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Branding is an incredibly important tool for creating and building your business. Large companies have been benefiting from branding ever since people first started selling things to other people. Branding made those businesses big.
If you’re a small business owner, you probably imagine that small companies are different and don’t need branding as much as large companies do. Not true. The truth is small businesses need branding just as much, if not more, than large companies.
Perhaps you’ve thought about branding, but assumed you’d need millions of dollars, euros or pounds to do it properly, or that branding is just the same thing as marketing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Marketing is the engine of your company’s success. Branding is the fuel in that engine.
In the old days, salespeople were a big part of the selling process. They recommended one product over another and laid out the reason why it was better. Salespeople had credibility because they knew about all the products, and customers often took the advice they had to offer.
Today, consumers control the buying process. They shop in big box stores, super-sized supermarkets, and over the internet – where there are no salespeople. Buyers now get online and gather information beforehand. They learn about all the products available and look to see if there really is any difference between them. Consumers also read reviews and check social media to see if both the company and the product are reputable. In other words, they want to know what the brand is all about.
The way of commerce used to be: „ Nothing happens till something is sold.“
Today it’s: „ Nothing happens till something is branded!“
A brand is a proper name that stands for something. It lives in the consumer’s mind, has positive or negative characteristics, and invokes a feeling or an image. In short, it’s a person’s perception of a product or a company.
When all goes well, consumers associate the same characteristics with a brand that the company talks about in ist advertising, public relations, marketing and sales materials. Of course, when a product doesn’t live up to what the company says about it, the brand gets a bad reputation. On the other hand, if a product or service over-delivers on the promises made, the brand can become a superstar.
Brand recognition and its characteristics
Branding is the science and art of making something that isn’t unique, unique.
Branding in the marketplace is the same as branding on a ranch. On a ranch, ranchers use branding to differentiate their cattle from every other rancher’s cattle (because all cattle look pretty much the same). In the marketplace, branding is what makes a product stand out in a crowd of similar products. The right branding gets you noticed, remember and sold – or perhaps I should say bought, because today it is all about buying, not selling.
There are five main characteristics of branding that make it an intergral part of the marketing and purchasing process.
Branding makes a product more special than other products. With branding, a normal, everyday product has a personality, and a first and last name, and people know who you are.
In today’s marketplace, most products are, more or less, just like their competition. Toilet paper is toilet paper, milk is milm, and a grocery store by any other name is still a grocery store. However, branding takes a product and makes it unique. For Example, high-quality dringks water is available from just about every tap in the Western world and it’s free, but people pay good money for it when it comes in a bottle. Branding takes bottled water and makes Perrier.
Furthermore, every aspect of your brand gives potential customers a feeling or comfort level that they associate with you. The more powerful and positive that feeling is, the more easily and more frequently they will want to do business with you and, indeed, will do business with you.
Strong branding makes you better than your competition, and makes your product name memorable and easy to remember. Even if your product is absolutely the same as every other product a consumer thinks about when deciding to make a purchase.
Branding also makes a product seem popular. Everyone knows about it, which implicitly says people like it. And, if people like it, it must be good.
The stronger your branding is, the more likely people are willing to spend that little bit extra because they believe you, your product, your service, or your business are worth it. They may say they won’t, but they will. They do it all the time.
For example, a one-pound box of premium Cailler chocolates costs about £39; the same weight of Tesco’s cost about £3. The quality of the chocolate isn’t ten times greater. The reason people buy Cailler is that the brand Cailler means „ gift“ whereas Tesco’s brand means „snak“. Gifts obviously cost more than snacks.
In the buying age, people most often make the decision on which products to pick up before they walk into the store. The stronger the branding, the more likely people are to think in terms of your product rather than the product category. For example, people are as likely, maybe even more likely, to add Moët & Chandon to the shopping list as they are to write down simply Champagne. The same is true for soda, ketchup, and many other products with successful, strong branding.
Plus, as soon as a shopper gets to the shelf, branding can provide a quick reminder of what products to grab in a few ways:
An icon or logo
A specific color
A specific shape
An audio icon
Branding works perfectly for positioning you as the leader, authority or as an oppinion leader in your customers mind.
– Branding by association
– Branding by achievement
– Branding by testimonial
– Branding by Impact
– Branding by Influence
– Branding by automation
– Brandig by WOW
We will get into this in more details over the next pages stay tuned.
Big companies spend millions of dollars on advertising, marketing, and public relations (PR) to build recognition of a new product name. They get their selling messages out to the public using television, radio, magazines, the Internet. They can even throw money at damage control when necessary. The strategies for branding are the same in a small, but the scale, cost, and a few of the tactics change.
Your brand name needs to work harder
The name of a small business can mean everything in terms of branding. Your brand name needs to work harder for your business than you do. It’s the first thing a prospective customer sees, and it is how they will remember your. A brand name has to be memorable when spoken, and focused in its meaning. If the name doesn’t represent what consumers believe about a product and the company that makes it, then that brand will fail.
In building your product’s reputation and image, less is often significantly more. Make sure the name you choose immediately gives a sense of what you do.
Large corporations have million of budged to take a meaningless brand name and make it stand for something. Small business don’t so use words that really mean something. Strive for something interesting and be right on point. You don’t need to be boring.
Plummer, for example, would do well setting themselves apart with names like „The On-Time Plummer“ or „24/7 Pluming“. The same is true for electricians, IT providers, or even marketing consultants. Plenty of other types of business are so general in nature they just don’t work hard enough in a business or product name.
The Net – todays playing field
The Internet has leveled the playing field for small businesses like nothing else. You can use the Internet in several ways to market your brand:
Website/Funnel: Developing and maintaining a website/funnel es easier than ever. Anyone can find your business regardless of its size.
Social Media: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter can promote your brand in a cost effective manner.
The branding ladder to build your unique brand
Even if you do everything perfectly the first time (and I don’t know anyone who does), branding takes time. How much time isn’t just up to you, but you can speed things along by understanding the different milestones of branding, as well as the business and marketing strategies that can get you to the top.
Climbing up the ladder
Moving through the milestones of branding is like climbing up a ladder to the top of the marketplace. The ladder has five distinct rungs and, unlike stairs, you can’t take them two at a time. You have to take them in order, and some business spend more time on each rung than others.
You can also think of the ladder in terms of a scale from zero to ten. Everyone starts at zero. If you properly climb the ladder, you can end up at 12 out of 10. Here an example of a special rung at the top of the ladder that can take your business over the top. Afterwards we’ll explain the ladder in more details in the following section and how your small business can move it up.
Brand Advocacy 12/10
Brand Insistence 10/10
Brand Preference 3/10
Brand Awareness 1/10
Brand Absence 0/10
Your business, in fact every business, starts at the bottom rung, which is called brand absence, meaning you have no brand whatsoever except your own name. On a scale of one to the, brand absence is, of course, zero. That’s the worst place to live and obviously the most, difficult entrepreneurially. The good news, is that the only way is up.
Ninety-seven percent of businesses live on this level of the Branding Ladder. They earn far less than they want to earn, far less than they should earn, and far less than they would earn if they did exactly the same work under a real brand.
Brand awareness is a good first step up the ladder to the second level. Actually, it’s really good, especially because 97 percent of businesses never get there. You want people to be aware of you. When person A speaks to person B and says, „Have you heard of“The24/7 Plumber?“ You want the answer to be „yes“.
On that scale of one to ten, however, brand awareness is only a one. It’s better than nothing, but not that much better. Although people know of your brand, being aware doesn’t mean that they are interested in buying it. Coca Cola drinkers know about Pepsi, but they don’t drink it.
Getting to the third level, brand preference, is definitely a real step up. This level means that people prefer to use your product or service rather than that of your competition. They believe there is a real difference between you and others, and you’re their first choice. This level is a crucial branding stage for parity products, such as bottled water and breakfast cereals, not to mention plumbers, electricians, practitioners, lawyers, and all the others. Brand preference is clearly better than brand awareness, but it’s less than halfway up the ladder.
Car rental companies represent a perfect example of why brand preference may not be enough. When someone lands at an airport and needs to rent a car on the spot, he or she may go straight to the preferred rental counter. If that company has a car available, it’s a sale. However, if all the cars for that company have been rented, the person will move to the next rental kiosk without much thought, because one rental car is just as good as another.
Exerting Brand Preference needs to be easy and convenient
If all you have is brand preference, your business is on shaky ground and you can lose business for the feeblest of reasons. Very few people go to a second or third supermarket just to find their favourit brand of bottled water. Similarly, a shopper may prefer one store over another but, if both stores sell the same products, he or she will often go to the closest store even i fit is not the better liked one. The reason for staying nearby does not need to be a dramatic one – the shopper may simply be tired, on a thigh schedule, or not in the mood to travel.
When your customers are so committed to your product or service that they won’t accept a substitute, you have reached the fourth level of the Branding Ladder. All companies strive to reach this place, called brand insistence.
Brand insistence means that someone’s experience with a product in terms of performance, durability, customer service, and image has been sufficiently exceptional. As a result, the product has earned an incredible level of loyalty.
If the product isn’t available where the customer is, he or she will literally not buy something else. Rather, the person will look for the preferred product elsewhere. Can you imagine what a fabulous place this is for a company to be? Brand insistence is the best of the best, the perfect ten out of ten.
Apple is a perfect example of brand insistence
Apple users don’t just think, they know in their heads and hearts, that anything made by Apple is technologically-advanced, user-friendly, and just all-around superior. Committed to everything Apple, Mac users won’t even entertain the thought that a PC may have positive attributes.
Apple people love everything about their Macs, iPads, iPhones, the Mac stores and all those apps. When the company introduces a new product, many of ist brand-insistent fans actually wait in line overnight to be one of the first to have it.
Considering one big potential problem
Unfortunately, you can lose brand insistence much more quickly than we can achieve it. Brand-insistent customers have such high expectations that they can be disillusioned or disappointed by just one bad product experience. You also have to consistently reinforce the positives because insistence can fade over time. Even someone who has bought and re-bought a specific brand of car for the last 20 years can decide it’s just time for a change. That’s how fickle the world is.
At ten out of ten, brand insistence may seem like the top level of the ladder, but it’s not. One level is actually better, and it involves getting your brand-insistent customer to keep polishing your brand for you.
Brand advocacy is the highest level of the ladder. It’s better than ten out of then because you have customers who are so happy with your product that they want everyone to know about it and use it. Think of them as uber-fans. Not only do they recommend you to friends and family, they also practically shout your praises from the rooftops, interrupt conversations among strangers to give their opinion, and tell everyone they meet how fantastic you are. Most companies can only aspire to this level of customer satisfaction. Apple is one of the few large corporations in recent history that has brand advocates all over the world.
What exacactly does Brand advocacy for your ? Here are five extraordinary things it does for you!
– Provides a level of visibility that you couldn’t pay for if you tried. Brand advocates are so enthusiastic they talk about you all the time, and reach people in ways general media and public relations can’t. You get great visibility because they make sure people actually listen.
– Delivers free advertising and public relations. Companies love the extra super-positive messaging, all for free.
– Affords a level of credibility that literally can’t be bought. Brand advocates are more than just walking testimonials. They are living proof that you are the best.
– Provides pre-sold prospective customers. Advocate recommendations carry so much weight that they are worth much more than plain referrals. They deliver customers ready and committed to purchasing your product or service.
– Increases profits exponentially. Brand advocates are money-making machines for your business because they increase sales and decrease marketing costs.
For these reasons, brand advocacy is 12 out of 10!!
7 easy ways to do so
If you’re interested in branding your product or company, you may not be sure where to begin. The good news: We’re here to help. You can brand in many ways, but here we pare it down to seven ways to help you start:
Branding by association
This way involves hanging out with and being seen with people who are very much higher than you in your particular niche.
Branding by achievement
This way repurposes your previous achievements.
Branding by testimonial
This way makes use of the testimonials that you receive but have likely never used.
Branding by Impact
This way involves the effect you’ll have on someone working with you on a deep level over a certain period of time
Branding by Influence
This way involves the adaptation and take over of your behaviour and values on someone you’ve been working with.
Branding by WOW
A WOW is the pleasantly unexpected, the equivalent of going the extra mile. The easiest and most certain way to WOW people is to tell them that you’ve written a book. If this has just WOW’ed you too and courious to discover how you can publish a book of your own, go to www.hcbpublishing.com or scan the code you see below to schedule a curiosity conversation to see if we can help you with your WOW 
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