Introduction
What comes into your mind when you think of big and famous companies like Apple, Amazon, etc.? The quality assurance! Despite whichever type of product/service they deal with, we are assured of good quality, right? This is the power of branding. Branding for a company is basically about building trust among consumers.
Now, various elements make a brand complete, it can be a logo, taglines, mascot, etc. Branding involves all these elements and many more things, which we will see in the blog. Before diving into that, let’s first get clear with exactly what is branding in marketing
What is Branding in marketing?
By using elements like a mission statement, logo, design, and a constant theme across all marketing communications, branding aims to give customers a strong, favorable impression of a business and its goods or services.
This depicts that your tone across different platforms like emails, messages, social media, websites, etc should be at least similar if not the same. Also, with the availability of online and offline platforms, brands have to perform two different types of branding. For example, offline branding involves the placement of a product/service in a store to enhance the consumer experience. On the other hand, online branding involves picking and uploading appropriate images, logos, infographics, etc.
You might have heard that re-branding is a very difficult task for a brand. Ever wondered why is it so? At the time of re-branding, companies or brands have to change the tone, logo, content, it’s overall appearance all over the platform, and this is a difficult task. Now that you all are clear about what is branding in marketing, let’s see its importance.
What is Branding in Marketing: The Importance of Branding
Provide your Business with an Identity
Through branding, you can give your company a personality that goes beyond the goods and services you offer. Particularly if you have a brand objective that is distinct from your product line, you are more than a brand. For instance, if your brand is dedicated to animals’ welfare, you'll come to be known for those pursuits as well as your goods.
Branding helps in bringing customers from brand recognition to the brand awareness stage. Even if the audience doesn’t purchase your product/service but they should know about your brand's existence.
Branding Helps in Buying Decisions
Many of us tend to buy products from a well-known brands, right? Because we’ve got a positive image build in our mind regarding the brand’s a product/service. This is particularly true for social networks, where 89% of customers say they'll choose to purchase from a business they currently follow and recognize over some other brand.
Given that, having a distinctive and identifiable brand gives you an advantage with an audience because they are more likely to buy from a company they are familiar with.
Increases Consumer Loyalty
Customer loyalty is a result of regularly having a good emotional experience, being happy with your goods, and having a strong brand that people value. It is based on a person's own experience with a business. In general, loyal customers believe that your product is superior to that of other brands.
Excellent customer service and goods that satisfy consumers' needs are two of the main aspects that encourage customers to stick with a business. A powerful brand constantly seeks to enhance the consumer experience and develops goods that are relevant to customer wants.
Increased Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing is the technique that involves generating natural or automatic discussion either of your brand or of your product/service. Through effective branding, a brand gets multiple brand ambassadors at no direct cost. People will spread the word about your brand to colleagues, family, and random bystanders at the general shops and stores when it tells a story they want to hear.
Strong brands that successfully leverage word-of-mouth marketing & deliver high-quality goods that live up to their claims help in making the strategy successful. Your satisfied clients will tell everyone they know about your high-quality products when they have used or tried them and enjoyed them.
No or Minimum Price Sensitivity
Price sensitivity refers to how much your product's price affects your target market's propensity to purchase it. The less it influences their choice, the better; it shows that they trust your brand enough to give price less importance. Customers who are less price sensitive have probably been pleased with a product they have purchased from you or feel positively about your brand.
You have the authority to increase pricing because of the strength of your brand. Why? since you've gotten good at what you're doing. It's not something you can change immediately, but with time and effort, you can develop brand loyalty and lessen price sensitivity.
These were the importance of branding. Now, in this what is branding in marketing blog, next we’ll see elements of branding.
What is Branding in Marketing: Elements of Branding
The main 8 elements of branding are:
Logo
A logo is the entirety of a brand's personality condensed into a recognizable image. It's frequently your first contact with a brand; it's the image that lingers in your memory and evokes memories of the brand whenever you come across it again. Almost all of your brand's assets, including your business cards, website, products, social media sites, any branded template you employ, and all of your marketing and advertising materials, feature your logo.
Name of Your Brand
Among the most potent components of the overall brand is the name. It serves as the face of the brand & provides the first chance to convey to the audience why it deserves to be remembered. The name's main purpose is that it be remembered. Only when it becomes memorable will it be able to fulfill its secondary function, which is to position the brand in the niche it wants to occupy.
Another essential component of any brand identity is color. Some businesses have even gone as far as to patent their characteristic brand colors because the color is so crucial to branding. However, why is color so significant? Because colors express key attitudes and personality qualities. As customers, we can tell whenever a brand has put in a great deal of developing a color combination when we see a certain combination of hues and our brains immediately associate it with that brand.
Tagline
The focus of brand communications is taglines, commonly referred to as slogans. Your brand's distinct proposition should be communicated through brand messaging. Slogans and jingles are distinctive brand components that may not apply to every business but, when used, are an integral aspect of your branding. These distinctive brand components can be utilized in promotional materials, advertisements, etc.
Brand Tone
The tone of voice of a brand incorporates a particular vocabulary. The voice you hear while reading any copy created by a brand, including emails received from the company, the text on their website, and the vocabulary the company uses on social media is known as the company's tone of voice. One of the best ways to influence how people view your brand is through your tone of voice. When choosing a voice and tone for your company's communications, try to match it to the services it provides and the demographics of its intended audience.
Images
With images, it means all types of images, and graphics that you use throughout your marketing strategies, and campaigns. This isn’t about any particular image, or logo, it relates to the type of images you use on your website, on social media, and at every online presence.
Take this as overall packaging, background images, gradients, and patterns a brand uses. A brand needs to select and use close and alike image themes. This element of branding is closely related to other elements like color palette, logo, shape, etc.
Font Style
The text style you see on various places like websites, logos, and emails of a big or small brand isn’t selected randomly at the moment. The font's overall style, color, and size are carefully decided beforehand and are used everywhere in a similar manner.
So why and how font selection is an important element of branding? The font style of a brand represents the brand's tone. Different font depicts different emotions some are funny, some emotional, serious, etc. The brands ideally select two different fonts for their content, one for headings and the other for the general text that the brand uses.
All in all, the various components of your brand work together to give it a specific look and feel. Consider what you offer, spend time getting to understand your customers, and start designing to give your brand a different personality. This was all about what is branding in marketing, now let’s understand the new concept that is co-branding.
What is Co-Branding? Why is it important?
Co-branding is a collaboration between two companies where the success of one company benefits the development of the other. When two similar businesses collaborate, co-branding relationships have the greatest impact since the audience benefits specifically from the collaboration. You might already be aware of a sports corporation working with an athlete as a co-branding example.
Top benefits of Co-Branding:For Consumers, Co-Branding is Attractive:
Consumers enjoy partnerships where two companies come together. They're interested to see what will happen because they may not have imagined your teamwork. Because co-branding is an uncommon technique, it draws interest and more attention. On the days leading up to a launch, you might notice people checking their social media accounts or visiting your websites out of pure excitement.
Increased Marketing Budget
Businesses are aware that promoting products may be an expensive investment. This benefit makes it possible for more innovative marketing strategies and opportunities, which may ultimately lead to a higher return on investment.
Visibility to New Audiences is Increased via Co-Branding
Although you may operate in the same business, you and your partner generally target specific audience segments. When you collaborate on a co-branding effort, you are exposed to their audience and they are exposed to yours, which helps you both build brand awareness, attract new customers, and expand your total reach.
Combination f All the Best Features
Co-branding integrates all of the partner brands' best assets. Other brands can benefit from the strengths that a brand develops for itself. Each partner brand can provide its strongest attribute while gaining the strongest attributes of the others to become more powerful overall.
These were some of the top benefits of Co-branding in what is branding in a marketing blog.
As you might be clear from the above information, it is important to know what is branding in marketing to upscale your business. If you own a business, you must apply the concepts and elements and try and build a good brand. If you want to start digital marketing and learn the same, Fingertips' Digital Marketing Upskill Program can help you with it.
FAQs
1. What does branding mean in marketing?
Let’s answer your question, what is branding in marketing? Branding is about creating a perfect impression in the minds of the audience of the company.
2. What are the 4 steps of branding?
The steps to create a brand are Brand salience, performance & imagery, judgment & feelings, and brand resonance.
3. Why is branding so important in marketing?
Branding helps to build relationships with your target audience and helps them to differentiate your product/service from competitors.
