Let’s talk about branding…

As a business, you’ll know how essential it is to promote yourself with essential branding. Whether it’s on or offline, spreading the word is the key to making those all important sales. And with Christmas on the horizon, how do you make sure your marketing efforts are working hard enough, and you’re standing out from your competitors?

It’s all in the branding…

Branding is more than just a logo. In fact, it’s one of the most effective strategic marketing tools you can employ.

Don’t believe us? Think about Apple. Through careful branding, they’ve successfully managed to build a premium brand, enhance their core value and build a proposition that’s based around quality – which means that their products are charged at a premium price – something consumers happily accept, purely because they want to be affiliated with the brand.

Ok, so you might not be ‘Apple’ but that doesn’t mean you can’t employ similar techniques to help you replicate success with your own branding. First of all, get a handle on how and why branding is so essential….

If you’ve already nailed a strong brand presence, read about how you can host a sale without damaging your reputation, here.

1) Stand out from the competition

Capturing attention is key in today’s competitive markets. If your marketing looks like everyone else’s, you’re not going to stand a chance. This is where your branding comes in. You might have exactly the same offer as your competitor, but if you brand and package your offering differently, you’ve got more of a chance to stand out.

Make sure that your brand position shines through, regardless of your offering, promotion or sale. Throughout the year, you may use your brand colours and logo carefully to position yourself as a high-end brand, for example. If it comes to sale season and you use neon colours and tacky imagery to promote your sale, you’re going to undo all your hard work, as this will negatively impact perceptions of your brand.

Remember that your branding helps to make your business more unique and memorable, which directly affects sales. The more control marketers have on the positioning and perception of their brand, the more they can control their pricing.

2) Creating trust through consistency

Remember what we just said about undoing all your hard work? Well, consistency is key to maintaining a brand identity. Consumers only recommend brands that they trust, and recommendations are key for making sales. A key factor in building trust is consistency.

A carefully constructed branding strategy with strict brand guidelines will help you build credibility, relationships, and eventually trust.

Your branding and brand identity should reflect the experience your customers have when they buy from you. Let’s go back to Apple again. When you visit their website, you’re presented with a smooth, sleek experience, which perfectly matches their branding. When you visit an Apple store, you’re presented with minimal decor, simple layouts and a above all a seamless shopping experience. This isn’t by accident. Everything about Apple is dictated by its branding, which in turn creates a harmonious and seamless customer experience. And, with each good experience a customer has, their trust in a product is reinforced.

This is why the credibility of a product or service is usually dictated by its branding.  

3)  Building and ultimately maintaining loyalty

Your ultimate end goal should be to build a loyal customer base, who will keep coming back to shop with you, over and over again. It’s well known that its cheaper to get existing customers to shop with you again than it is to find new ones and encourage them to purchase.

By building loyalty through a consistent brand experience, you will not only help to drive baseline revenue through consistent sales but also acquire customers who will become advocates for your business and brand, leading to word-of-mouth recommendations, which are priceless in terms of advertising and marketing.

How do you maintain your brand identity? Let us know in the comments, or tag us in your branded creations using #ProudlyPrinted.

Find everything you need to boost your business with key branding essentials at Printed.com. Shop the range now.

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