What is Branding? What a businessperson often gets confused about is the dissimilarity between brand and branding. It is quite simple; a brand is a marketing tool, while branding is a technique. You have to know the difference before we dig deeper and understand more about branding. So, let's begin! The distinctive feature that identifies your service or your business from others is your brand. It could be a name, logo, design, or symbol. It is the impression and understanding your customers have of your business. So what is branding then? Branding is a marketing technique to build your brand; it is a marketing practice that increases your brand recognition. It starts from curating an attention-grabbing visual design, coming up with an effective logo, smart usage of color scheme, and executing high-quality photography. You need to carefully and meticulously knit together to promote recognition represent your business to the customers. A well-polished design can communicate your brand advantageously. People tend to rush to judgment; studies show that it only takes 0.05 seconds for customers to reach their decision on whether to stay or exit your website. You might want to create a design that is simple, welcoming, and at the same time, visually compelling. Through imagery and color, you can stir up customers' emotions, focusing on using uncomplicated colors and shade and easy to perceive images. Your brand design also builds reliability; it is everything that visually characterizes your brand. A poorly designed website can radiate an unprofessional impression from customers and emit unwanted mistrust on your business, resulting in rapid rejection. So, therefore, visuals are vital. After finalizing and perfecting your Brand Design, let's find out more about the other branding, the Brand Identity, and the Brand Personality. Brand Identity Your audience will identify your business from other competitors without a hitch by your brand identity. Brand Identity is the complete visual appearance of your business. According to Jean-Noël Kapferer, an active, world reputed expert consultant on brand strategy; there are six facets or elements to a brand identity that can strengthen your brand.
Physique - This is the face of your brand; your icon, logo, style, and design, everything your audience can visibly distinguish about your business.
Personality - This is your brand's internal facade, representing how you communicate with your customers.
Relationship - Relationship emphasizes the customers' familiarity with you; it is the promise and the bond between you and your customers.
Culture - This is the values, the principles, and the structure on which your brand's behavior is aligned.
Reflection – The customers have to be reflected in how they see themselves consuming a particular product or patronizing a specific service.
Self-image – The way customers of a specific brand perceive themselves and how the brand relates to that. Customers and consumers purchase goods that resemble their self-image.
Brand Personality Brand Personality refers to the association of human personality traits with your brand to which the customers can pertain. It is essential in moderating communication with your customers. Your customers can relate to the traits that they possess with the personality characteristics your brand has. A Stanford researcher named Jennifer Aeker created a useful theoretical framework of the brand personality, which divided the character into five dimensions, each comprising a set of facets.
Sincerity: down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, cheerful
Excitement: daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date
Competence: reliable, intelligent, successful
Sophistication: upper class, charming
Ruggedness: outdoorsy, tough
Aeker's framework can help you, and even customers, distinguish your brand from your competitors. To summarize everything, branding is a strategy to help customers to experience your brand and again to identify your business, among others quickly. It is done by creating and shaping a brand that will effectively be etched in people's minds.
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