Selling is Easier with a Recognizable Brand

What is a Brand?

The most important assets of any business are often intangible: your company name, brand, symbols, and slogans, and their underlying associations with customers to produce awareness and perceived quality and value.

Think about buying a cellular phone, computer, or vehicle. What brands come to mind? Why are these brands top-of-mind? How would you describe the brand value of your company and what it delivers? How would you describe the "unique selling proposition" of your company?

What do you see when you think of a particular brand? Most people recall the logo and the product associated with that logo. The graphic identity and any attached slogans or taglines are an integral part of a brand, but more importantly is the immediate perception, expectation and emotional response linked to the brand.

A brand is more about making people think thoughts or feel emotions. The essence of a brand can be captured by a logo and slogan to semantically reinforce what ad agencies like to call "the brand experience". The emotional response is developed from behaviour modification or conditioning produced by advertising, marketing and promotional campaigns.

Brand Management

Companies that are strategically smart, tactically creative and persistent in the way they manage their brand and identity are more successful.

Your brand is formed by the numerous choices your business makes, from your company name and logo to your advertising, corporate literature, and business cards all the way down to the way your frontline staff deals with customers. The promise you make to each customer combined with the customer's judgment about how well you deliver on that promise must be consistent. A successful brand becomes an emotional bond that builds customer loyalty and informs prospects on what they can expect from your products and services.

You want your company’s personality to be easily identifiable at every customer touch point and your brand experience reinforced. Everything your company is involved in, including email stationery, print stationery, collaterals, packaging, displays, presentations, ads, telephone reception, office signage, office spaces, any customer or employee touch point, should display your brand. The image should be consistent across media.

Branding Simplifies Selling

With a strong brand, you don't have to sell nearly as long or as hard. Customers know what you stand for and what they can expect from your products and services. It all comes down to selling. And selling is made easier with a corporate brand that sends a strong message about your company’s uniqueness, corporate personality and, more importantly, about what your organization essentially is and what a customer can expect.

When your brand represents quality, reliability, dependability and value and is linked to a positive emotional response you can demand higher prices for your products and services without strong opposition because customers know additional value is associated with increased cost; the price-value ratio justifies the added expense.

Graphic Identity – The Fundamental Building Block of Your Brand

You need to think of everything your company does as an exercise in building your brand. Be conscious of the way you convey a meaningful relationship between your products or services and their users. Your company’s name and graphic identity are the fundamental building blocks of your brand. An effective identity will reinforce the uniqueness and positioning of your business. The configuration of words, images, ideas and associations form an aggregate perception of value in the minds of customers, stakeholders, and the general public.

If your brand is an expression that reaches out and engages current and potential clients, it simplifies your job of selling.