the company. It also makes other businesses want to partner with the brand. Brand perception programs should aim to build brand value and equity, which is the company’s extra value from its name. The more positive a brand is perceived, the more loyal customers will be.

Companies should measure customer satisfaction and train their employees to address customer concerns. In addition, they should try to make customers feel valued and respected. After all, it is easier to create a positive perception than to correct a negative one. A company should strive to be honest in all its communications, both in general and advertising. In addition, it should ensure its products do what they say they do, and its customer service departments can help customers if they aren’t satisfied.

Creating an emotional connection with customers

A brand can emotionally connect with its customers using multiple innovative methods. These methods include advertising, frontline consumer contact, and company-sponsored events. Companies that successfully connect with consumers can see enormous payoffs. For example, a central bank introduced a credit card specifically for Millennials and saw a 70% increase in Millennial credit card use. Another household cleaner company converted market share losses into double-digit growth. And an apparel retailer reoriented itself to its most emotional customer segments and accelerated same-store sales growth.

Identifying emotional motivators for a brand can be challenging. In many cases, customers are unaware of why they purchase a product or service. Furthermore, brand emotional responses may vary depending on the product, the brand, the touchpoint, and the customer’s position in the decision-making process.

Developing an emotional connection strategy can require a strong commitment from management and deep customer insights. It’s not the job of the marketing team to hoard this knowledge. Instead, it should be shared with other functions to ensure success. The goal is to make emotional connections a core part of the company’s strategy and to use the emotional connection to create alignment. Flourishers created a scorecard that identifies a retailer’s emotional drivers.

Emotional branding is a powerful marketing technique that helps companies build relationships with customers. This strategy uses relatable storytelling to humanize a brand and make it feel like an extension of the consumer. As a result, customers will be more likely to purchase a product or service if it creates an emotional bond with them.