Branding is important. We have all heard of its high-priority, but do we understand its value? Lots of online businesses crave to have a strong brand, but what does branding means for an online business?
Branding helps separate your business from your competitors in your niche. It helps convey your business into a specific term or emotion. It helps to connect your name or company name with a particular service or product.
Every business is out there to give a solution to a problem. Online businesses use branding to give acknowledge to their solutions. When you spread your solution to everyone you can, they’ll eventually understand which kinds of specific needs solves your company.
Ultimately, all you need to do is connect your brand with a solution you provide. This is called branding. In fact, that’s how people will get to your business. Your brand should represent people’s perception of your company’s reputation, customer service, advertising, and logo.
The definition of branding is strongly linked with giving an identity to products and services, assigning properties that are within and outside an offering, and differentiating a business from its competitors. Branding helps get people’s attention, build trust, and attract customers. It’s the first and lasting impression a visitor sees on your site. Therefore, take some time to think about what effect do you want to provide with your brand. What emotions, messages, and colors should your brand be associated with.
Simply as it is, your business’s reputation goes hand by hand with your business’s branding. As a consequence, a positive reputation reflects your brand and therefore customers may decide to choose you instead of others. Studies have shown that 90% of people use online reviews to find a business. A particularly effective way to build your brand is social media. People react to positive content and they’re most likely to engage with brands active on Instagram or Facebook.
Before we dive in to explain the necessity of branding for small businesses we must mention the elements of branding. A perfectly splendid brand should be a strong combination of attributes that affect our senses every time we experience contact with it.
We include these elements that represent a business’s branding:
- Name: Your business name used to identify your products or services.
- Logo: Symbol, element, sign, design crafted to recognize the business.
- Color: The color that a business is recognized by, and it’s mostly used for marketing purposes.
- Message: It can be the motto of the business and its important because it creates a value to set the brand positioning
- Vision: The business’s short term and long term goals to have a clear view of the future.
- Graphics: The illustrations used for marketing purposes. For example, a sticker in email messages.
- Sound: What kind of sound is used to strengthen the brand identity.
Bellow are our lists of reasons why branding is important for your online business.
Branding wrap ups your business or your personal story
If you want customers to love your business it is important that they hear what you have to say. Storytelling is a way of building relationships. Your brand story should create strong loyalty and drive your customers to invest in your brand.
In order to implement a powerful connection with your story you need to:
- Know your audience (discover who your target audience is)
- Position your brand (learn how to position your brand to have a clear differentiation from competitors)
- Look for your brand hero (he/she should prove that your product or service works well)
- Create to be shared (once you create a brand your customers love, they’ll share your content and look forward to seeing your next post)
Branding boosts recognition
It is very known that improving your brand is really worth it. Just ask Google if you’re not sure where your name lies in the list. In case your brand is really eye-catching for Google, you have the advantage to get new clients quickly, charge more for your offers, or even earn your clients’ loyalty.
But eventually, it’s not just about Google, it’s much broader than that. It’s about:
- Packing the essentials ( name and logo ) good ( create an authentic and unique story from your business’s value)
- Being generous about sharing your content (produce content that directly addresses your audience’s needs)
- Meeting your clients physically (if possible)( be even more creative and find out where your clients meet to find them there)
- Building a community ( put some effort to combine like-minded people to exchange acknowledge and passion from your niche)
- Engaging and making experiences ( deliver more than your audience’s expectations and then you’ll truly warm up their hearts)
However, it’s no secret that brand recognition and brand awareness go hand in hand. Brand recognition strategies are mostly used to keep your customer’s attention while brand awareness is about establishing a connection with your customers.
Branding makes an emotional connection
One of the criteria for making purchase decisions are definitely the emotions. Companies indeed want to dig deeper to know more about how can they come closer to the customers. It eventually takes a lot of time and it always goes with other elements of branding.
Establishing a good brand system means being really innovative and create new experiences that will help your customers to engage deeply with your brand. Small businesses have the advantage of building a brand into a specific niche that people will trust and make them feel good.
Imagine your business’s brand stands for something very important for your audience. What kind of emotions do you send them? Anger, happiness, fear? Create an emotion for your audience every time they see your brand. Because, remember that most people make purchasing decisions based on emotions, not logic.
Branding makes you stand out from your competitors
The key to success for small businesses is finding different ways to differentiate from their competitors. When doing so, businesses have to provide the best attribute if they want to be the best player in their niche. Try to experiment a little so you can find what works best for you.
Standing out from your competitors doesn’t just mean having a unique product concept. You need to sell your solution, not just the products or services. It is basically your whole marketing approach, or the 4 Ps in marketing, product, price, place, and promotion.
There are many options to be different from your competition:
- Provide really rich content (write a blog for your online business that will help your audience learn interesting things from your niche)
- Bundle your similar products ( group related items, and to make is more remarkable discount their price)
- Provide a better communication experience (people want to receive fast and more informative messages)
- Focus on personalization & Details ( provide better buying experience, add some extras)
- Provide better customer service ( try to be responsive and keep your audience informed)
Building great branding requires a lot of commitment. Take some time to carefully form your brand identity. If you don’t have enough inspiration, try to find some from your competitors. It’s always about filling the gaps.
Even as a new online business, you can really create an inspiring environment for your customers. Your brand should encourage. Your brand should make them emotional. Your brand should make their life easier. Let’s talk about your brand. What is your most important thing for your brand that makes you different from your competition?
In case you’re setting up a new online business, you might take a look at step 3 from our guide: Establishing Web Presence for Your Online Business. One of the first obstacles you will encounter is who to name your business and accruing a proper domain name.
Sources (6)
The importance of branding: why branding matters (99designs.com)
Why is Branding Important? (strategynewmedia.com)
6 reasons why a strong brand is important for your small business (deluxe.com)
Brand recognition or brand awareness: What’s the difference? (fabrikbrands.com)
Differentiate your business from the competition: 7 tips to success (agilecrm.com)
The secret to brand recognition: effective brand guidelines (articulatemarketing.com)
