What is a brand?

Before you think about SEO, Social Media and any other form of marketing, you should ask one question, what is a brand?

A brand is simply a perception of your business, product, service in your customer mind. The associated feeling they get when your name is brought up in a conversation is what can be called a brand.

I took a look at several different meanings when I was researching for this blog ranging from Charlie Hughes “a promise wrapped in an experience.” along with Sergio Zyman “a container for a customer’s complete experience with the product or company.” and each one of them have one thing in common which is the perception and experience of the people associated with you.

What is Branding?

You can’t create a perception of something which can’t be experienced and you can’t experience something which you can’t learn about and you can’t learn about something which doesn’t state what they are and to state what they are is what is called Branding.

Shaping your customer perception to what you wanna be associated with is called Branding. No brands want to get called the cheapest option but being called affordable to your alternatives is where they accept the bargain because keeping a business running is an obvious choice in comparison to running with a delusional perception which turns your balance sheet red.

If you can’t put your ideas, feelings into your customer minds early, somebody else will and at the time where the footer of the website pages constitute of Brand alternative and vs pages, it’s the smart thing to do yourself.

The obvious way is to make a good product, serve your customer with their benefit in mind and fix the shortcomings before it reaches a significant fractions and becomes an issue rather than a small bug. All of these factors combined with just tiny marketing will outlive the brand with great marketing and weak product, multiple issues and owner’s greed.

Brand, Brand Identity & Branding

A brand is a perception of your idea, your characteristics and what people associate with the sound of your brand name. Anything can be a brand ranging from companies, influencers to a person.

Brand identity are the visual and verbal elements that represent your company personality, values and voice/tone which turns your consumers into advocates for your business where you can’t reach.

It consists of a company name, logo, tagline, tone and anything which can separate you from your competitors.

Branding is the action which is taken to shape and propagate your brand identity onto the public.

If you already have a product, a business and anything that has been in the timeline for so long that it has accumulated opinions, you already have a crowd which knows how to separate you from the competition, it’s just your choice whether you want to get involved in that discussion.

Why Every Business Needs A Brand ?

It’s easier to shape what can be seen and it’s easier to modulate what can be heard and it’s easier to recommend what can be found. You can’t advocate for your business where the potential customers are discussing a solution, you have to let your Brand do the talking and get it recommended by someone who is involved in the discussion but isn’t on your payroll. Many brands try to hijack forums like reddit which can help them in the short term but if the brand seems like it is propagating into a discussion it isn’t being called in, it can do more harm than good as customers are now intelligent at least that is unless you are targeting fools.

Someone can recommend an alternative only if you have differentiated yourself enough to be an option because at the end of the day, you are selling the same thing for someone who is either visiting your sector for the first time or using an alternative for far too long.

A strong brand builds Trust, Recognition, Differentiation, Brand Loyalty and most importantly easier marketing as the team receives one template to propagate your idea instead of multiple ones which clash with each other.

A simple example can be your reaction to one viral video against your product, if you don’t acknowledge it, your competition definitely will and even though in an ideal world, they shouldn’t kick the guy who is down, it’s not an ideal world.

What Makes A Strong Brand?

In simple words – Your product and service quality.

In longer words – The same but ensuring everyone knows it, gatekeeping the process to reach that quality, you have kept your opinions in places where the discussion takes place and at the end, you have people advocating for your brand rather than just you. The last one is just a byproduct of having a great product.

Factors like consistency, tone of voice, positioning are just some of the various factors which determine the strength of your brand which is relative to the sector you are in.

For example, a local fast food chain logo in your city will be easier to identify than a builder whose revenue is multifold of the former as both brands are relatively investing in their branding in different places and even though both are D2C, the immediate appeal triggering hunger and urgency matters more for the yellow and red brand which signifies instant connection rather than any real estate logo which has to signify security and trust.

Branding Before Marketing

A simple definition between branding and marketing is the difference between Who/Why vs How i.e what you stand for, what your core values are and what are the promises you have made to the world. Marketing is just ways to deliver on those promises. Everything from SEO, Social Media, PPC,etc are just ways to amplify what you signify.

If you know what you stand for, it’s easier to share with the world what you want to be known for. The other benefit is It reduces the friction between different departments like finance and operations and decisions which get stuck between approvals can be solved together by looking at what the company values.

Marketing After Branding

Let’s talk about how a brand connects with marketing and how digital marketing needs a brand as a prerequisite and not the other way round. You can’t optimize for what you can’t formulate in one single text file.

One of the core marketing techniques called SEO is optimising your brand against your competitors for queries your customers are searching for on the web. You need good content to justify your good ranking both in Google and AI but both of them can’t recommend what they can’t visualise. A brand with different names and identity across the socials does more harm than good as this not only gives your brand a potential bounce rate everywhere but also confuses your existing customers who see right through your plans to expand but not improve.

Traditional Marketing doesn’t care much about the tone of voice as no one is deciding to invest their fortune based on a quirky comment by their favourite business online, as recommendation always still boils down to your product and services but to have a great brand along with an even better branding has no downsides.

People don’t search for logos, they search for solutions to their problems, they return when they trust a brand and become the brand advocate themselves if the relationship sustains for a longer period.

Note – You are in the first phase of 0 to 1 in marketing launchpad, a journey where we’ll cover everything from simple questions like “What is a brand” to “Getting Your First Audience”. To see where you currently are in the journey, Go to Marketing Launchpad.

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