What Is Branding?
We, humans, have our own names, and that is how we identify our friends and family. Likewise, when identifying companies, we often recall them by their brand names. Branding is a vast concept that comprises multiple components such as brand identity, values, positioning and many more.
Confused? Well, it’s fine because branding is really not as straightforward as you think.
Branding can be broken down into steps: determining your target audience, developing your brand missions and visions, researching your competition, creating your value propositions, determining your brand guidelines, and lastly, developing strategies to market your branding. These steps are essential to building your company’s reputation.
Difficulties in Brand Development
Establishing your brand identity comes with major challenges. Firstly, it is challenging to conduct market research to identify your target audience for your branding due to a lack of time and manpower, especially for younger companies.
Another challenge is finding out what your brand has to offer which differentiates you from other similar brands and services. That could be difficult.
Thirdly, it is not as straightforward to derive your brand personality without conducting proper survey research.
Lastly, it could be difficult to develop a brand logo that identifies your company’s products and services, because there are various brand elements to look at and improve. Not only that but those elements have to relate closely back to your company’s identity.
Companies With Their Branding Strategies
One of them is Google itself, which millions of people use as their main source to get information. What is so unique about Google compared to other search engines? Well, their strategy is to build and gain trust from their users by providing fast, accurate and relevant search results to them.
Apple, for example, focuses on emotions, making their customers feel valued by others after buying their products.
Lastly, Nike’s strategy is simply to focus on postings that relate closely to their vision statement which they came up with, “We see a world where everybody is an athlete — united in the joy of movement.”
