How building branding awareness leads to business success

Building brand awareness is the measure of how well your audience recognized, desires and trust your product or service.

In order to find out how branding can lead to your business success, you first need to know exactly what branding is.

The Definition of Branding

Branding is everything that your customer sees and thinks about your product, service and business. It’s that unquantifiable value of your business in respect to your customer.

Branding is something that makes your business unique. It identifies your business with a certain product or name. In other words, when a person hears a certain name or sees a certain symbol, they automatically think of your business.

A successful brand is one that is known by as many people as possible. Many people know of certain items just by looking at a symbol of them. There are many websites where you can take a test to see if you know a company by its brand. Check the internet to find some of them. A brand is what you want to make your company succeed.

How to Develop Your Company Brand

The first step to building brand awareness is to determine and define what you are branding. Is it the name of your company, or a certain product you offer your customers? Once you have decided on what to brand, you will need to look at your competition to see if your brand is unique enough to beat them out.

Your brand is a reflection of your business. If it is the name, such as an insurance company, you want your name to be something that people can remember. It should say something about your business model or core values. If it is a product you are looking to brand then, make the product something that everyone believes they have to have.

No matter what you are looking to put out as your brand, you want to create as much need for it as possible. This increases your sales, thereby, making your business successful. Many companies have trademarked their brands to protect them from competitors. This is a good idea if you want to keep your brand unique. No one will be able to create a likeness of your name or product without your consent. This is how many of the bigger companies have remained successful.

Establish Your Brand By Creating an Effective Company Logo

Effective company logo design captures the essence of your organizations’ message and persona providing iconic presence when building brand awareness.

A logo personifies and embodies the presence of a brand. The best logos have common characteristics that seek to accomplish a goal.

Social Media Today reports that a company logo must actively promote a brand without necessarily being the main focus. A successful logo defines a brand, making it stand out from the sea of generic corporate sameness.

Brand Directory reports the top 10 most successful companies as follows:

• Apple
• Google
• Microsoft
• IBM
• Wal-Mart
• Samsung
• GE
• Coca Cola
• Vodafone
• Amazon

The average viewer is able to pick out common themes, ideas, and design choices in any of the company logos of all these major companies. If a company desires to create an effective company logo, there is no better place to look than the companies which have mastered their global presence through logos which spearhead their brand to success.

A few key strategies in building a great logo will make the brand far more powerful.

1. Color Balance

Colors accentuate certain emotional responses. As a general rule of thumb, red evokes excitement, orange evokes natural and organic, purple is youthful, white is pure and clean, and pink is feminine and warm, reports SigGraph. These types of colors accentuate a certain desired emotional response, even in subtle ways. Choose a color that matches the brand’s overall style, demographic, and image.

A brand is often built on a single color, and the logo itself should rarely exceed two colors, notes Market Storm. On a purely financial level, more colors equates higher cost for printing. But on an aesthetic level, more than two colors can easily become distracting and convoluted. Simplicity reigns in logo design. This is why the Logo Garden logo design, for example, is as efficient in both a social media and physical format. It employs a single color graphic (green) over a blue logo mark. It also uses white space to establish a clean and pure look.

2. Negative Space

Many logos employ a single color in their repertoire and take advantage of negative space for a fuller effect. These logos, as noted at Logo Design Love, include the WWF panda, the Dolphin House simple letter type, and the single graphic for Carrefour. These logos use the non-existent white background to create an enthralling effect. By using less, these logos actually employ more.

3. A Brand Appropriate Style

The Rio Olympics are energetic, exciting, and vivid. The company logo for the brand consists of many swirling colors and a font type that is left of center. Many companies are catering their logo to a mobile platform. A circle design with one or two colors, as seen with the Studio 7 logo, is important for businesses that are tech-based and accessible on a mobile platform, as CreativeBloq.com points out. Cater the logo to the brand’s overall emotions.

The modestly chaotic Rio Olympics brand matches the brightly swirling logo, as well as the basic circle design that matches the tech firm. DC Comics is based upon the superhero genre. It’s no surprise to see a logo that is, quite literally, the DC logo being half revealed in a ‘lift off the sticker’ type of style. It perfectly accentuates the main aspect of the brand in a bright and clever way.

Again, these are just a few key considerations when developing a great logo. Logo design for brand impact is an art form in itself which typically integrates many different considerations the key ones being the right amount of research, strategy and creativity.

The Difference Between a Brand and a Logo

Many business people have a difficult time understanding the distinction between a brand and a logo. They feel that if the logo is on all of their products, paperwork, business cards, and their building that they have established a brand. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and because many do not fully understand this concept it is quite likely that they are missing out on some very profitable opportunities.

While a logo is an easily recognizable design that may or may not include the company’s name, symbol, and trademark it is merely the visual representation of the company’s message and position in the commercial world. A well-designed logo can communicate your brand’s message to the consumer. However, it is not a brand. According to Bourn Creative,

“A brand encompasses the positioning, the messaging and communications, the visual design, the target market, the voice, the marketing and promotions, the presence, and the experience any individual has with the business, product or service online, offline, or in person.”

In short, a brand represents every interaction the company may have with the outside world. It is a communication strategy that allows your business to share your passion and experience with the community. It represents who you really are, what you do, and your reasons for doing it.

Once a business appreciates the importance of a strong branding they are better prepared to take the next step in communicating this information to the public.

The Branding Audit

One of the first things that must be done to establish a recognizable brand is to determine the public’s view of your organization at the start. Start by evaluating your company’s strengths and weaknesses and identify problem areas that may need to be restructured. As you do your analysis it is important for you to determine which areas need to be revamped completely, adjusted somewhat, and those that are strong enough to keep in place.

A successful branding should be developed from both the internal and external approaches in order to be effective. This is clearly explained by The Ignition Consulting Group,

“It is based on the point of view that successful brands are built from the inside out. While conventional branding research look mostly at one audience – consumers – a complete brand audit assesses relationships with all of the important stakeholders of the brand, including both internal and external audiences.”

Once you’ve completed your brand audit you need to evaluate its mission.

Decide on The Mission of Your Brand

Next, you’ll want to decide on the brand’s promise. This is what your company will promise to the people it will be interacting with. People develop respect for a brand when it delivers on the promises made. Because of this it is important to have a clear-cut vision of those commitments and how they will act on them.

To decide on the Brand Promise, consider the value of the company to its customers and to its competition. You may also need to consider the values and beliefs that will be used to support that brand. It is important that you fully understand the message you want to deliver in your brand and delivering on your promise is the key to high brand recognition. You don’t want to promise more than you can deliver and you don’t want to undervalue your business either. These things take some very careful consideration, so don’t rush through this process.

Once you’ve collected all of your information, make sure that everyone in the company is willing to get behind the promises you make. Everyone should be in full support in order for the branding to be successful.

When and Where To Market Your Brand

Marketing is the most important part of building brand awareness. This what allows you to reach as many people as possible, but also shaping what message these people take in.

Marketing your business can take many forms. If you own a brick and mortar building and store, maybe you could advertise in your local newspapers to let people know who and where you are. Signs placed strategically throughout your neighborhood and on your storefront is another way you can advertise your business.

If you have business online, then a great way to do this is by developing a good website and having positive reviews posted on several job portals. If you contract with a search engine, there are different tiers that you can go into. The more money you pay for the service, the better your standing on the search site. Your website can be pushed to the top of the search engine by contracting at a higher tier.

Search engines are the primary way for you to start building brand awareness.

Simple Branding Tips for Increasing Brand Awareness through Search Marketing

As a small business owner, your brand is everything. It’s the culmination of all of your hard work and dedication that encourages consumers to purchase your product or service. When a prospective customer sees or hears one of your brand elements, they’ll immediately associate it with the product or service you offer. While there are dozens of different ways to increase brand awareness, the most effective solution is search marketing.

Here are a few very simple branding tips to improve your search visibility:

Branded Domain Name

If you haven’t done so already, scoop up the domain name for your brand (e.g. yourbrand.com). It should come as little-to-no surprise that Google, Bing, Yahoo and even the smaller search engines view domain names as a ranking signal, meaning you are more likely to achieve a top search ranking for keywords associated with your brand if you register and use your brand’s domain name.

Don’t limit yourself just to the dot com, but also register the dot net and dot org, as well. These are generally viewed as the most essential domain extensions. While Google has said that it treats all extensions the same, numerous studies have found dot com, net and org to yield the most value in terms of SEO.

Web Content

Of course, the single most important step towards increasing brand awareness in the search results is to publish high-quality content on your brand’s website. Doing so will encourage search engines to scan and crawl your pages, which should in turn boost your site’s search ranking. And when your site ranks higher in the search results, it will take up more “search engine real estate” for terms related to your brand. Just remember to include brand-specific terms in your content, such as your business’s name, tagline, address, email address, etc.

PPC Marketing for Branded Terms

If you really want to go the extra mile, try purchasing pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements for your brand name. There are several benefits associated with bidding on your brand name, one of which is the simple fact that it creates a new listing in the search results. Furthermore, brand terms usually have minimal competition; thus, they cost a fraction of the price of “regular” keywords.

Many people feel that paying for branded terms simply cannibalizes their organic traffic. There have been plenty of studies that disprove this common misconception. There are many reasons that paying for branded terms can benefit your business here are a few more if you don’t feel convinced:

According to a Think With Google study focusing on B2B sites:

• 12 percent of conversions come from paid branded terms.

• Branded keywords have 2X higher conversion rate.

SwellPath ran an interesting study to see how much traffic they were losing or cannibalizing by bidding on branded terms to find that they generated 40% more valid traffic by bidding on their branded terms. WOW!

Google Alerts

Google alerts is an invaluable tool for tips on increasing brand awareness in the search engines. This free-to-use service will send notifications to your email anytime your brand name is mentioned online. By identifying new “mentions” of your brand, you can respond to customer reviews, questions, comments and more in a timely manner.

While search engines and online shopping channels provide many great ways to reach a lot of people, there certainly are challenges to defining your brand.

The aim of any business/retailer is to establish its brand as the preferred selection. Positioning your brand is strongly influenced by your value proposition. This proposition can be defined at different levels, which may include one or more of the following examples:

• Price
• Value
• Quality
• Exclusivity
• Premiumness
• Specialty
• Legacy
• Expertise

Maintaining or Changing Your Brand

It is imperative that you keep your brand as up to date as possible. This may mean that you need to make changes to it from time to time. If it is a product that you have branded, you will need to keep it relevant in order for it to remain ahead of the competition.

In the case of electronics, for instance, technology has developed at such a fast rate that you will need to keep up with the latest developments in order for your product to even remain compatible with other technologies.

If your brand includes the name of your company, you should look at whether or not it is still significant in the business world. Often times meanings and associations change with your audience and people in general. What once was very popular could now be a has been. This can have a direct impact on your brand message and how it is received.

If for any reason you business was involved in some kind of legal action, a name change may be necessary in order to repair your reputation. The reputation of a business is the most important aspect and if it has become tarnished, it may not continue to succeed.

The business world is a very complicated and difficult one to be in and without the right tools, your business could easily fall into the category of one of the lost ones. Many businesses have failed because of poor branding or marketing and you do not want this to happen to you.

No one goes into business to fail and you want to do everything you possibly can to make it succeed. Finding out what your customers want and need is the key to making your brand a success. Maintaining a good name and reputation will keep you there.

Listening to what others are saying about you and making changes when and where you need to will help you to keep your business at the top of the market. Learning all about the type of business you are looking to run and how to understanding how to market and sell it is essential.

Your knowledge on the subject of your company should always be up to date and knowing all you can about your products will also make your brand better. Having a good working team behind you is also important as they will be representing your brand and they can either make or break you.

Hiring the best technicians to service your products and having an excellent customer service department is important. Employee happiness is the best thing you can have in your company and giving back to them will keep them working for you for many years.

Creating a brand is not easy!

It involves careful introspection of every part of your company, its values and its attributes.

“Companies that have clearly defined brand promises and values and attributes have strong frameworks for decision making, and using these frameworks helps develop the brand’s strength and worth to the organization.”

It may be difficult but the rewards are well worth the hard work you’ll put into it.