In the era of modern business, effective branding is a necessity. Many factors contribute to the success of your brand. Out of these, there are three highlight points and they are branding, brand identity and brand strategy. Marketing your brand is like following a strict puzzle. And if you are a complete beginner and have no idea about any of these, you can always seek professional help from a branding company.

This blog will explore the fundamentals of a brand’s success by giving you a brief idea about the basics.

1. What is branding?

In simpler terms, branding is everything that can make an organisation stand out in terms of product landscape. The sign of good branding is that it can bring a brand to your mind even when the name isn’t present.

2. Why is branding important?

For any company’s success, it needs to have a strong brand. No matter what you sell, products, services or ideas, what makes you stand out in a competition is your brand. Branding is important because it’s the first thing the customers see when they visit your company and if executed properly, branding can be the driving force to your company’s success. So, everything that goes into the brand, the colours, font and style, everything contributes to it.

3. What is brand identity?

This is a representation of how you want your brand to be perceived. This can be developed through a means of logos, name trademarks, etc.

4. What is brand strategy?

The brand strategy uses branding to create a framework. This framework lays out the why, what, when, etc of the organisation and the communication of its brand. Just like social strategy, brand strategy is the route map for you and your employees to build equity in the way you want it to be built.

5. What are the 7 Brand strategy elements?

The elements of a brand strategy include purpose, consistency, emotion, flexibility, employee involvement, loyalty and competitive awareness.

• Purpose:

When defining your brand positions, it is important to understand what your business promises. It’s just like knowing why you wake up every day and go to work. In simpler terms, the purpose must be more specific than simply serving as a competition factor between you and your competitors.

Still confused? We will help you to define the purpose of your business. If this is your goal, then purpose can be viewed in two ways- functional and intentional.

• Functional: the functional concept focuses on the evaluation of success in terms of commercial reasons. For example. The purpose of business is to make money.
• Intentional: here, the focus is not only on money making but also on doing good in the world.

We admit that money-making is crucial, but what people admire the most apart from the figures is to focus their work beyond profitability, just like doing good in the world.

So, when you define your brand’s purpose, ask yourself, while keeping money a priority, what sets your brand apart from the industry? Check out other brands with a similar vision and understand how they frame their mission and statements.

• Consistency:

What is the key to consistency? It is nothing but to avoid talking about things that don’t relate to your brand or enhance it. Consistency should be not only your work but also your messaging. If you posted a message, in fact before posting it, understand if it aligns with your company, or is it just something to confuse the audience?

Cohesive messaging is important for your brand to stand on. Because consistency contributes to brand recognition. And this fuels customer loyalty.

So, to prevent losing your potential customers, create a style guide. This helps to keep your business put together, setting and encompassing the tone of your voice to the positioning of certain services. Considering all these will benefit your brand as a whole.

• Emotion:

If you believe that customers are always rational, you’re mistaken. You must find a way to connect with your customers on a deeper and emotional level. You can use emotional triggers like- are they given peace of mind? Are they feeling like family? Do you make life easier? Such emotional triggers can be used to strengthen your relationship with your customers and foster loyalty.

• Flexibility:

The world is fast-changing. To stay relevant in such a world, marketers must be flexible. But how will one remain consistent while being flexible? That’s simple. Consistency aims at setting a standard for your brand and flexibility enables you to make adjustments. Such adjustments build interest and distinguish competition from your approach.

If you are a business that wishes to improve with branding, there’s only one thing to help you move forward- change. Just remember that if your old tactics aren’t working anymore, change them. You can take this opportunity to engage with your followers. Use factors like out-of-the-box partnerships and unhighlighted product attributes to connect with new and old customers.

• Employee involvement:

Just like we discussed earlier, if you wish to bring brand recognition, consistency is important. We talked about a style guide which can help you achieve this. But that doesn’t alone do the job. For a cohesive and consistent experience, you must involve your employees and train them in every way possible, because it is not you, but they who represent your company at the root level.

• Loyalty:

Loyal customers are a blessing. Reward these customers for the love they shower upon you, your business, and your brand. Sometimes all they need is a thank you. You can write them a personalised letter or maybe send them something special. Remember, these are the people who went out of their way to write about you, promote you and even un-knowingly became your brand ambassadors.

Remember, there is no other critical part of brand strategy than loyalty. Hence, creating a good relationship between you and your customers, old or new, sets the expectation of what they can expect if they choose to be with you.

• Competitive awareness:

Competitive awareness means taking competitions as a challenge to improve your strategy, thereby, creating a greater value in your brand. After all, you are in the same business, going behind the same customers. So, watch and learn. Adjust and unlearn the tactics and growth strategies from them. This will only position your company at a better level.

To conclude, many factors contribute to a brand’s success and it can feel like a lot to take in. It may not be easy to find the right balance with all these, but this guide will help you move through it all with ease. And the best part is, you don’t have to do it alone, when there are many branding companies in Dubai. All you must do is choose from the best.

Cheers to your success and heights!