What should be the main goal of branding?
When it comes to marketing, there are so many things that haven’t been perceived correctly. We are looking at an industry that is not at all fixed in the sense that the best practices always keep changing. With this in mind, whenever talking about branding goals, you will end up with different opinions.
Goal Depends On Marketing Type
There are two main types of marketing: responsive marketing and brand marketing. These two marketing camps often talk about how their tactics are better than those of the opposition when the truth is that all marketing firms are really good at the end of the day.
Responsive marketing always has a higher budget because company CEOs want to see responses. Branding marketers mainly think about other factors of interest. They care about the long run and want to build a brand, a name that is known by potential customers. On the whole, there is just one way to look at things: through brand marketing, you gain access to a better ROI as everything follows a more natural results line.
What we mean is that whenever you work with a professional branding marketer that has a proper local understanding of your business, the main goal is to increase brand awareness. When working with responsive marketers, you get fast results, but they are always based on the short term.
A Proper Understanding of Branding
Branding marketers will create brand rules, standards, and guidelines. Response marketers are frustrated as they need to respect such guidelines. While that is totally understandable, the goal of branding is all about increasing business through a more viral approach. The branders will want to make people be intrigued and ask about everything that goes on in the industry while trying to find out more about the company.
A brand is a concept that a company or a person holds about something, all based on accumulated experiences. Brand essence is basically a mix of tangible and intangible concepts, images, and words, all designed to create feelings. Branding has the ultimate role in creating brand essence.
The Goal of Branding
The truth is that it is not that important what techniques you use as long as marketing brings in good results. That is what counts the most at the end of the day. However, you should seriously consider working with a branding specialist. We say this due to the fact that branding is highly important in business.
A brand is more than just a logo. Branding is the image a company presents to the public. It colors all interactions, all marketing, and all user expectations. In many ways, branding is defined by people’s perceptions as much as it is by what your company produces or the service you provide. In other words, branding is critical to the success of every company and is involved in all aspects of a business. The following nine principles are a guide to effectively design your brand and take your business to the next level. Here are 9 proven brand design principles for startups to follow:
#1. Strategize
Before you take your brand public, you first need to decide what brand you want for your company. This decision is based on an understanding of the core concepts of the business: what value is your company providing customers or users, who are the customers or users, what relationship do you want between them and your business. This step requires intensive communication with your business and all parties that interact with that business to understand all the elements of your company. As much as possible, your brand should reflect all of these elements and represent the core of your business.
#2. Consistency is the Subsequent Key
Branding strategy is so important because consistency makes a big impact on your brand’s effectiveness. People will remember your brand better if you deliver a consistent experience to them. This doesn’t mean you can’t redesign your brand (brands should be fluid and adaptable), but rather that you should be aware of your brand’s history and use that to your advantage.
The key is that there should always be a vein of familiarity within a brand that reminds people they’ve used your services or product before. A company’s brand should also be consistent and apparent across different platforms, whether it be social media, the press, or the company’s own website. Target your audience, not every audience, and that should reflect on how you brand your business.
#3. Monitoring the Competitors
Early in the branding process, research not only your business and its target audience but the competition as well. Find out what your rivals are doing in terms of branding and then do something as different as possible. As much as you can, you want to stand out from competing companies. Part of the goal of branding is not being mistaken for something or someone else, so use a distinct brand to your advantage and make your business memorable.
#4. Create a Flexible Logo
Your logo is a pivotal slice of branding and needs to be versatile. An ideal logo works just as well as an icon on a smartphone as it does blow up on a billboard. A logo image is often the first thing a potential user sees, so make sure your logo is well-designed to create a good first impression. That being said, the logo is still only a part of branding, so don’t sink an undue amount of resources into creating the perfect logo.
#5. Simplicity is Durable
When designing your brand, exercise restraint with all elements of your brand. Simple designs are easier on the eyes and can create a powerful impression when done right. Limit your color scheme to only a few colors (black and white not included), and be sure to pick the right colors for your business. Similarly, limit your use of different fonts. Typography can be an effective marketing tool, but it should be used in moderation. When designing your brand, a useful exercise is imagining that it will last decades from now. The best brands aren’t trendy; they’re iconic.
#6. Transform Your Brand into an Adaptable Form
Building off the importance of consistency, your brand should provide a similar experience across all platforms. Users and customers should be able to identify their experience with your business as unique to your business regardless of whether they’re on a computer, a mobile device, or seeing a billboard or paper ad. To that end, it’s important to hire designers in all technological platforms your business is present on to craft a similar experience across the board.
Do you really need to hire an iOS designer if you already have an Android designer who says they can do iOS too? If you can afford it, then in short, yes. These days you can’t ignore either platform because they are both such a large part of the market, and odds are your Android designer is not very good with iOS. Yes, it’s expensive to hire designers, but it’s an investment in your brand that will soon return your investment with profit besides.
#7. A Great Brand is Balanced
One of the most important constituents of good branding is the absence of overcrowding. Effective brands minimize the number of words used to deliver an idea, whether it’s a catchy motto or more technical information about a business. Usability and clarity are two of the most important bits of web design, so use ample white space around words. When using text, keep it minimal as much as possible without losing cognition. You want your brand to easily convey the heart of your business without losing the attention of potential readers and buyers.
#8. Deliver Value and Integrity
The final piece of any great brand is that it delivers value to customers. There is no effective brand that doesn’t provide something of worth to consumers. At the end of the day, you are a business trying to make money by getting people to pay for something. The best way to do that is if that something is really good. To that end, integrity is a crucial element of success. If you tell people your business does a thing, do that thing, and do it well. The best way to build your brand is to give users and customers a positive experience, one that will lead them to trust your business more in the future.
#9. Customer Communication
Instead of concentrating and executing more on adding fancy icons and frames to your website, it’s better to pump up the quality of your customer service via proper communication. We all live in this marketing world by the belief that the customer is king. But the fact is, and many marketers agree that customer service is the queen.
However, we marketers love the new challenges, and thus, we see chatbots and voice bots usage on most of the websites. According to Squawk, a London voiceover agency, voice bots will sooner become the frontier of customer service with the help of advanced speech recognition technology.
Final Words
You want potential clients to know about you before they try your projects. Have as much patience as possible, and try to build the reputation of your brand. This is very important. If you do not do this, you will end up faced with a total loss of money in the long run. That is a lot more important than many believe as the income that is generated is so much higher.
Diverse people discussing about Branding -DepositPhotos
