The ROI of Intentional Business Branding

If you’re thinking about putting more of your eggs in the marketing basket, that is a great idea that you should move forward with, but we would first challenge you to consider starting with investing in your brand. Regardless of the industry and company size, a business that works on its brand with intention improves its recognizability and other outcomes against close competitors. Let’s take a closer look at the true ROI of branding and how you can achieve lucrative branding outcomes in your own business.

What Is Branding?

Branding is the strategic process of establishing your business’s identity through a range of imagery, words, sounds, media, colors, and other elements that distinguish your personality and company purpose from those of other companies on the market. With branding, businesses can create a recognizable brand or an ideal image that elicits a certain response from loyal customers and the general population alike. The goal of branding is to evoke emotions, keep your company at the top of a consumer’s mind, and reinforce your identity and purpose.

While it certainly has some overlap, especially when either one is done well, branding is not the same thing as marketing. Branding is the foundation that tells people who you are and what you care about with simple components, like a logo, typography, certain brand colors, a special slogan, etc. Marketing often pulls from these strategic brand components to create a buzz and general aesthetic around the brand, but marketing itself is less focused on building the brand’s identity and more focused on telling people why they should care about and support that brand. Companies with a strong brand identity provide a great wealth of resources for a marketing team that wants to reach its audience more effectively.

Types of Branding to Consider

Most people think about a brand’s logo and distinct colors first when they consider what goes into a brand. However, the most successful brands work to create a more holistic brand identity that will reach their target audience through different channels and different methods. Brand elements may include:

• Images and Photography.
• Logos and Icons.
• Specific Words, Phrases, and Tones (the Wendy’s X account, anyone?)
• Color Palettes.
• Fonts and Typography.
• Slogans.
• Brand Ambassadors and Characters.
• Audio and Music.

A growing area of branding is sonic branding, or the act of using specific sounds and music to identify and separate a brand from its competition. With sonic branding, brand music, UI and UX software sounds, on-hold music, voice messaging, and sonic logos all contribute to a customer’s concept of who a brand is. 

According to Erik Thompson, the founder of Walter Audio:

“[A sonic brand] helps to answer the following: Can your customer recognize your brand with their eyes closed? How about when your commercial comes on TV and they’re looking down at their phone, or walking to the kitchen to re-up their snacks? Is your sound and music congruent with the rest of your brand? Is it resonating with your ideal customer? Does it have positive emotional appeal?”

While Thompson was speaking directly to what a good sonic brand should be able to do, many of these questions help us to understand how to do branding well across the board. Strategic branding is all about choosing the right elements that will help customers recognize the brand instantly and associate it with positive emotions or memories.

The ROI Benefits of Thoughtful Branding Decisions

While it may take some time and be expensive to get started, developing a brand is one of the most strategic investments you can make for the long-term growth of your business. These are just a handful of the benefits that can come from making thoughtful branding decisions.

Improve Brand Awareness, Recognition, and Reputation

Humans, by nature, gravitate toward things that are aesthetically pleasing and coherent. This includes brands and companies with consistent branding strategies. 

Be honest about yourself as a consumer. If you were to visit a company website for a business you’d never heard of and you saw that the colors were bland, the logo was nonexistent, the font was generic, and the tone of the content was inconsistent, would you be likely to purchase anything from that brand? Our guess is no, especially if there’s a competitor with a better website and more recognizable brand identity. That’s why taking the time to establish a brand ultimately pays off; you’re much more likely to attract (and keep) customers and convey that you are a credible source for the product or service they’re looking for.

Develop a Consistent Brand Story

As you work to develop the different elements of your brand, you’ll likely spend some time thinking about not only your company slogan but also how you want to talk about your company in general. Branding is a great launchpad for better understanding and spelling out your brand story. 

This story is what drives and motivates your company to produce a great product or service, and it’s also a story that makes buyers feel connected to what you’re doing. A solid brand will help you solidify this story and will constantly refer back to it, ensuring that customers know your story and connect more deeply with your offerings.

Attract New Customers

Companies without a true brand tend to fly under the radar, especially when it comes to acquiring new customers. Your existing customers likely found you the old-fashioned way if you didn’t have a strong brand, whether that was through word of mouth or by accident. But most modern consumers aren’t finding or purchasing from their next favorite brand in these ways. 

When you invest in a holistic brand identity, you create a recognizable brand footprint that new customers are more likely to discover and find attractive for their next purchase. Even if they’re not quite ready to purchase or never move forward with your company, when they’re impressed with your attractive and memorable brand identity, they’re more likely to tell other people about your business. Chances are, at least one of these people will also be impressed and either buy or continue to spread the word.

You were already a good company, but now, you have a solid brand that showcases your strengths to prospective buyers who otherwise wouldn’t know about you.

Build Brand Loyalty Among Existing Customers

Have you ever been to a cool store or restaurant and then completely forgotten about it for months or years? The success of most small businesses relies on happy, returning customers, but if your branding isn’t doing its job, there’s a good chance that many of your past customers have forgotten about you.

Branding, when done well, constantly reminds buyers that you exist and why you are a reliable option for what they need. Especially if your branding leads to a fun social media account or an easy-to-navigate website that buyers want to return to, you’re likely to earn your customers’ loyalty and long-term interest with a few simple branding decisions.

Outperform Competitors

Simply put: If your company has a strong and recognizable brand but your competitors don’t, customers are almost always going to choose to buy from you. It rarely has anything to do with product or service quality, though that can play a role. Particularly in the area of new customer acquisition, you will earn more customers than most simply by creating a strong brand that draws people in and keeps them there.

Reach New Employees and Investors

Many people don’t realize that branding doesn’t just improve your relationship and reputation with customers. It also gives you the chance to prove to prospective employees that you are a reputable and interesting company to work for. Also crucial, a consistent brand oozes professionalism and indicates that you are running a stable, successful business. Investors will notice a brand that stands out and will be more likely to support your venture because they think you can handle future growth.

Tips for a Successful Branding Venture

The ROI of branding is clear and worth the trouble, but for many business owners, knowing how to get started with branding is most of the battle. These are a few tips that we’ve relied on for building our own brand and for helping our clients with their brand growth:

• Brand according to your mission, vision, and values: Particularly if you consider yourself a purpose-driven company, this is a non-negotiable. Every branding decision you make should center on your values and whether or not that decision will highlight those values or obscure them; this is especially important when considering the tone and word choices of your brand.

• Keep your branding consistent: While it’s fun to introduce a new color or font once in a while, too much variety in your branding will feel like chaos and ward off buyers. Establish a branding plan and stick to it as much as possible, even when you’re running a one-off marketing campaign or responding to an Instagram comment.

• Measure meaningful branding KPIs: Branding KPIs are not just about sales but are tied to brand recognition and overall perception. Important KPIs to measure include share of voice, brand sentiment, net promoter score, search volume for brand name, repeat purchase rate, market share growth, and more.

• Know your audience: Just like with ongoing marketing activities, you have to know who your target audience is and what they expect from the companies they buy from. Instead of just thinking about who your current customers are, reflect on who your ideal buyer persona is, what they might want, and how they’re most likely to engage with your brand.

• Show off your brand across all relevant channels: Related to knowing your audience, be sure that your brand identity is clearly reflected across the channels that they use most often. This may include social media, search engines, local news and newspapers, etc.

• Get creative: The most memorable brands are unique and make decisions that delight their customers. Take the occasional risk and think about what your favorite brands have done to truly stand out in their fields.

At Mane Impact, branding is one of the most important strategic services that we offer. In fact, we almost always recommend that customers start with branding services before we get into the details of design, web development, and marketing strategy. After all, if your brand is suffering, the rest of your marketing efforts are likely to fall flat.