What Is Branding and Why Is It Important for Your Business?

Branding, brand and brand identity: What it really means?

Understanding branding can be difficult to explain and pinpoint exactly what is considered branding. However to understand branding requires some level of marketing, business and as well as basic human relations. Currently, there is false information out there or information that only focuses on one aspect of what branding is. Branding is considered to be;

Branding is the perpetual process of identifying, creating, and managing the cumulative assets and actions that shape the perception of a brand in stakeholders’ minds.

This is sort of an ambiguous way to explain what it is, but if we break it down word for word then it gives you more context to the meaning.

1. A perpetual process- Branding is a one and done job, right? unfortunately, it never stops. Brands are constantly changing to adapt to the situation. Many factors lead this such as people, markets, businesses, social status, trends, etc. Brands have to evolve in order to keep up with the times
2. Identity, create and manage- this is the process of branding. Firstly you must identify who / what you want your stakeholders to be. Next create your brand strategy to position yourself accordingly, and then constantly manage everything that influences your positioning.
3. Cumulative assets and actions- Your positioning must be translated into assets (e.g., visual identity, content, products, ads) and actions (e.g., services, customer support, human relations, experiences) that project it into your stakeholders’ minds, slowly building up that perception.
4. The perception of the brand - This is also referred to a reputation. The words and thoughts used to associate by customers and everyday people that talk about your brand/ service. This perception is the result of the branding process (or lack thereof).
5. in stakeholders’ minds -It’s not just clients customers that play a role in building brand stakeholders includes clients, existing customers, employees, shareholders, and business partners. These people help to influence the actions and values of a brand.

As you can see there is a lot more to branding than the visual aspect of using a logo that represents your company.

A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a company.

Branding by definition is an emotional relationship between the customer and the business. Every day we discover new products from rival businesses that we probably have never heard of before. With an ever-growing choice of products to use, companies are looking for ways to connect with customers, make them stand out from the opposition, become irreplaceable and create a long-lasting relationship.