subject: Why Branding Your Name Is Important [print this page] Most businessmen and entrepreneurs believe that to succeed, they only need to have a good sales strategy and an efficient marketing tactic. After all what is business but primarily to earn from sales of ones products or services? Actually this mindset is quite primitive. Sales and marketing can only make a business go far to some extent, but it does not guarantee the continued proliferation of business. Something else is needed to prolong ones business. At this level, what one needs is branding a name.
A lot of business people believe that branding is just a small part of marketing. Actually it is not. It is the core of the entire marketing scheme, equally important as the sum of the marketing strategies themselves. Branding is how one relates with everyone involved in the business the employees, the suppliers, the clients, and the prospects. Branding is the image of the entire business entity. It is ones name. It unimaginable how to create lasting relationships when a person has no name, and it is even more unthinkable how a business would survive without having a brand that would allow it to present itself and be known.
What can Branding do?
When done effectively, branding admonishes loyalty, not only from customers but also from ones employees, vendors, or anyone a business entity comes into contact with. Building a brand, and making a good reputation out of it can make relations easier to establish. One may provide the best product or the most efficient services in the market, but if people could not remember who provided such good delivery because there was no brand to remember the good experience with, more likely the people will just forget it. Of course there is a risk that a certain brand might be tied to bad business relations, but that is already up to the business approach itself. In reality, some people even still end up patronizing a bad brand since it is more memorable than others. Well, most businesses would definitely want to avoid having bad experiences with consumers, but this case just show how powerful branding is.
It is amazing to think that most of the successful companies spend billions each year just to make their brand memorable. Perhaps the most known example comes in the beverage industry with the long running rivalry between Coca Cola and Pepsi. Nowadays, they do not even sell their product much anymore but their brand. Each has its own strategy for this. Coke uses a sense of belonging with heartwarming ads, while Pepsi utilizes a sense of being in by using cool people. No matter how they do it, their aim is to ingrain into everyones mind the memory and the awareness of their brands. The results speak for themselves. People automatically grab a Coke or a Pepsi from the beverage aisle, even though there are so much more drinks that taste better and are more beneficial to the health.
The same is true with other brands. Most aspiring entrepreneurs think that the best way to lure people is to offer the most affordable prices. However it is not really the universal case. Most consumers would still get the more recognizable brand even if the price differences are very wide. As said, brands create loyalty, and in usual circumstances, people would go to something they are loyal to even if the competitor has more to offer.
A lot of businessmen do not delve so much into branding because its short-term benefits are rather not as encouraging. Brand recognition usually increases profits by only 10 to 20 percent, which for a small company might not seem so significant, if so much effort is required to do it. However, when thinking in the long run, the loyalty that branding will create would multiply the increase in profits exponentially. Branding gives the owner and the employees of the company something to believe in, and this eventually is transmitted to the customers.
Of course there are many exceptions to the rule. Branding alone will not make a business successful. But its use can make so much a difference especially when the sales and marketing strategies are effective. Branding separates the bigwigs from the small players. Branding is useful whether for a company that just has started or one that has existed for a time. Branding is an important step to success.
