The Importance of Branding: 7 Reasons Why Small Business Needs It

April 8, 2021 By Tina Circelli Comments are Off branding

What is branding and why is it so important? As a small business, one of your first goals is to grow your client base. To do that, you need to help clients find you and learn more about your products. That is a big part of any digital marketing or advertising campaign. Yet, once they find you, you want them to remember you, come back to you time and time again, and tell others about your company. That’s where branding comes in. The importance of branding is simple – with it, people remember and trust you to meet their needs.

What Is Branding?

Branding, by definition, is the marketing process of creating a name and logo or design for a company that allows others to identify the company from just that logo. Brands help one company to stand out from another. They allow customers to know what to expect when they buy a product or service from one brand compared to the next.

With branding, including in a digital atmosphere, you’re creating a way for people to remember you and come back to you. It also helps customers to know what to expect from you if they buy from you again. It helps your company to stand out from your competitors. A solid brand also has differentiating features – what helps your company stand out from the competition. All of these factors help to drive company recognition, enabling you to sell more product or book more services with or without additional advertising spend.

Branding is not just a logo on the side of a building. It’s detailed and comprehensive. It is used in various types of advertising including across all marketing efforts. There’s more to it, though. Your brand encompasses every part of your business model. It applies to:

Your digital marketing
Customer service
Reputation management
Advertising
Logos and colors
Promotional products

All components of branding work together to create a single, unified statement that people recognize and react to positively. Every part of your business should be represented by a single brand.

Why Is Branding Important?

The importance of branding may be hard to recognize at first. You may already believe you have a name, logo, and strategy for marketing. Your brand goes further than that. When you create a brand, you define your company in the eyes of others. You also get to control what people think about your company, or how they see your business if you develop and build your brand up properly.

But still, why is branding important to your small business? There are a few key reasons for this:

#1: Branding Attracts Customers to Your Company

Branding is a big part of the reason people choose to work with one company or another. A solid, easy-to-recognize brand can help to build a customer base. This happens for several reasons. First, a brand is comprehensive enough to tell a story. People learn about the brand, are attracted to it, and want to learn more about it. They typically will gather information about the brand – and hopefully engage with it – and then want to use that company’s services.

Brands help to create a positive impression on customers from the first moment they are introduced to it. If the brand is well developed, the would-be customer wants to engage and sees the brand as dependable.

#2: A Good Brand Builds Trust in the Industry

Another key reason to build a strong brand is that it helps to create trust within your industry. It helps to build trust with customers as well as would-be customers. Once the brand is well recognized, people know what to expect from it. When given the choice of purchasing between a brand a customer recognizes and one they do not – many customers choose to go with what they know. Branding can help to increase a customer’s willingness to pay more for a product that they know and trust than one they don’t recognize.

#3: Branding Increases the Value of a Business

A strong brand is recognized by customers. As a result, that brand is worth something in terms of the company’s overall worth. The goal of branding is to generate sales – both right now and in the long term. As customers do that, it helps to build the company’s value in the industry. If you were to seek out a partner or even sell the company down the road, having a well-established and recognized brand can help increase the value of the company. That’s because customers already know and trust it – it is not an unproven organization.

#4: Branding Represents a Promise

The importance of branding can also be seen in the form of a promise. That is, when a product or service is provided under your brand, customers have expectations. That promise you are making to the customer is valuable and essential to maintain. That works both ways – a brand helps your customers to know what to expect. At the same time, it holds you and your employees to a specific standard in what you are providing and how you provide it. That consistency in itself can help to build success within your organization.

#5: Branding Builds an Emotional Connection

What brands do you know and love personally? Most people have a few that they respect highly and seek out whenever a new product or service is launched. A component of that seeking behavior is having an emotional connection to the brand. Brands create connections and engagement opportunities for customers.

When you have a solid reputation within your company and an image that’s easy to recognize, people start to support you in many ways. They buy from the company, but they also brag about the company and tell their friends about you. With proper branding, marketing, and engagement, companies can create lasting impressions that build life-long customers. That’s one of the highest valued customers you can develop.

#6: Branding Helps Build Employee Pride

Who doesn’t want to work from a top brand, one that is well respected and easily recognized? Some of today’s largest tech companies, such as Apple and Microsoft, are recognized for their customer products, but also for the brand. Employees seek out opportunities with companies like this because they want to be associated with a brand they can trust.

Employees are satisfied and harder working for companies that have an established brand. They know what to expect. They feel as though they belong – and even are a part of the company and its success.

#7: Branding Helps Businesses to Grow

Another way to see the importance of branding is to consider what it can do for your company over time. With a strong brand, your business is more likely to grow and thrive. It can help to create more revenue as more people get to know it and tell others about it.

Branding, such as on social media, creates an opportunity for your business to reach new people. When you have a marketing campaign that’s built to enhance your brand and create engagement with customers, you’ll be able to reach new people. That helps to build your company’s footprint online and overall. Branding also allows you to spend less on your marketing strategy over time because your customers know you, respect you, and reach out to you when they need your services.

What Happens Without a Brand?

Building a brand helps your company to become known. It helps you to grow your bottom line. It also helps to encourage people to stick with you long term. If you did not have a well-defined brand, what type of first impression would you make? Would customers remember you and the service your company provided the next time they need what you offer? Or would they forget about you?

While that may seem a bit harsh, a good brand stands out for positive reasons. It also ensures that a company can rely on you to provide a very specific service in the right way.

To reach this level, it becomes essential to build your brand based on your company’s culture, goals, interests, and mission. A comprehensive brand is more than just a set of words. It is a visual presence as well as a specific style. It is also a unique statement about your company and all it has to offer.

Building a brand requires a number of steps including defining what your brand should be. From there, you need to create a visual depiction of your brand, work to build a digital marketing campaign around it, and then utilize that brand image across all touch-points. It’s a process that yields numerous results, especially when pulled off successfully by a trained team.

Ready to Invest in Branding?

At Website Design Kingston, our dedicated team of specialists can help you define your brand and implement it into your digital marketing strategy. The importance of branding is clear – it is what defines small business long-term success. By working with our professionals, we can help you build a brand that you’re proud of and one that delivers results consistently. Learn more when you contact us today.