“Branding outwardly reflects what a customer anticipates is happening on the inside of the company.”
What is branding?
Branding is the discipline of creating a consistent visual and verbal identity for a customer to identity with as they experience your company's product or service. Successful brands are unique, memorable and create an emotional connection to customers. Branding is not exclusive to a single deliverable, for example a logo, website or company brochure, but rather, the collective representation of a company through all of its customer touch points.
Whether you know it or not, all companies have a brand but not all brands have value. Brand value is your customer's confidence in the delivery of your brand promise. According to Interbrand, the current value of Starbucks' brand is $7.4 billion — ranked 64th among the world's most valuable brands.
Quality branding does not replace the need for a quality product or service and an overall customer experience. Put another way, Starbucks could not charge $3.99 for a cup of coffee if they provided a dreadful customer experience or consistently served poor-tasting coffee. Quality brands cannot support bad companies but quality branding can dramatically increase the revenue and value of a good company.
Why is branding important?
Quality Brands Command a higher price
When an innovative product or service is tied to a quality brand, companies can demand a higher price point for their offerings. All companies have brands but few companies harness the power of consistently and professionally representing who they are to their customers.
Quality brands influence customer choice
Branding outwardly reflects the organization and structure within a company. Customers are much more likely to purchase from a company that looks polished and professional than one that provides an inconsistent and disheveled branded experience.
Quality branding improves recognition
In an endless sea of choices, recognizing a quality brand provides credibility and trust to a consumer. Quality branding is a silent salesperson that consistently shows why your product is better (faster, safer, more reliable, lighter, more sustainable, higher quality, local, organic, etc) than a competitor.