Branding

From Entrepedia: The Entrepreneurship Wiki

Branding stands as an integral part of any marketing campaign, whether that of a major corporation or a small startup venture. Research has shown that there is a direct connection between the success of a branding campaign and our emotional investment in that brand. Writing for Small Business Branding, Vera Raposo points out that "strong brand names produce favorable emotions. Favorable emotions most definitely play an important role in a customer’s buying decision. It pays to increase brand recognition." ^[1]

Of course, the large corporations will have significantly more money and resources to dedicate to the development, evolution, and management of an effective brand, whereas SME's will need to focus much more on creativity and hard-work to ensure that their brand generates more familiarity in the market. There are certain key aspects of a brand that make it really catch people's eye, and more importantly, stick in their minds later on. A brand is far, far more than just a logo, a slogan, and a slick name, although these are, of course, crucial. A brand needs to project a unified appearance, and more than that, a sense of your business's personality. Think about some of the top brands on the market today, and ask yourself what kind of personality they are trying to project: goofy? Fun-loving? Determined and intense? Warm and welcoming? It's certain that whatever personality you sense was deliberately crafted and carried throughout every aspect of the brand development.

When it comes to developing your own brand, you should have a clear sense of the personality that you want to convey; whether you want people to see your business as comfortable and cozy, or hi-tech and imposing, or fun and quirky. However, just coming up with a personality for your brand to convey isn't going to turn your logo into a household name; there is still a lot of work that goes into creating a successful brand.

Contents 1 The Branding Process 2 Brand Design Philosophy 3 Word of Mouth 4 Branding During a Recession 5 References

The Branding Process

• Market research – knowledge of your customers and a business platform to match
• Positioning – differentiating yourself from what's already being offered in a given field will help your brand stand out in customer's minds while the brand itself is still being developed
• Defining your brand – you will need to develop a brand identity, which is how you want customers and potential customers to perceive your brand. This will reflect on your business; not only involves your product or service, but your values and promises as well
• Outlining your brand – this includes the name of the brand, the logo, and a catchy tagline to go along with them. Remember to ensure that every aspect of the brand is unified: the colours, text font, company logo, tagline, etc. should all have been given a great deal of consideration so that they are all in line with the definition that you have set out for your brand previously.
• Launching the brand – setting out a marketing plan, objectives, and then getting your brand out there. Once you have launched your brand you will need to ensure that it is used with consistency: in your e-mails, newsletters, and every aspect of your PR and marketing campaign. This will help you communicate the brand image and the values that it represents to your clients, suppliers, and most especially your customers and potential customers^[2]
• Managing your brand – working to build and nurture a brand that people come to know and trust can take time and effort. Brand management involves applying specific marketing techniques to the development or growth of a brand in order to increase the brand equity. You should set some time aside each month to review your brand's effectiveness, as well as your general marketing strategy, so that you can quickly identify whether your brand is successful or not, and catch a change from a successful brand to an unsuccessful one before it happens.
• Evolution – you'll never want to completely change your brand, but things will always need to evolve to remain fresh and new while at the same time still offering customers reliability and the promises they trust in. Ask yourself whether your current brand is achieving the goals and objectives that you had initially aimed for, and if not, what you can do to better your brand performance. Raposo suggests that business owners ask themselves, "Is each marketing tools resulting in a return on investment? Does each message strengthen branding?"^[2]

There are different branding types that work differently for different businesses. You will need to figure out which best suits your venture and what you are offering customers.

You can do all of this yourself, or look into a company like Brandsavvy to help you through each of these processes. Brandsavvy is a UK company that offers businesses help taking a mere logo and developing it into a recognisable brand.

Brand Design Philosophy

David Law, of (SpeckDesign), identifies two key questions to ask when developing your brand design philosophy:

• What is the meaning of the brand to the customer?
• How does the design match the brand?

On the other hand, Jay Lipe, CEO of Emerge Marketing and blogger at Smart Marketing set out a tentative list of ten terms to become familiar with in regards to

branding:

• Value Proposition
• Brand Equity
• Differentiation
• Brand Attributes
• Key Messages
• Targeting
• Segmentation
• Core values
• Integrated Marketing Communications
• Metrics

To this list, Chris Brown of Brand and Market.com suggests that relevancy be added, noting that "if [your brand] doesn’t matter to the target market, no amount of clever messaging and strategic promotional delivery will help" ^[4] These terms and questions offer points from which you can grow a deliberate and well informed brand design, one that will help to increase your sales significantly and attract more loyal customers. They will also help your brand evolve as the situation around your business changes: as BrandSavvy.com emphasises, "Businesses don't grow in nice straight lines. No. They expand for a bit then hit a plateau. They change something, then grow a bit more... To put it another way, growth relies on change. And change invariably demands branding expertise - because if you don't tell the world, how do you expect customers to work with you, pay more or engage with you often?" ^[3]

Word of Mouth

It's important not to discount word-of-mouth marketing when you launch your venture. It can be highly effective, and cheap. People are probably more likely to look into something they heard from a friend or family member, or from a colleague over a cup of coffee, than they are if it is one of the hundreds of adverts that flash across their television screen or blink at them from website margins.

Word-of-mouth marketing is something that can be used to your advantage, but it can also have a negative effect on your business - and, as Raposo points out, "People are more likely to complain about a company than they are to promote a company positively. As anyone for a review and you’ll see – arms need to be twisted and bribes offered to motivate reviews. However receive bad service and people run home to post reviews on their computer to tell the world how awful a company is".^[5]

So what does all of this have to do with your brand? Well, it may not necessarily effect how your brand is developed, but it should certainly give you more opportunities to see how people respond to your brand: keep an eye out for Twitter posts referencing your brand, to see what people are telling their followers about you. Do they like what they see? Have you missed the mark? A service like Twilert can help you keep track of all of the twitter posts with a specific keyword – for example, your business or brand name – with a weekly update sent to your inbox. Or, you can register as a startup with the social networking site YouNoodle, and keep track of Tweets, blog posts, and media references to your brand. Remember that you can encourage word-of-mouth marketing through your own brand or Twitter account, but make sure that it is unified with your overall brand design as well.

Branding During a Recession

Branding in an upturn economy often focuses more on encouraging customers to spend money on feel-good images and fancy features than on highlighting the benefits, value, and usefulness of a product or service. This type of branding does not hold up in a recession, as the draw of feel-good images falls by the wayside and value becomes the core of what customers are interested in. While none of that may seem to be part of a brand, the truth is, that's very much a part of what a brand is.

Carsten Cumbrowski, an internet marketer writing for ReveNews Online, emphasises the fact that any characteristic that customers associate with your business is branding: "Your name is associated with a good property that is important to your customers. This increases the likelihood to finalize a deal." ^[6] And during a recession the image that your brand projects – the promises that it makes to customers and potential customers – is more important than when the economy is stable.

The power of a brand is the trust that it inspires in customers, the emotional response that they feel when they see your logo compared to that of your competitors: the importance of that trust increases monumentally in a downturn economy. Wayne Hurlbert, writing for SmallBusinessNewz.com, describes how, "When times are hard, people prefer to do business with others whom they know and trust, even more than when the economy is strong. What people think of your brand and its promise are essential to that trust."^[8] Hurlbert goes on to point out that simply making the right promises and projecting the right image will not be enough during a recession, though it may have worked in an upturn economy: "It's crucial that your products and services meet the promises made in those marketing materials. A customer who feels as if their needs were ignored, or taken for granted, will take their potential for long term loyalty to your competitors. Your brand promise must be kept, or your customers will disappear."^[8]

However, the pressure that a recession puts on your brand can be a blessing in disguise, as your increased efforts to ensure that you meet the promises that your business makes and live up to the image that you project will have a positive effect on your customer loyalty even once the recession has passed. Even if, as Cumbrowski says, "The value of brands diminishes during times of recession,"^[6] the value can increase dramatically once the economic climate stabilises again if you have approached branding during the recession with the right attitude. Kartikeya Kompella, in an article for AllAboutBranding.com, emphasises that "The resilience that recessions endow brands with is critical to their longevity... Brands can use this period of insecurity to make assurances of quality as well as other reassuring signs that help the consumer go through an uneasy period with greater confidence."^[7]

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Vera Raposo, "How A Familiar Brand Can Mean More Sales For You", Small Business Branding, 08-05-08 [1]
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Vera Raposo, "Your Fabulous Brand Done Easy", Small Business Branding, 26-05-08 [2]
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Brandsavvy, Brandsavvy.co.uk [3]
4. ↑ Chris Brown, "11 Crucial Criteria to Creating a Better Brand", Brand and Market.com, 22-10-08 [4]
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Vera Raposo, "How Word of Mouth Affects Your Brand", Small Business Branding, 11-06-08 [5]
6. ↑ ^{6.0 6.1} Carsten Cumbrowski, "The Value of Branding During Times of Recession", ReveNews Online, 18-11-08 [6]
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1} Kartikeya Kompella, "Branding in a recession", AllAboutBranding.com [7]
8. ↑ ^{8.0 8.1} Wayne Hurlbert, "Keep A Positive Brand Image During a Recession", SmallBusinessNews.com, 25-01-08 [8]

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