If you’re in business, you’ve probably heard how important it is to focus on building your brand. It is the number one piece of advice given to entrepreneurs, and it is the number one selling feature for business coaches trying to boost their sales.
Does anyone ever tell you why branding is so essential? Do you sometimes feel like you’re going through the motions without knowing what purpose your work is serving? Here are the reasons why building a brand is so important.
Recognition
Consider some of the most world-famous brands you know. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are prime examples of strong branding. You don’t even need to see the name of the business to know who is being advertised; the colors and font style are often enough. This is because they have strong brand identities that have remained consistent since their conception.
Pepsi is another example of a company that has changed their logo and approach many times while maintaining their core branding. Your brand is your unique identifier that helps consumers recognize and remember you.
Trust
Having a strong brand shows that you have dedicated time, thought, and money to build your business. You aren’t a fly by night shop that will disappear once you have taken a customer’s money. A brand builds trust by being the foundation of a rapport. It is associated with how you perform, what things you promise, and what promises you deliver. It means that you still have a face of the business, even if you aren’t actively advertising.
Trust can’t be conveyed simply by having strong branding; it’s just a medium for delivery. Attach loyalty, conscientiousness, and strong customer service to your brand and customers will have no trouble recommending you to their peers.
Consistency
Building a brand means creating consistency across the various aspects of your business. It ensures that when Jimmy in sales is ordering high-quality, branded gear from Custom Tablecloths, it matches the logo, color, and overall messaging of your business. It gives everyone common ground from which to work. This ties back into recognition and trust.
Direction
Having a brand gives you direction. If you’re trying to convey certain values, building your brand around that mission will tell you where your business needs to go. It will narrow down the seemingly infinite directions you can take when operating a business and help you define a clear path forward.
When it comes to building your brand and identifying your mission statement and values, it becomes a bit of a “chicken or egg” situation. Once you create a mission statement and identify your values, you must then start building your brand to help you follow those goals. As you get closer to being in alignment with your mission, you can then fine-tune your branding to better fit your messaging.
Differentiation
Unless you have invented something completely new, you are likely facing a lot of competition from businesses with similar product or service offerings. Even if you have created something new, you compete for consumers’ disposable income. Is your product worth their money or should they give it to someone else for something else? They’ve lived this long without you.
Your brand sets you apart from similar businesses and offerings. If all other things remain equal, it helps consumers decide between you and your competition. Airlines are a perfect example of this concept. Ultimately, it will be your ability to get a customer over your competition that will make your business successful. Are these five reasons enough to convince you?