Importance and Strategies to Build a Brand in the Marketplace
Whether a person is aiming for personal development or business development, brand building is important. It is a marketing activity that helps in increasing the awareness of the brand by giving it a distinguished identity that is easy to recognize by targeted audiences. It is an important part of marketing strategy as it helps the business to grow. But brand building is a not one-time activity; it is a complex process that requires constant effort and a consistent approach. But before understanding the importance and ways of building a brand in the market, let’s take a quick overview what exactly is brand building.
What is Brand Building?
Decades ago, brand building was limited to a unique slogan, design, symbol, or combination of these elements that help in distinguishing a company’s product or service from its counterparts. But of late, it has evolved a lot. In the present competitive scenario, brand building is the process of generating awareness about your company’s products or services with the help of marketing and advertising campaigns. All the marketing activities unanimously aim at creating a long-lasting and distinguished image of the brand in the marketplace. In simple words, brand building is a process of exposing your brand in such a manner that it creates value and an unending impression in the customers’ minds.
The brand-building basically revolves around:
- Product Brand: A physical product or goods comprises a product brand. A good product with remarkable market visibility and good packaging cumulatively helps in the product brand building. Some of the best examples of product brands are Rolex, Sony, Adidas, etc.
- Service Brand: An intangible offering to customers comes under a service brand. In such a case, the customers’ experiences define the brand building. Some of the popular examples of service brands are Starbucks, McDonald’s., etc.
- Retail Brand: It is a combination of product and service experience. Thus, a good product with a satisfactory user experience is a requisite for establishing retail branding. Examples are Walmart, Tesco, etc.
Why Brand Building is Important?
- It Improves Recognition – Logo is slated as one of the most important components of a brand and represents the “face” of a business. A professionally designed logo with attractive colors and aligned with the business ethics instantly carve the business niche in the customers’ mind. Just remember, if your target audience remembers the logo of your business and recognizes it, it simply indicates you have successfully created the desired impression of the company.
- It Generates Trust – A professional outlook and appearance are a must to create credibility in the market. Not only consumers, even other businesses think twice before getting associated with such a brand that has an illegitimate or unpolished market image. So, generating trust is crucial and the first step towards building successful business branding in the competitive marketplace.
- It Generates Customer Loyalty – When a product or service brand successfully establishes its presence in the market, it becomes easier for them to gain customer satisfaction. And no one can deny the fact that it is an easier task to convert a satisfied customer into the loyal one instead of attracting a new customer. So, companies should aim at delivering exceptional products or services to the customers to make them loyal to their brand.
- It Increases Awareness – Branding business 24*7 is one of the best ways to create awareness about your business in the most effective manner. An old adage “out of sight means out of mind” holds strong in this case. In the fast-paced social networking world, it is prudent to keep highlighting your business offerings loud so that you should remain connected with your customers 24*7. It is because many surveys prove that “well-branded businesses are the most stand out”.
Ways to Transform a Business into a Successful Brand
Now, coming to the most important part on how to transform a business into a successful brand. Brand building is a long and complex process and no one other than a digital marketer can understand the fact. He knows that he needs to make continuous efforts in the same direction to reap rewarding results. Thus, a professional digital marketer divides the entire brand-building activity into different parts and prefers moving ahead step by step. Let’s unveil these parts of brand building journey one by one.
Determine Your Target Audience – Defining the target audience is the first step towards building a successful brand. A business cannot cater to everyone’s interest at one point in time, right? Thus, remain crystal clear about your target audience and tailor your business message to suit their needs. In order to ensure that your business message should reach the right audience, they should click on the ads uploaded by you and check your social networking on a regular basis, create audience persona demographics like their age, gender, location, interests, etc. This is easy to do via conducting marketing surveys.
Focus on Gaining Instant Recognition – A customer remembers those companies or products, which are truly outstanding, have distinguished identities and spreads business messages loud and fast. Hence, do not fail in harnessing the power of logo and website. Firstly, make your business logo unique, memorable, and relatable by using powerful colors. Do not try to imitate the colors and themes of competitors; try to create something new. Secondly, distinguish your brand from competitors by making a super-fast and responsive website that loads in 2 seconds or less and is easy to access on different electronic gadgets.
Expose Brand to Earn Trust – One of the best ways to win the trust of customers is by delivering what you are promising. A customer makes repeated purchases if you are able to stand strong on his expectation for the first time and every time fulfill your promises. So, never try to mislead them by indulging in false advertising. Additionally, promise only what your company can deliver actually without any fail. Keep yourself alive in customers’ memories by creating informative infographics or short interesting videos. Show them that you really care for them by sending continuous reminders about new sales or new product arrival in the market.
Remain Connected with Audience – In this social networking business world, there are umpteen ways to remain connected with the targeted audiences 24*7. The social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter ease the task of remain connected with the targeted audiences and understand their requirements. These social platforms help to spread business messages far and wide. These sites also help in seeking audience opinions and increasing user engagement to a significant level. Just like a website, social networking sites are 24*7 brand promoters of your company which highlights your customers’ experiences and opinions.
Follow Consistent Voice Tone- When a business follows a consistent voice tone for spreading the business messages; it reinforces the business character and connects with audiences easily. For instance, if your targeted audience belongs to working professionals and they prefer formal language, so try to adopt a formal business tone in your all promotional strategies. Whether you are using outdoor media or social networking sites for brand promotion, adopt a formal voice tone. Furthermore, create a long-lasting impression by following authoritative voice tone in images, video, or text content.
Grab The Helping Hand of Co-Branding – Co-branding helps companies to gain brand recognition in the most easiest and effective manners. The partnered companies help in generating awareness and genuine leads for your business. Every digital marketing company should aim for co-branding with three kinds of partners: awareness partners, lead partners, and functional partners. The awareness partner mainly focuses upon creating brand awareness of a brand. The lead partners, as the name implies, ensure to generate quality leads that increase the business revenue. The functional partnership is beneficial for defeating your competitors as the partnership focus on improving the quality of the product which eventually increases brand recognition.
Conclusion:
Always remember it is vital to establish the unique identity of a brand in the market and focus on brand building as an ongoing activity instead of a one-time activity. Keep promoting the brand 24*7 by following multiple marketing tactics at one point in time. And no one other than a professional and experienced digital marketer can perform the job in the most sought-after manner.
