Brand development: Comprehension before Progress

Branding is one of the most important things to any business, no matter how big or small it is, no matter what retail or B2B it is.

What is “branding”?

With more than 20 years of working in the marketing fields, founder and president of LogoYes.com – the first website for DIY logo design in the world, John Williams said understanding the importance of the term “branding” will help you build a brand successfully.

In a simple word, branding is a commitment of you to customers. It shows what they can expect from products and services you supply and it differs you from other competitors. Brand origins from 3 questions including “Who are you?”, “Who do you want to be?”, and “How will you be in people’s eyes?”

Do you dare to be unique and creative in your field? Are you an experienced and reliable person? Do your products follow the rules “high price, high quality”, or “low price but meaningful”? You cannot choose both, you cannot supply everything either. Who you are based on what the target customers want and need from you.

A brand basis is a logo. The logo of a business needs to include the website, packages to advertising materials to convey the brand messages.

Branding strategy brings in big advantages for businesses in competitive markets.

Branding strategy and brand value

Branding strategy is to communicate and convey the brand messages with 5 questions consisting of how, what, where, when, to whom? Where you advertise is a part of the branding strategy. The distribution channel is also a part of this strategy. Hence, Visual or verbal communication is also part of the strategy.

Branding consistently and strategically will create a strong brand with a higher value. The added value of a brand’s products and services results in a higher price in comparison with that of similar products but no brand. A typical example is soft drinks and soda. Coca-Cola has built a high-value brand strongly, hence, their products have cost more and customers pay for that.

The actually added value to brand equity often comes in the form of an acknowledged quality or emotional bond. Nike, for instance, associates their products with top sports stars, and their customers always love the products because they support athletes. Nike’s shoes sell well not only because of its functions.

Define yourself

Defining a brand is like a long journey to explore yourself. It is full of difficulties, time-consuming, and uncomfortable. It requires you to answer some questions below:

What is the mission of the business?
What is the mission of the business?
What do customers and potential customers think about the business?
What qualities does the business need?

Do the research yourself. Find out the needs, habits, and wants of your current and potential customers. Stop depending on what you think about customers’ desire. Understand what customers really want.

Understand what customers really want.

Defining brand and branding are complicated, so you need to take advantage of professional opinions from SMEs consultation of non-profit organizations or centers of SMEs development.

After defining the brand, how to advertise it to the world? Here are some simple but tried-and-trusted tips:

Create a great logo, and place it everywhere.
Rewrite a brand message. What is your brand message? Every staff needs to understand the typical features of their brand.
Integrate your brand. Expand every aspect of your brand from how to answer the phone, what you and your staff wear to the signature in the email.
Create a "voice" for your company that can properly reflect your brand. Vitally, this voice should be shown in all papers and images in all materials directly or virtually. Is your brand customer-friendly? Is it charming? Let’s build a tagline (a type of slogan or short, memorable, and vivid phrase that summarizes your company or a product). It also shows the nature of your brand.
Design forms and create brand standards for marketing materials. You should use colors, logo position, a thorough perspective, and sense. Don’t make it complicated but unified.
Be honest with your brand. Customers will never come back or recommend your brand if you cannot fulfill your commitment.
Be unified. It relates to everything above and is the biggest note. If you cannot do it, every effort in branding is failing.

by Ngọc Diệp

* Source: Doanh Nhân Sài Gòn