Branding - often described as: "a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies a seller's goods or services as distinct to those from other sellers."
All brands, no matter how big or small, need to maintain a consistent brand image. The branding and image of a business is the core representation of an organisation and will highly influence customer attitudes towards the company.
Branding can represent the values of a company whilst giving a brand personality. This is why it is crucial for branding to be consistent throughout all marketing channels, allowing the business to become recognisable and memorable.
Google presents an excellent example of how strong branding can create brand recognition. This is achieved through the thoroughly consistent use of typeface and colouring, allowing the company to be easily recognisable.
Quick Tips For Branding
Read our quick tips on how to ensure consistent branding and how to position for your customer base.
- Know what your customer wants and expects from your company and reflect this within your branding e.g. if you are a children's party organiser bright colours and fun images may be most effective, whereas a high end technology company may use minimal imagery and a monochrome colour palette.
- Ensure that language is consistent throughout all channels e.g. if you are known to use casual, conversational language, ensure you use it throughout all company channels to avoid confusing customers. An example of this is seen within ethical clothing brand Rapanui, who market themselves as a casualwear brand and so use casual jargon such as 'awesome', 'stuff' and 'yoof' (youth). This is used across all channels, including the company blog, website and social media.
- Know which channels your customers use the most and ensure they are regularly updated with relevant content. This will ensure your company remains relevant by keeping customers interested. For example, if your customers are primarily online, it is important that you have a responsive website and regularly updated social media channels.
- The logo, signage, print and text face should all complement each other to create a strong brand image whilst giving your company stronger brand equity. These elements will become your brand's identity and should be applied to everything you produce. The colour palette and typeface of Coca Cola is used on everything it produces, allowing the brand to become recognisable.
- Develop a catchy tagline to aid in memorability e.g. Red Bull's "it gives you wings" or Apple's "think different."
- Create a brand guidelines document which stores all of the above information, including: typeface, brand colour, logos and taglines which can be accessed by all of your marketing team in order to give universal branding guidelines for the company.
Branding should be a top priority in order to differentiate yourself from other businesses in a competitive marketplace and give your brand a personality which your audience identifies with.
To do this, you first need to define your brand.
