What Are The Advantages Of Branding In Marketing?
Branding is a technique or process through which you focus on generating a strong and positive image, emotion, or perception in the mind of the consumers when they use or think about your product in order to achieve the desired Brand Resonance.
Since ‘Brand’ is an intangible concept without any physical presence, we need to create a tangible and visual Identity that represents all of the intangible aspects of the Brand.
This process of humanising the product to give it a life of its own includes the creation of Brand Identities (logo, website, packaging, slogan, jingles, colours, fonts, etc.) which is an important aspect of Branding, albeit just a few of many.
Furthermore, the Brand Manager also uses various other strategies and means to create the desired Brand Imagery and Brand Feelings in the mind of the consumer that is obviously assisted by optimum product performance and delivering what was promised, thus, creating a powerful relationship and Resonance between the two.
But, why and how does the creation of a Resonance between the consumer and the Brand have an affect on the Branding strategy?
And what are the other advantages of Branding when it comes to the Marketing of a product or service?
The advantages of Branding:
1 — The Humanisation of the Product
The most basic purpose of Branding is to distinguish your product in the market and amongst the competitors through the creation of various unique Brand Identities which includes the formation of logo, website, packaging, slogan, jingles, colours, fonts, etc.
Through the creation of these unique Brand Identities, a Brand Manager is able to individualise the Brand in the crowd of competitors and give it a desired personality of its own that is reflected distinctly and noticeably at every turn.
Now, the purpose of creating these desired personalities for the Brand is way deeper than just a means to distinguish it in the market.
The purpose to humanise a Brand is to give it the unique identity, traits, and personality that manoeuvres the human nature and emotions of the consumers in such a way that they feel and associate with the brand exactly the way a Brand Manager wants them to.
The purpose to humanise a Brand is to give it a life of its own which brings us to our second point:
2 — Customer Retention and Brand Loyalty
When we humanise a Brand by creating various Identities that are unique to the Brand itself, it creates a desired Image in the minds of the consumers.
For example, Nike, as a Brand, works towards creating an image of being an athletic, innovative, and authentic Brand in the mind of the consumer through the use of its logo, colours, advertising campaigns, way of interaction with the consumers, etc. amongst other things.
This not only creates a feeling of trust in the mind of the consumers that the Brand will deliver on its promise, but also a sense of loyalty when the Brand actually does deliver on its intended promise, thus creating a perfect resonance and a lasting relationship between the two parties.
However, a weak Brand would perhaps miss out on creating a powerful Brand Image in the mind of the consumer.
Even when the product is able to deliver on its intended promise, a customer will have a hard time forming a relationship or a deeper connection with a weaker Brand in the absence of a strong Brand Identity and Brand Personality.
This brings us to our third point:
3 — Price Sensitivity
The stronger the Brand, the more loyal are the consumers. The more loyal the consumers, the lower is the price sensitivity!
Lower price sensitivity means that the consumers are willing to pay a premium price for your product even when there are other competitors in a similar category as yours who offer similar products in possibly the lower price range.
So, why would a consumer want to pay a higher price for your product when they can have a similar product for a lot less?
Again, let’s take the example of Nike. When a consumer buys a Nike merchandise, he/she does so because of their trust in what Nike promises to offer — athletic, innovative, and authentic products each and every time.
It’s the consumers’ trust in Nike’s mantra that enables them to be loyal to the Brand to the extent that their Price sensitivity reduces considerably and they are ready to pay a premium for the Brand regardless of the availability of a competitor product on a lower price range.
4 — Brand Visibility
A strong Brand invariably has a higher Brand Visibility in the market.
When a Manager works on creating a unique logo, colours, jingles, advertising campaigns, etc. associated with the Brand, there’s a higher chance that they will have a lasting impact on the mind of the consumer.
Thus, this will eventually increase the Brand Recognition and Brand Recall value of the Product where a customer will be able to correctly identify or recall a particular product or service just by viewing the logo, tag line, packaging, etc.
5 — Powerful impact on advertising campaigns
Devising an advertising campaign for an organisation requires a lot of strategy, creativity, and understanding of what kind of feelings and emotions need to be targeted or elicited in the mind of the consumer.
However, having a strong Brand with a clear and unique Brand Identity, Brand Imagery, and Brand Positioning can help a Brand Manager create several powerful advertising campaigns that not only demonstrate the Brand Personality but are also perfectly in sync and have a higher Advertising Effectiveness on Customers.
This brings us to our next point:
6 — Increased Marketing communication effectiveness:
When you are clear with your brand values and your advertising campaigns are to the point, worthwhile, relevant, compelling, and memorable, you can eventually spend less on ads or marketing money with similar outcomes.
A Brand that delivers on its promise usually also has a strong and organic Word of Mouth campaign going for them which trumps any other kind of marketing strategy.
7 — Possible licensing and Brand extension opportunities:
Having a strong Brand also means that the organisation has the possibility to evolve/extend into more product categories successfully.
The customers are more likely to put their trust into an already established Brand over someone they haven’t heard of yet.
This gives the organisation/business an advantage when extending into more product categories.
8 — Employees
Internal Branding is just as important, if not more so than the external product Branding when it comes to an organisation.
So, what is Internal Branding and why is it so important in the context of things?
Internally Branding basically focuses on creating company values and a core culture inside the organisation.
The employees who work for the organisation should understand the importance of embracing the culture and values, while it’s the organisation’s job to recognise, reward and incentivise their employees’ efforts.
An employee who recognises and identifies with the company values and culture becomes more engaged to work for the organisation.
In turn, an engaged employee will always be proud, and happy to work for your Brand whilst being more productive, prolific, inventive, and creating a positive work culture for others as well.
Not to mention, a strong Brand with powerful company values and culture always attracts the topmost talents in their field too!
Conclusion
Yes, there are a million other advantages of Branding in addition to the ones explained above.
But, do keep in mind, even if you don’t work on your Brand and fail to establish and communicate your key messages clearly, the market will still do it for you.
So, the question is, do you want to portray your Brand as and how you’ve imagined it, or do you want to lose all your control over the outcomes? Remember, you need to live, define, and communicate your brand in that order, or somebody else will!
