How Branding Can Be an Effective Marketing Tool for Your Business

Developing fantastic branding is a real challenge for organisations – this is because ultimately your brand is something that you only have partial control over. Ultimately, it is the public perception of your brand that matters. All you can do is put out messages that match your branding and apply those guidelines to all aspects of your products and your customer interactions.

This is important because high quality branding can be an extremely effective marketing tool. Here we take a look at some of the ways that your branding is affecting your marketing efforts, and the things that you can do to improve them. 

Source: Unsplash

Creating customer loyalty (and employee loyalty) 

Loyalty marketing is one of the most effective ways to drive businesses forward – and branding plays an absolutely crucial role in this process. Previous customers spend on average 67 per cent more than new customers too, so retaining your existing customers is vital. Branding allows your customers to easily associate you with your products and services.

For employees it is important to have a brand narrative to be proud of. Staff like to feel that they are part of a coherent business – and it helps them to better understand the work that they are doing and the organisation that they are a part of. When you can engage your employees with their role in the company you can expect better productivity – some research has shown that staff that are highly engaged are 38 per cent more likely to have above-average productivity.  

And while this kind of productivity is not a marketing tool in itself, having more efficient staff can provide you with more time within the business to carry out crucial work. 

Shows that your business is established and real

A business with high quality branding looks professional and well-established – this is a very important marketing tool, as it can provide your organisation with respect, trust, and authority. If your business has all of these things, but lacks great branding, it can come across unprofessional and presenting your organisation poorly. 

For businesses that operate online this means ensuring that the web presence you control always using the same brand colours, the right tone of voice, and puts out consistent messages. This especially across social media platforms – customers should always be able to tell instantly that they are looking at your business’ page.

For physical businesses you need to ensure that you are creating the right visual cues for both customers and staff – this means more than just having your logo on a sign, it also means investing in blinds, awnings, carpets, and more in brand colours.

 

Source: AQ Blinds

Confirms the credibility of products

For smaller businesses especially, there can be a challenge in convincing customers of the credibility of your organisation. So, when you have won customers round and have shown the quality of your products or services, it is vital that they are able to link this credibility to the rest of your company and any other products that you sell.

In this sense, branding is used as a marker of quality in what you are producing and shows your customers what they can expect from you. One of the biggest challenges in marketing is getting customers to understand why to choose your products over your rivals – the credibility that branding offers provides a good way to establish this. 

Source: M&S

Helps you deliver your marketing messages

Great brands are instantly recognisable from their messaging alone. Think about extremely successful campaigns such as Marks & Spencer’s ‘Not Just Any…’ marketing messages. Part of what makes them so relatable and understandable is the fact that they play off Marks & Spencer’s existing reputation for quality and luxury. 

When your marketing matches your branding and customers are able to relate to the messages that you are putting out, it helps the whole process enormously. 

Emotionally connects with your audience

One of the major advantages of great branding is that it can go beyond point of establishing familiarity and actually allows customers to have an emotional response to your organisation. Think about major brands like Apple, and the great feelings of loyalty and quality that can be achieved by simply adding an ‘i’ at the beginning of a product name.

Chester Avey
Business Growth Consultant
Chester Avey has a wealth of knowledge surrounding business growth and marketing. Chester enjoys sharing his experiences with other industry professionals through his writing.

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