Understanding Business Branding – Part 1

With so much talk about branding these days, it’s only fitting that we discuss the following questions:

• What is branding?
• What are the benefits of branding?
• What are the goals of branding?
• What are the elements of branding?
• How does personal branding differ from business branding?
• How does one brand their business?

These questions and more will be answer in our series on business branding.

So far, the best answer that I’ve come across to the question, “what is a brand?” is depicted in the following image:

As Reid Neubert explains in his video “Why Branding is a Critical Business Strategy”, a brand is more than a promise. People’s experience with the brand will either validate that promise or contradict it. Hence, the definition – a promise of quality wrapped in experience.

Laurence Vincent, brand strategist and author of the book Brand Real, concurs and states:

Based on these definitions of a brand, we shall define branding as the process of promoting a promise of quality AND encouraging experiences that validate that promise.

In the above video, Neubert also highlights some reasons why branding is so important. Branding…

• adds tremendous value
• can open doors
• makes buying decisions easier
• shortens the sell cycle
  
  

Other benefits of EFFECTIVE branding include the fact that it…

• increases brand awareness and memorability
• improves brand trust and loyalty
• heightens the ease and frequency of recommendations/referrals
• lifts branded products/services above their unbranded competitors
• enables the use of premium price points
• reduces barrier to the introduction of new products/services
• lowers marketing expenditure
  
  

Once you understand what branding is and the benefits your business can derive from it, the next step is to develop and implement an effective branding strategy. That will be covered in the next articles in this series on understanding business branding.

Take a look at our “What and Who of Business Branding” board on Pinterest for some more insights.

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