Great brand­ing makes great business

Beyond just hav­ing a mem­o­rable logo, strong brand­ing rais­es a com­pa­ny’s val­ue, gives staff pur­pose and moti­va­tion, and makes attract­ing new clients eas­i­er. But exact­ly what is a brand?

The quick answer is — it’s everything.

Brand­ing involves much more than just a logo or graph­ic fea­ture. When estab­lish­ing your brand, it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er the over­all cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Every­thing from your team’s inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers to your web­site, social media pres­ence, and phone etiquette.

Your brand, in essence, is how your tar­get audi­ence sees you. It adds clear and demon­stra­ble com­mer­cial val­ue to busi­ness­es. And yes, we’re talk­ing KPIs that go way beyond neb­u­lous mar­ket­ing buzz­words like ​‘brand awareness’.

It is essen­tial to be aware of your brand expe­ri­ence and to have a plan in place to devel­op the brand expe­ri­ence you want. A suc­cess­ful brand does­n’t mere­ly appear out of thin air… We’re good; but not that good. It’s a well-con­sid­ered tac­ti­cal approach.

Brand­ing ben­e­fits every business

Some (yes, even mar­keters) say brand­ing is all about feel­ing while busi­ness is all about cold, hard num­bers. But this is BS. The two are inex­tri­ca­bly inter­twined. Don’t believe us? Well, check out the total­ly impar­tial InVi­sion report that talks specif­i­cal­ly about why good design is inte­gral to the suc­cess of a busi­ness, and by exten­sion, branding.

Accord­ing to an Accen­ture sur­vey, 66% of cus­tomers make pur­chas­es from busi­ness­es that val­ue brand cul­ture and trans­paren­cy. Because of this, brand­ing is essen­tial to your mar­ket­ing plans. Your brand­ing directs all your mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties. For instance, when cus­tomers hear Nike’s slo­gan screamed into their sub­con­scious, ​“Just do it!”, they’re remind­ed of more than just new train­ers. The brand reminds con­sumers of the over­all expe­ri­ence they have from pre-to-post-purchase.

Brand­ing is more sig­nif­i­cant than you might realise for a com­pa­ny. Your brand may appear to be made up just of visu­al com­po­nents like colours and logos from the out­side, but it encom­pass­es all aspects of who your com­pa­ny is inside and out. Your brand defines who you are.

Although brand­ing has always been cru­cial to a com­pa­ny, it might now be more so than ever. Social media expos­es con­sumers to a new and end­less stream of brands every day. While hav­ing many alter­na­tives and being able to research them to pick the best one can be ben­e­fi­cial for con­sumers, it is chal­leng­ing for businesses.

Busi­ness­es must go above and beyond to make them­selves stand out in a sea of com­pe­ti­tion since the world is drown­ing in brands today. To do this, suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es invest in build­ing a pow­er­ful brand that cap­tures and holds their audience’s attention.

More peo­ple know and recog­nise your business

One of the most obvi­ous rea­sons that busi­ness­es need brand­ing is to help be seen, and recog­nised, more often. Peo­ple will nat­u­ral­ly pay atten­tion to your com­pa­ny far more than they would to one with­out good brand­ing. Your audi­ence won’t remem­ber a com­pa­ny that does­n’t real­ly have any con­sis­tent brand­ing for very long. In one ear and out the oth­er, as they say.

Brands are essen­tial­ly pat­terns of famil­iar­i­ty, mean­ing, fond­ness, and reas­sur­ance that exist ion the minds of peo­ple.

— Tom Goodwin

A com­pa­ny is con­sid­er­ably more mem­o­rable if it has aspects like a dis­tinc­tive logo, cap­ti­vat­ing colours, and oth­er visu­al com­po­nents. Even if a per­son only briefly notices your brand and isn’t yet ready to use your goods or ser­vices, if it stands out in a good way, there’s a strong chance they won’t for­get it. If your brand­ing has stayed with them, then when they’re pre­pared to go for­ward, they’ll come back to you.

Great brand­ing shows cus­tomers what makes you, you. They are your DNA. In an era where peo­ple have gold­fish atten­tion spans and need every­thing yes­ter­day, brand­ing tells your sto­ry in an instant. It’s not just about look­ing good, it’s about what’s under­neath too.

Brand­ing gets rid of trust issues

One of the most valu­able assets a com­pa­ny can have is not just their audi­ence’s atten­tion, but their trust. Although, it’s not always easy to earn. A com­pa­ny that lacks essen­tial brand­ing will find it more dif­fi­cult to win the hearts of cus­tomers, who will get cold feet if you don’t put in the brand­ing work and com­mit to it.

When we look at busi­ness­es in any sec­tor, many of us expect to see brand­ing, so not see­ing it could raise a red flag for some, maybe even a flash­ing air-raid siren. You have very lit­tle to show for your busi­ness if it lacks branding.

You prob­a­bly already know which com­pa­ny you would trust more if you had to select between one that has dis­tinct, expert-look­ing brand­ing and one that has­n’t. You can show poten­tial clients that you are a trust­wor­thy, well-estab­lished busi­ness by hav­ing it all put togeth­er well.

Brand­ing tells peo­ple very ear­ly on what they can expect from your busi­ness. First impres­sions count. This is an invest­ment your busi­ness is mak­ing to improve itself, call it self-love and poten­tial cus­tomers will recog­nise you put in the work to cre­ate your brand and that you’ll do the same for them. You need to love your­self before oth­ers can love you. If you don’t take care of your­self, how will clients expect you to take care of them – so fix up!

Brand­ing makes or breaks your advertising

With­out adver­tis­ing, your brand is stuck in a rut, and that means no growth. Brand­ing and adver­tis­ing go hand in hand. If you want to have bet­ter adver­tis­ing for your busi­ness, you’re going to need to work on cre­at­ing a brand first.

When you’re adver­tis­ing your busi­ness, you want every­thing to be con­sis­tent, cohe­sive and rep­re­sent your business’s iden­ti­ty and val­ues. It needs to flow. This can be a chal­lenge when you haven’t tak­en the time to form your brand. If you’re adver­tis­ing with­out sol­id brand­ing, you’re miss­ing out on a lot of great oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate an effec­tive cam­paign. When every­thing is con­nect­ed, adding brand­ing to your adver­tis­ing will help your busi­ness become top-of-mind.

Your employ­ees wear your brand like a badge of honour

Brand­ing pro­vides val­ue inside your com­pa­ny as well by cre­at­ing pos­i­tive employ­ee morale with­out the forced cus­tomer ser­vice smile. 

Of course, you want your peo­ple to enjoy their time at your busi­ness and feel like valu­able mem­bers of the team. An organ­i­sa­tion with strong brand­ing will find it sim­pler to per­suade team mem­bers their work is more than just a job. Employ­ee morale ris­es togeth­er with great com­pa­ny cul­ture and great branding.

You should invest in brand­ing ele­ments that keep your employ­ees moti­vat­ed, besides those that can help you attract new clients. This cov­ers minor details like brand­ed cloth­ing and acces­sories, as well as the gen­er­al look of your office. Through brand­ing, you can unite your work­force (with­out spark­ing a Marx­ist rev­o­lu­tion, unless that’s what you want) and inspire them, which could lead to fan­tas­tic out­comes for every­one. Win-win.

Take Lush as an exam­ple. For over 20 years, they have been offer­ing eth­i­cal­ly pro­duced, hand­made cos­met­ics, toi­letries, and skin­care prod­ucts to the pub­lic. Also, Lush is renowned for being quite open about its stel­lar prin­ci­ples (boy­cotting ani­mal test­ing, reward­ing cus­tomers for recy­cling their pack­ag­ing, show­ing the name and face of the employ­ee who made the prod­uct, etc.)

Brand­ing cre­ates cus­tomers that come back for more

You want to attract cus­tomers who will keep com­ing back to your busi­ness, not just ones who come once and make a dash for it. With good brand­ing, you can give your brand a more human side, which your cus­tomers can relate to more than a com­pa­ny that’s strict­ly all busi­ness. Unless that’s all you’re in the mar­ket for…

With­out sound­ing like a dystopi­an over­lord, through brand­ing, you can influ­ence peo­ple’s emo­tions in a vari­ety of ways and increase their sense of loy­al­ty to your busi­ness. Build­ing ties with your audi­ence through brand­ing paves the way for them to become devot­ed cus­tomers in the future. By build­ing a brand that peo­ple gen­uine­ly care about, you can out­per­form oth­er com­pa­nies who aren’t tak­ing advan­tage of this. And we know you’re look­ing for some­thing serious.

Brand­ing builds an emo­tion­al connection

By estab­lish­ing your­self as a brand, you can deeply con­nect with cus­tomers, employ­ees, and the pub­lic. This con­nec­tion is a grad­ual process which hap­pens with time, but it starts by lay­ing down a good rep­u­ta­tion, let­ting your audi­ence get to know you and ulti­mate­ly find­ing mem­o­rable ways to communicate. 

Often, great brand­ing comes from embody­ing the essence of your brand in an unex­pect­ed, even counter-intu­itive or self-dep­re­cat­ing, way. Remem­ber that Nike ad that salut­ed the last-place marathon finisher?

A strong brand inspires con­fi­dence. It takes courage, strat­e­gy, intel­lect, and even a bit of dan­ger to build a great brand. It takes con­fi­dence to tell your cus­tomers what makes you tick. Put it this way – some of the most suc­cess­ful brands in the world got to where they are because of a sense of con­fi­dence in who they are, not because they were offer­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly unique prod­uct or expe­ri­ence. It’s all about pre­sen­ta­tion. First impres­sions count.

Great brand­ing gives you pur­pose and direction

What­ev­er your brand may be, make sure there are goals and a deep­er mean­ing behind it, like a cause peo­ple can relate to and get on board with. Even if it’s not about cur­ing world hunger but just mak­ing their first-world prob­lems just a lit­tle less prob­lem­at­ic. Great brand­ing is more than just your logo, typog­ra­phy, and colours.

Brand­ing leads to new and bet­ter direc­tions, too. Even the best brands occa­sion­al­ly sur­pass them­selves. Refresh­ing a logo is one of the many strate­gies used while rebrand­ing. Then there is the ​‘hard­core’ rebrand, which results in an entire­ly new iden­ti­ty. For­tune favours the brave brander.

Great brand­ing deliv­ers results by telling a story

At the end of the day, your brand is a busi­ness, and you want the best for its future. Part of the impor­tance of brand­ing is that a strong brand is essen­tial to deliv­er­ing the results you need.

Brand­ing gen­er­ates growth. When you’re seen as good, you are good. That’s why well-estab­lished brands make a shit­load of money.

A strong brand tells a com­pelling nar­ra­tive. Cus­tomers and investors place a high­er val­ue on busi­ness­es that have engag­ing sto­ries. Employ­ees who under­stand their roles and moti­va­tions work for com­pa­nies with great sto­ries. Peo­ple’s emo­tions can be moved by busi­ness­es with com­pelling nar­ra­tives, which is essen­tial for boost­ing sales. Peo­ple want to work for organ­i­sa­tions that accom­plish great things, and great things can only be achieved if they’re under­stood sim­ply and clearly.

When you com­bine all these fac­tors, your com­pa­ny can gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue – to put it in slight­ly more busi­ness-like terms than before. After all, nobody buys some­thing they don’t under­stand. Well, most of the time, anyway.

Wrap­ping it up

You might think we’re a lit­tle biased as a brand­ing and design agency but the impor­tance of brand­ing for busi­ness­es can­not be overstated.

There is a seri­ous mis­un­der­stand­ing about the com­mer­cial sig­nif­i­cance of brand­ing. While some peo­ple (and not just red-in-the-face CEOs from the 1950s) seem to think brand­ing is only for well-estab­lished, mid to large busi­ness­es, many aren’t even sure if it actu­al­ly ben­e­fits their com­pa­ny. Are you a busi­ness that believes brand­ing is unre­lat­ed or insignif­i­cant to the growth of your busi­ness? Let’s set the record straight.

Nev­er under­es­ti­mate the impor­tance of branding. 

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – brand­ing is every­thing. So be good to your brand and take the time to care­ful­ly curate your brand identity. 

Check out this arti­cle for more guid­ance or reach out to our team of faith­ful design­ers who are on hand to pro­pel your brand, and there­fore, the num­ber of peo­ple who engage with it (and love it)