Branding

Having a brand can differentiate your business from your competitors and drive customer loyalty.

And branding isn't just for multi-nationals with huge budgets: small and medium firms can create an effective brand by examining how the business works, what it means to its customers and acting on the results.

This briefing covers:

• What makes a brand.
• The business benefits of creating a brand.
• How to create and maintain a brand. What is a brand?

Brands can be defined in two ways. Firstly, a brand can be an identification or a mark that differentiates one business from another (through a name or a logo, for example).

Secondly, a brand symbolises how people think about your business.

Building a brand helps customers in their decision-making, creating a perceived knowledge of what they are going to buy — before they buy it.

Brands are based on three related criteria.

Confidence in a business, product or service doing exactly what the customer already believes it will do.

For example, a 24-hour convenience store brand can be based on customers' confidence that it will be open, whatever the time of day or night.

The emotional response of the customer to purchasing a product or service.

For example, a clothing retailer can create a brand based around making its customers feel good about what they wear, how they look, how good they feel about buying clothes from that shop and what it says about them to their peers.

A brand builds a unique personality for a business, and therefore attracts a defined type of customer.

Most importantly, branding is based on consistently rewarding the confidence and delivering the expected emotional response.

Why are brands like Apple, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Samsung and HSBC the top five fastest growing brands of 2006

There is extraordinary potential value in every brand.

A combination of having the vision to create a viable brand from the very beginning, committing to it and taking the initiative to legally protect it has made these mega-brands what they are today.

This article focuses on the value to small and medium size businesses of early prioritisation of brand strategy and diligent legal protection of their brands.

It will identify what makes a good brand and how to get the best out of legal trade mark protection.

What makes a good brand

Both the buying public and potential business partners form opinions on the basis of brands.

The main objects of any brand are to be identify the brand owner, establish customer loyalty and convey an appropriate image for the products or services being sold under it.

Any brand strategy must, of course, target its appropriate audience.

The strategy must also take account of the differences between selling products and selling services.

In the retail industry, for example, consumers may be more influenced by how a particular branded product is perceived by others.

On the other hand, with the provision of services the brand ay play a more important role in re-assuring the purchaser that the supplier is reputable or that the services are of a high standard.

A good brand must always be impactful and distinctive. When developing a successful brand, owners will focus on being different from their competitors.

From the brand name to colour schemes, images to phraseology, successful brands must aim to leave purchasers in no doubt as to what they’re buying. 

By concentrating such effort and resources on brand early on, a small or medium sized business will set up a platform on which to build reputation and goodwill as that business grows.

What is unknown today may one day become a household name.