Branding

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 believes it will do

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

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

Pulling the elements together

Once you have assessed your core competencies and your current brand positioning, start to define your brand identity:

Decide who you want to lead the process

Discuss your core competencies and brand values with employees and customers

Note your agreed core competencies and brand values, making sure that none of them conflicts with your brand stature

Extending the brand

A successful brand can offer opportunities for a business to grow. However, if you are introducing new products or services, you must make sure they are consistent with your existing brand values. Stretching a brand too far reduces its strength and can damage it:

If you are introducing new products or services, consider carefully if they fit with your core competencies and brand values

If your new products or services remain within your core competencies but not your brand values, you can consider a diffusion brand

If your new products or services fit neither your core competencies nor your brand values, you nmust brand them separately

Do I need a brand?

Every business has already got a brand, even if it doesn’t treat it as one. Your customers (and potential customers) already have a perception of what your

business means to them. Building a brand just means communicating your message to them more effectively so they immediately associate your business with their requirements. Brands can help

increase turnover by encouraging customer loyalty and are particularly useful if:

You are in a fast moving sector

You are in a crowded marketplace

You have no other points of difference

You want to add value to your business

First steps

Before you develop your brand identity, you have to assess your business, how it operates and the messages that you want to - and are able to - deliver consistently to your customers. You must be realistic right from the start. There are five key

areas to consider:

Work out your business’s, product’s or service’s core competencies

Assess who your existing and potential customers are and find out what they like and what they don’t

Find out how your customers and your employees feel about your business

Define how favourably your business is viewed by customers and potential customers - this is your perceived quality

Consider how far you can develop your business with its current customer perception without moving away from your core competencies. The amount you can change your offer is your brand stretch

Budgeting for the brand

A brand can cost as much or as little as you like. If you keep it simple, it can be confined to the cost of the time you spend creating it and getting your staff to work with it. These are the things you could

budget for:

Your time and the cost of your staff’s time

Reworking your company’s stationery, signage and packaging

Design and printing of sales support material

Advertising and PR

A branding agency to create and manage the brand for you

Having a brand can differentiate your business fromyour 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.

Creating a brand

Once you have worked out your core competencies, brand values, perceived quality and brand stretch, you can communicate them to your customers:

Build the message into everything your customer or potential customer sees and hears before they have any direct contact with your business

Make sure your staff understand the brand values and believe in them

Review your systems and make sure every point of contact that a customer or potential customer has reflects your brand values

Managing the brand

A brand will not work instantly - it will develop strength over time as long as your business consistently communicates and delivers your brand values to customers:

Keep all your staff involved in your brand and your business

Monitor your customers’ response to the brand regularly and continually review how your brand values are communicated to them

Once the brand is developed within your own business and your existing customers, you can use it to attract new customers

Names and taglines

You don’t have to create clever names to have a brand - you can use your own name, for example. But what you call your business, product or service is important. Make sure:

The name suits your existing and potential customers’ tastes

Your customers refer to your business, product nor service the same way you do

It doesn’t clash with your brand values or core competences

Some brands have taglines - a subsidiary line used to reinforce the brand message. It can help, particularly if the name of your business or product doesn’t describe what you do. If you want to create a tagline, base it on your core competencies