Many attribute the success of Apple not to its products, but to the sheer power of its branding. In fact, it could be said that at this point Apple is coasting on the success of its brand more than its actual product offerings. Consider: in Q4 2017, Apple’s sales accounted for 18% of smartphone industry profits, while also raking in 87% of its profits.
Since then, Apple has only gone from strength to strength when it comes to their branding.
We can argue all day about who has the best ecosystem, software, or products between Apple, Samsung, and Google, but no one can deny the power of Apple’s business branding.
Very few companies in the world inspire the same brand loyalty that compels patrons to line up or even camp outside their stores whenever a new product comes out. Fans even flocked to their stores in late October last year for the latest iPhone, despite the ongoing pandemic.
All this teaches us is how a powerful brand can command sales numbers. And although Apple is a master of branding, they are not the only ones. This article will detail how business branding can power your company’s sales.
What Makes a Brand?
When you ask people to define a brand, many will point to a company’s visual elements: the logo, their colors, or their design decisions. Although these elements are indeed part of the brand, they don’t make up the entire story. In fact, a company’s brand is so much more than its logo and colors.
The brand of a business is all about setting itself apart from its competitors.
Some startup companies understand this and begin their venture with a strong, consistent brand image in mind. Take TOMS, for example. The shoe seller began in 2006 as a platform for social improvement, donating a pair of shoes to charity for every pair sold.
Today, the 625 million-dollar company continues to pair footwear and what is calls “grassroots good,” a powerful message that keeps its customers buying. This simple strategy worked to differentiate Toms from the thousands of other shoe sellers out there.
Other companies can take a while – even years into their operations– before they seriously explore branding. But sooner or later every company will need to recognize that the success of a business is hugely impacted by how much it can be recognized and distinguished from competitors.
Apart from distinct visual elements, branding includes:
- your company’s products
- values
- messaging
- customer service
- employee experience
- everything else that affects the public’s perception of your business
Strategizing, planning, and executing these elements in a deliberate manner is at the core of business branding.
But it’s not enough to just know how to brand your business if your goal is to get more sales.
Brand Identity = Market Specificity
Your brand identity will be a combination of your own efforts and outside forces affecting people’s perception of your business. Knowing, or better yet, establishing a brand identity will help your marketing efforts hyper-focus on your desired market.
In this age of personalization – where consumers have unprecedented control over what they eat, watch, and listen to – a company that hyper-focuses its marketing efforts based on their brand identity can pierce through the noise and reach their consumers in a more meaningful (and profitable) way.
Starbucks is known for good coffee and excellent, personalized service – it’s part of their brand. People visit their regular Starbucks branch to experience that feeling of familiarity, while getting their morning brew. The company took this to the next level when they introduced their loyalty program.
Using their mobile app, Starbucks patrons were able to customize and order their drinks. They also had access to purchase history, location, and more information to make sure the experience was as personal as it could possibly be.
According to the Harvard Business School, in 2019, Starbucks attributed 40% of its total sales to this very successful rewards program. The company understood what their brand stood for, what kind of customers they attracted, what exactly these patrons wanted, and they delivered, big time.
This is also an excellent example of how data can be used in marketing. In this case, data was used to create tailored experiences for Starbucks fans, while also giving the company vital information about their customers’ preferences.
The objective here is to use your brand to help you zero in on new or existing lucrative markets.
The data that matters most to establish your branding comes from your customers. Some guide questions:
- What do they value most?
- What problems can you help them solve?
- What goals can you help them achieve?
- Where do they look for their solutions?
- How can you position your company to provide the solutions they need?
- How can you reflect that clearly and consistently in your branding?
Your company’s products, values, messaging, customer service, employee experience, and basically everything that affects the public’s perception of your business is part of your brand.
Consistent Branding = Trust and Loyalty
It makes sense that maintaining your existing branding will ensure that people who already engage with and like your brand will stay. Repeat customers are almost always better because they spend more money and are relatively easier to sell to.
Repeat customers are also more likely to promote your business to family and friends—customer advocacy is one of the most compelling ways to sell your product or service, converting as well as, if not better than, company-driven marketing.
Here, consistency in brand messaging plays a critical role. In 2017, Rihanna launched Fenty Beauty, a beauty brand that promised “Beauty for All” in all its messaging.
It drove its message with its product (40 foundation shades for all skin tones), its visual marketing (ads featuring women of different cultures and body types) and establishing a strong presence in social media with memes, tutorials, and other forms of user-generated content from a diverse group of users and influencers.
Not once in its materials did it directly talk about “diversity” and “inclusivity.” Instead, it just put those concepts into action—walking the talk, as it were, even as the brand cleverly targeted traditionally underserved markets. It’s a wonderful example of sales strategy being married to the branding of a business.
Your brand messaging ideally reflects your value proposition and is delivered in a way that caters to your target market. This means the tone of voice, choice of words, and communication channels should all be carefully considered.
Your unique value proposition will set your business apart and will set the tone for all your communications. One tip is to come up with a list of words that strongly associate with your value proposition. These can be part of your brand bible, and in every piece of messaging, whether external or internal, you can tap into this pool for reference.
A vegan food store, for example, may include the words sustainability and healthy in their pool. These terms will resonate well with their intended audiences and give team members a mantra to live by, so it reflects in all of their work.
But clearly and consistently conveying your value proposition is only half the battle. Trust and loyalty, the real rewards of consistent branding, only come when a business is also always able to deliver on the promises they make in their messaging.
Although you will gain valuable brand recall with consistent branding, your products and services will only be associated with disappointment if you fail to deliver on the value proposition your messaging proposes.
Intel is one of the biggest, if not the biggest name, in tech. Today, it still enjoys 60.6% of the market share of processors. But this number has dramatically dipped compared to only five years ago, when they had 82.5% of the market.
There are several reasons for this decline. As a premiere tech company, they promised innovation – the most powerful processors, in fact. However, when 2017 rolled in, and their closest competitor, AMD, launched their new line of chips, Intel had little in the way of a response.
It eventually became clear that AMD’s new processors were better, and their market’s perception shifted. Intel enjoyed their time in the sun too much and now they are steadily losing market share.
Although Intel will most likely bounce back, this period can be a cautionary tale for businesses. Complacency can be tempting especially if you are enjoying success. But the minute you start breaking the promises you make in your brand messaging, you will lose your market.
Positive Brand Perception = Brand Equity
Going back to Apple, their solid brand equity gives a boost to the sales of almost any product they take to market just because they’re Apple. Of course, they had built this brand equity through decades of consistent product design, messaging, and marketing.
But you don’t have to spend millions in design and marketing to get brand equity. Brand equity is the perceived value of a brand by its intended market. Building positive brand perception will also reward you with brand equity.
For this, all the branding basics must come together. Here are a few of them:
- Established brand identity. Who are you?
- Well-defined target audience. Who buys your product?
- Consistent brand messaging. How do you speak to your audience?
- Quality products and services. What value can you deliver?
- Reliable Aftercare. How do you keep existing customers loyal?
- Positive employee experience. How do you develop a workforce that reflects your brand?
Conclusion
Building your brand is more than choosing colors or a logo. It entails everything from the words you use in your email campaigns, to the words you use to discuss your product, to the policies you enact in the workplace. Today’s consumer has access to all kinds of information, and they will always choose the brand that they feel aligns with their values the most.
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Use business branding to your advantage. CRISPx is a team of marketing and branding experts that have worked with many clients, from tech startups to established enterprises. We build brand identities, solidify messaging, and improve brand perception. Connect with us here to take your branding to the next level.