1. Setting you apart from your competitors
The first thing that a great brand can do for you is create a difference between your company and your competitors. Promoting your product is a great thing, however, if you manage to raise your brand awareness and brand recognition through the roof, what you get is something much better. In time, you won’t even have to put that much effort into various product placement campaigns, seeing as how your reach and your reputation will be able to do this by default.
2. Build brand loyalty
Another thing you can do through branding is form a loyal customer base. People who put their trust in a single brand become more than just consumers, they become a community. This “us versus them” mentality can soon become your closest ally when it comes to return customers and business consistency. Just look at the iOS vs. Android fan bases or Pepsi vs. Coke fans, which are zealously loyal to these brands, regardless of the products they push. In fact, these people don’t even really care about the characteristics as much as they do about the logo, which is a thought that can be quite advantageous for an entrepreneur.
3. The rule of seven
The next trend you need to understand is that in order for a person to become a customer, they need to encounter your brand on at least seven different occasions. This is the so-called rule of seven. One of the easiest ways to ensure this works to your benefit is to do some branding with the help of promotional materials. For instance, with branded items like custom T-shirts, hats with logos on them or even marketing vessels such as promotional lanyards, you can make every single person wearing it into a mobile billboard. In this way, you will surround your customers with your corporate traits and symbols and get to that necessary point of familiarity much sooner.
4. Increase shareholder value
As for the value of your company, branding adds a bit more weight to it as a whole. The problem with this is the fact that such things are difficult to quantify or put on paper. However, one survey claims that a strong brand might amount to about 70 percent of the entire shareholder value. You need to keep in mind that in order to build a strong brand, you don’t have to invest that much money. In other words, if increasing your shareholder value is the end goal, then creating a solid branding strategy gives the optimal ROI.
5. Increasing the relevance of your brand
The next thing you need to understand is that every person has a priority list they subconsciously reexamine when deciding how to spend their money. Sure, the number one priority is something they will always set aside some money for but how about the No. 5 or No. 9 priority? While this still might be something a customer wants or needs, will they be willing to go out of their way to pay for that? Of course not. Nevertheless, by increasing the relevance of your brand, you can help your products climb this priority list with a much greater ease.
6. Build trust
Finally, branding helps you build trust with your customers, which is vital if you expect them to entrust you with their money and loyalty. You see, subsequent purchases are often bigger in size. The best way to explain this, as well as the fact that 8 percent of regular customers generate 40 percent of profit, is to say that a first purchase is a sort of a test. Here, they’re not just testing your products but your check-out process, your customer service and your behavior as a company. Needless to say, if you pass this test, you can look forward towards more lucrative cooperation in the future.
Conclusion
As you can see, branding benefits your business on every level possible and it is something you will have to tend to at one point, regardless of the size of your operations or the specifics of your industry. These six reasons are only here to give you more incentive to double your efforts.
Guest article written by: Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and regular contributor to Technivorz.