Professional Partner
What is branding? How to build a brand? Why is branding important?
These are some questions business owners may have when stumbling across branding and how it is such a powerful tool.
In this article, I am going to go into a deep dive in the importance of branding for an online business and how it can skyrocket your business in 2021.
Why is Branding So Important?
Did you know that according to Oberlo's branding statistics, 64% of consumers will buy into a brand rather than a business just because of its consistency on social media?
Also, did you know that it takes around 0.05 seconds for a customer to form an opinion on your brand from your website?
Consumers just prefer a well-branded business over one that isn’t. Facts don’t lie.
So taking these facts into account, a business must have an excellent website design in order to entice the customer within 0.05 seconds and their social media must have consistency posts to increase the chance of consumers becoming customers.
Establishing a properly branded business will give you the best chance to gain new customers and increase your conversion rate as well as countless other benefits such as an increase in awareness and trust.
What is a Brand and How Do You Build a Brand?
The google definition of branding is “The promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design”.
However, the truth is that branding is much more complicated than this, but to break it down into bite-size pieces, branding is split into 3 fundamental principles. Definition, communication and consistency.
Let us break these down.
The 3 Principles Of Branding
Definition
The difference between a cookie-cutter business and a branded business is that a branded business defines how it wants to be perceived by its customers. A well-branded business can do this by defining their values through their business.
Passionate about preventing climate change? Use this as a chance to show this through your brand, you can do this by providing 100% recycled materials or by lowering your carbon footprint.
Pushing values through your business helps your business stand out and gives your business personality. Your business becomes more relatable to certain audiences.
All of this builds long-term trust between your business and your ideal customer base, which in turn means more money in your pocket.
Communication
Communication is not only one of the most important skills in life but also in a business. A business must have excellent communication skills in order to entice the correct audience and to convert this audience into customers.
Examples of excellent communication in a business are having proper copywriting throughout all online platforms, such as websites and social media. Another example of good communication is having an impeccable customer service system.
A business can do this by making sure that customers can always reach out to you and that customers don’t hesitate to contact you. Don’t make your customers feel like they’re a nuisance if they contact you, in fact, welcome your customers with open arms. Also make sure that your business is present on every platform, Instagram, Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Yell, Yellow Pages, Snapchat etc.
This will increase your brand awareness.
Consistency
This is by far the most important principle from the three. Being consistent shows your audience that you are here for the long run and in turn leads them to trust you more. Consistency also builds your reputation in your industry and therefore making you more relevant. So, how can your business be consistent? There are 3 main things that your business needs to be consistent in:
- Your message - consistently conveying the message your business has will make sure it is present in all online channels and no matter which platform a person finds you on they understand the message you are conveying. For instance, a person who finds you on Google and a person who finds you on Instagram should have the same answer when asked “what message does “X” business portray”. If the one person has a different answer it is either they misinterpreted your message, so your copywriting isn’t correct, or they were portrayed a different message, this means the message wasn’t consistent. Always ensure your message is correctly copyrighted to avoid misinterpretation and always ensure your message is consistent across all online platforms. AirBnb are perfect example of this, you can view an article that dives deep into their success here.
- Your design - This is pretty self-explanatory. Use the same colours, fonts, language and tone across all online platforms.
- Your content - Always ensure that you are pushing out high-quality content that will be of value to the consumer. Don’t be hesitant to give this content for free, especially if your business just started and doesn’t have a reputation
Conclusion
In the past, a person could easily start a business because not many people were doing it, it wasn’t difficult to stand out from the crowd because the crowd was virtually non-existent. However, now in 2021 with business industries becoming more and more saturated every single day, a person nowadays cannot just start a business like the olden days.
Like everything in life, you have to adapt. In these times, the only way to truly become successful and last longer is to establish a brand. A brand is more likely to survive the test of time and the earlier you do it the better. This is because in the future it is going to become harder and harder to establish a brand due to over-saturation and therefore competition.
Start small, maybe by upgrading your website for better UI/UX. And slowly implement the 3 principles of branding and you will establish a long-lasting brand in no time.
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