Branding 101

What do you mean by a brand?

A brand is a particular company that produces certain products or provide certain services under a particular name. A brand makes a promise to its customers to provide good quality of products or services and do their best to keep up with their promises. Creating a brand makes your product stand out.

Importance of having a brand:

• Brand creates loyal customers.
• Brand allows you to charge higher prices on your services or products.
• People associate higher quality to branded products.
• Brand is both a strategic and financial asset.
• People trust branded products more.
• Creating a brand increases the value of your company.
• Investors prefer to invest more in brands than a regular business.

What is branding?

Naming a brand is not enough. Brand should have its own identity so it could stand out and clients can identify your brand, among the competitors. Services and experience you provide to your clients through your brand and promoting it with the help of creative advertisement is called branding.

Brand is the idea and branding is the vision.

Elements of branding for a successful brand:

• Define your brand

Defining your brand means the message you want to give to your clients. It’s like the voice of your brand. It includes the value your brand stands for, it’s DNA, how you will provide your service and the experience to your client, and how your service or product is going to make a difference in your clients’ life and distinguish your brand from your competitors.

• Brand personality

While creating a brand’s personality ask yourself if your brand was a person what kind of personality it will have? Mostly in small business or start-ups, brand personality is the owner’s personality. But it’s on you if you want your brand to have its own identity or not.

• Clients

You need to earn profit in order to run a business. We all want to target the maximum population, the more the better. But targeting the ideal client, who will purchase your products or services and will make purchase again in future, is really important.

• Name & Logo

Name and logo work as the identity mark which helps your clients to distinguish between your brand and other competitors’ brands. Name and logo are not the whole brand but it helps clients to connect with the brand and values it stands for. That’s why business owner emphasize more on the perfect name and logo.

• Brand Identity

How your customers are going to identify your brand, falls under brand identity. Brand identity is your logo, business card, website, etc. This includes the look, vibe, and voice of the brand. Every brand has certain Font/ Typography, Smell, Color story, Sight, Hearing, Touch, Tagline, Music, Packaging etc. which makes them different from their competitors.

• Mood board

A mood board is a collage of pictures and text in order to evoke a certain style and emotion for certain projects or events. Creating a mood board for a brand helps to set the mood and vibe of the brand, with the help visuals, which helps to understand what experience a brand wants its clients to experience. Mood board gives you direction and helps you to design your brand accordingly.

• Brand strategy

To achieve a certain long-term goal, a brand has to prepare a strategy. A well-planned and executed strategy helps to attract and managing clients, makes your brand noticeable, achieve long-term profit goals, etc.

• Re-branding

Changing the public image of a company or a brand is called rebranding. There are many reasons a brand should opt for rebranding. For example, when we start a brand, we have a vision, but over time our motive and vision may evolve and brand represents so much more than from when it started or when your business direction changed completely. You want to brand your business for future and not for business present position.

Why is branding important?

• A good branding helps you to win consumers’ trust.
• Branding helps to make your brand experience memorable.
• Branding helps your brand be recognized.
• Branding helps your brand to stand out in the market, among all your competitors.
• Branding helps you to make a good first impression.