What is Branding?
Definition of Branding: The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers’ mind, mainly through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme.
If you read through the above definition there are a few underlined keywords that you need to pay special attention to:
1. Unique Name – When you think about Branding – either your company, Product or Service make sure that you use a Unique Name. Why?
You are going to invest blood, sweat, tears & money while building a brand – it is a process & cannot be done overnight. It will take time and if you don’t have a unique name somebody else might just come by tomorrow and challenge you to the usage of the name. All the effort of yours will go to waste then!
Trademarks & Copyrights ensure that each brand has a unique identity including “Name” so there is no conflict of interest. So be wise – research for the name and make sure its unique.
You can test whether you have a unique name or not in India using the tool in India Filings site link: Click Here to Know
2. Make sure you use this tool before you start any branding exercise.
Image – This is the 2nd important keyword in the Branding process. An image is what you project your brand to be?
An image may not be exactly “Visual” but it’s about what attributes do people think when you hear about your brand.
3. Consumer’s Mind – As entrepreneurs, we are all caught up with our own perception of the “Brand” as we are the ones who are building it in the first place.
The focus keyword here is Consumer. Does he even know that there is a Brand out there with your name? Does he understand the image that you are trying to project? Does he see your Brand as a unique value addition that can cater to his requirements?
If he does not, then your branding exercise has been a failure.
Next, to Build a Brand use Visual aids like Logos & Taglines.
Logo Formats
Logos also used to create a Unique persona for your Brand & if communicated properly your logo is enough for your audience to recall the Brand.
Logos can be of:
Word Format or
Pictorial or
Combination of Both
Word Format
These logos are just word format of the Brand. They include the name of the Brand & the distinction is the usage of the Brand name either using spaces in-between words in a certain way or combining all the words together. These also use certain typefaces for impact.
Our Logo “Branding by Pixels” is an example of such a Word Format, as you can see in the above image. We use black & white colours. White as our background & Black for the words. Also, you can see that “brandingby” is considered as 1 word & “pixels” is separated out.
This is intentional as we intend to become a full-fledged “Branding Agency” soon so we might be looking at launching other ways that we can “Brand” a customer’s business.
Pictorial
We have all seen this logo and we know what it means. The Golden Arches of McDonald’s & what does it bring to your mind?
A Mac Burger with a side of fresh French Fries & a serving of Chilled Coke.
That is the power of Branding by Pictorial Logos, it is easy to place your Pictorial logo amongst a group of other companies logos and can still be recognised.
It will also occupy small space and it is easily readable by the human eye as Human Eye can process images seen for as short a period as 13 milliseconds.
Read more about Why Visual Content is Important for Marketing?
What is Branding in Marketing?
Your brand is a foundational piece in your marketing communication and one you do not want to be without. Branding is strategic and marketing is tactical and what you use to get your brand in front of consumers. That’s why it carries a great deal of importance within a business or organisation as well.
The brand serves as a guide to understanding the purpose of business objectives. It enables you to align a marketing plan with those objectives and fulfil the overarching strategy.
5 Reasons Why Branding is Important?
Brands are important because Branding enables you to:
1. Builds Customer Loyalty – As part of my IT career, I travelled to London & Asia Pacific. My number 1 concern in these trips was not the safety of my person being a lady but regarding “Food”. Living out of a suitcase for 6 months it was very difficult to cope in a foreign country trying to adjust to local cuisine.
My number 1 go to food joint in all those 6 months was a “Subway”. Why? Because I KNEW what I would get in a Subway. If you travel as much as I did then you would know you would feel more comfortable going into a store that you have had experience back at home rather than going into a store that you have no idea regarding the format of.
2. Allows you to charge Higher Prices – A Brand allows you as a company to charge higher prices than your competitors because your customers trust that your product’s quality.
Example: Apple
Apple always charges more for its products not because it has the most technologically advanced products but because of the design. At the end of the day, what is more, important to you as a customer? Is it the technology or the design? The technology of course but we still tend to buy Apple Products and display them proudly to our Friends & Family.
This is one best example of a Brand being able to charge Higher Prices just because of the Branding that went into it.
3. Builds Market Share – Let us all be honest for a second, shall we? As Entrepreneurs, all of us have started on this hard journey to create something of value – for our customers. You have a vision for your company & work extremely hard in building it.
We could have had easy lives by just being a regular job holder but most of us chose to be part of this tough journey. At the end of the day though, we all know that building a business is not for charity we are looking to generate revenues & it is extremely important to be successful at it and that is where Branding will help you by building Market Share.
Branding is a promise that is made to your customer regarding – Quality, Affordability, Convenience, Reliability some or most of which are part of your Brand Values.
4. Easier to Launch New Products: Branding allows to create an umbrella under which you can create and launch new products. The Brand Promise encumbers all of the new products so your customers are willing to buy the new products without any hesitation.
One of the best examples out there is P&G.
P&G – Procter & Gamble has around 70 – 80 products with different branding underneath its umbrella. They have now consolidated to 70 – 80 products but previously they used to have more than 100+ products.
Creating an umbrella brand allows you to launch new products easily & quickly.
5. Adds to Brand Equity & Good Will: We all know this Brand “Coca-Cola”, its the world’s largest soft drinks company and commands a market value of $175Bn. Do you know that there is 1 ingredient of its Brand Equity that in itself commands $75Bn – Can you guess what that is?
NO, it’s not the secret ingredient.
Its the Brand Name “Coca-Cola” which commands $75Bn equity. That is the Power of Branding.
Case Study – “I am not Convinced in investing in Branding”?
Even after all this gyaan (Gyaan (Hindi word) meaning Knowledge), if you are not still convinced in Investing in Branding for your company I would like to leave you with a real-life story that just happened last week.
A month ago, An Indian Pizza Brand which manages 10 retail stores has called us for “Visual Content” services – during the discussion I asked him regarding his “Branding” & “Marketing” efforts as his stores were not well known in the market and there was visibly not many people in his store.
He was evasive regarding Branding & Marketing and did not even want to learn “Why Branding was Important?”
We could not work with him as our costing for “Visual Content” services was not within his budget. All said & done I was really concerned regarding the state of his business given that the Market Leader “Dominos” does an awesome work at Marketing.
If you have ever been a customer of Dominos even once in your lifetime, you would have seen their aggressive SMS marketing wherein every Wednesday without fail you will receive an SMS regarding their 1+1 pizza offer.
1 month later, I heard from a mutual friend that another company has offered to buy this “Pizza Joint” & quoted to pay 1CR rupees for all the 10 stores.
Is it not Wonderful? That he got an offer for 1CR rupees even though he did not listen to us regarding the importance of Branding?
It would have been a great news if he did not invest 3.5CR rupees in this business.
WHAT???
Yes, you heard it right – The owner invested 3.5CR rupees in the business & the company which wanted to buy him off was offering him 1CR rupees & you know what reason they gave for the lower valuation – “YOUR BRAND DOES NOT HAVE ANY RECOGNITION IN THE MARKET”.
Wow – 3 years of time & 3.5CR rupees later the owner could not even recover his own expenses – All because he did not think “Branding was Important”.
Don’t make the same mistake that he did.
Start Your Brand Building exercise TODAY!
Learn more about 5 steps to Brand Building in our Next Week Blog – Subscribe for weekly updates.
Reach out to us for a discussion on “Building a Brand” by emailing us at sirisha@brandingbypixels.com
Have a great week ahead.
Happy Marketing,
Sirisha Inapurapu,
Founder, Head – Marketing,
sirisha@brandingbypixels.com
brandingbypixels.com
