They consume your product, but they buy your brand.

Studies show that the top 4 aspects influencing customers' decision to buy are quality, convenience, value, and what goes into making the offering, however, 81% of customers report that, in addition to those, they also need to trust the brand, to commit and take the purchase decision. Can you survive without a good brand?

What is Branding?

Branding is more than a logo or a clever tagline. At its core, branding is the process of creating a distinct identity for your offering in the mind of your target audience. From you visual identity (logos, colors, typography) to your purpose, values, voice, and the resonance of your customers’ experience, branding gives your offering an appealing and memorable point of contact, allowing customers to have a closer, more intimate relationship with your product, and setting it apart from the competition. Jeff Bezos once said, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room. ” That’s branding in a nutshell.

What is Branding?

Branding is more than a logo or a clever tagline. At its core, branding is the process of creating a distinct identity for your offering in the mind of your target audience. From you visual identity (logos, colors, typography) to your purpose, values, voice, and the resonance of your customers’ experience, branding gives your offering an appealing and memorable point of contact, allowing customers to have a closer, more intimate relationship with your product, and setting it apart from the competition. Jeff Bezos once said, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room. ” That’s branding in a nutshell.

The word "brand" comes from the Proto-Germanic word "brandaz", meaning to burn. Initially used referring to the act of burning a mark on livestock using a branding iron, to claim ownership. Over time the concept evolved into our modern concept of a brand. Some of the original iron brand concepts still remains. For instance, a prominently displayed logo, with recognizable coloring, that displays professionalism and the values of the target audience, isn’t just alluring, it also communicates pride in the offering and the excellence that goes into making it, hitting two of the four chief decision influencing parameters (quality and ingredients). It also resonates, creating a kinship with the target audience, alleviating the marketing losses from the 81% exposed to the offerings and who do not buy over brand mistrust.

We can help you make sense of branding and provide assistance developing your custom brand, perfectly suited for the business tone you need to set for your application and target audience.

The High Cost of a Weak brand

Businesses that fail to invest in a solid brand strategy often experience a series of avoidable and costly issues:

  • Lack of differentiation: Without a clear brand, you fade into the noise. Your target customer doesn’t see you as unique, much less as superior.
  • Low trust and credibility: A weak or inconsistent brand erodes confidence in the business that offers it.
  • Ineffective marketing: Ads fall flat in all metrics without a solid brand being communicated. From catching and holding attention, to conversions and referrals.
  • Price Sensitivity: Without the perceived unique value, you’re forced to compete on price.
  • Poor customer loyalty: People don’t stick with things they don’t connect with emotionally.

Consider this: The rule of 7, states that on average, it takes 7 engagements for someone to consider purchasing from a brand, but without clear and consistent branding, people may not notice enough to register the accumulating engagements in their mind.

Why Branding Matters: The Numbers Don’t Lie

Still not convinced that branding is worth the investment? Let’s look at some compelling data:

  • 89% of shoppers stay loyal to brands that share their values (Fundera)
  • 77% of B2B marketers say branding is critical to growth (Circle Research)
  • 64% of consumers cite shared values as the primary reason they have a relationship with a brand (Harvard Business Review)
  • 55% of a brand’s first impression is purely visual (IOM)
  • Brand recognition can nearly double with the use of signature colors (University of Loyola)
  • 88% of consumers become loyal to a brand after 3 purchases (Yotpo)
  • Brand consistency has been linked to revenue increases of up to 23% (Forbes)
  • B2B customers are more than twice as likely to buy from brands that show personal values rather than business ones (Corporate Executive Board)
  • 84% of B2B marketers state their main goal is brand awareness (Content Marketing Institute)
  • 89% of HR leaders state that strong branding gives a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent. (Randstad)

We can go on and on with similar statistics for days, because there is consistency in findings among a wide variety of organizations and research studies. They all underscore a single critical point: Your brand is the bridge between your business and your audience. If that bridge is weak, unstable, or unclear – conversions, loyalty, and growth, all suffer.

Brand Strategy: The Blueprint for Success

A strong brand doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of intentional strategy that plays off of the strengths of the business, the needs and preferences of consumers, and the opportunities afforded in the market. A winning brand strategy most often will include:

Brand Strategy Services image.

Brand strategy is a plan to conquer the market by way of extreme differentiation.

  1. Brand Purpose: What is the reason for being of the brand? Customers are much more likely to buy from, trust, champion, and defend, companies with a strong purpose.
  2. Brand Vision: What will the brand look like in the future? A clear vision guides a brand towards an area of unique value.
  3. Brand Mission: What are the brand’s commitments today? This guides the actions of the team driving the brand to take actions aligned with the purpose.
  4. Brand Values: What are the actionable boundaries of behavior that will guide customer interaction? This is an integral part of the formation of a brand culture, which is the real connection with consumers.
  5. Brand Position: How does the brand fit the market in comparison with the competition? How is it superior in satisfying the target audience? Creating clarity in the brand position becomes the driving force behind what is presented to the market.
  6. Brand Personality: What attitudes, subjects, and personal traits resonate with the target audience. The brand personality is exuded through all communication of the brand.
  7. Brand Story/Heritage: (Optional) Stories are engaging, and one that speaks of the origin of a brand, and leads to a clear understanding of the attitude and values, and why the mission is so important, can tie everything together in a very memorable and compelling way. These stories can also pick up on connecting emotions like tradition and nostalgia.

Need help developing a brand strategy that synergizes with your business and product strengths, is in line with your target audiences’ preferences, and is geared towards opportunities and a firm position in the market? We can help.

Visual Design for Brand Logos

Being pretty is one thing. Being attractive to the target market and inspiring confidence in taking a decision to buy, is a completely different thing. Our work speaks for itself. Can you tell the tone of pride, assertiveness, and professionalism? How about the nuanced feels of elegance, sophistication, casual fun, playfulness, inspiration, dynamism, official authoritativeness, or sublime confidence?

Visual Design for Brand Logos

Being pretty is one thing. Being attractive to the target market and inspiring confidence in taking a decision to buy, is a completely different thing. Our work speaks for itself. Can you tell the tone of pride, assertiveness, and professionalism? How about the nuanced feels of elegance, sophistication, casual fun, playfulness, inspiration, dynamism, official authoritativeness, or sublime confidence?

Visual design must be aligned with all the brand strategy direction, as it will flavor and tie into the perception of the market known as the brand promise, which is what customers can reasonably expect the brand to deliver.

When a brand logo is well designed, it is not just art. Logos must be flexible enough to comply with a variety of needs. From being recognizable in a 16px X 16px favicon, to being interesting when scaled up on a billboard. From having a sense of depth, to being capable of single color printing (used stylistically in some powerful forms of media, and allows etching, 3D carving/printing, and embossing of the logo commonly used in signage and gifts). A good logo has the ability to adapt to those business needs, and more.

Logos must look sharp and organized, and have an element of wittiness that relates back to the brand promise to reinforce memorability. The design itself, of good logos, creates credibility and sets a tone that is positive to promote customer engagement. The design must also be timeless, avoiding the major trends/fads in design, to avoid feeling dated within a few years.

Colors also evoke emotions, purple is often associated with the divine or with inspiration, blue can inspire reliability and trust (sky and water support life), green can inspire renewal and hope (spring time) and environmental conscience, warm colors (yellow to red) can elicit youthful energy and passion, black and sharp contrasts can feel insightful (clarity of lines), less saturated colors can cast off a sense of elegance, sophistication, altruism, and confidence (think clouds and stratosphere), while full saturated colors can be more dramatic and convey intensity, and fun. Multiple colors can give an impression of levity, simple variety (could be for children with simple colors), exploration, verstatility, and inclusion, while few colors hint at a more tightly operated organization and/or a greater depth of focus in the offering. When colors are aligned with the purchase intent and values of the target audience, it can be very powerful.

Shapes can also elicit emotion. Sharp corners tend to feel unfriendly, structural, or product/process focused, while curves tend to feel softer, friendlier, more approachable, and focused on the customer and the relationship. Clear geometric shapes tend to convey organization and cohesion, free form shapes tend to convey creativity, slanted shapes can convey dynamism, an upswing in the visual balance can convey progress, animal figures can be endearing.

Brand Asset Design to the Max

So once you are clear about what your brand represents, where it is going, and how it fits the market compared to the competition. And once you are clear about the brand personality and the feel it must convey. You are ready to begin developing your brand assets. It is an iterative creative process and must be done with the input/evaluation/commentary of people within the target audience. Ultimately they should see themselves reflected in the brand. Brand assets we frequently work with include:

Logo

The face of your brand and a symbol that elicits emotions and connection to the products instantly.

Palette

A cohesive set of colors that elicit emotion and produce a suitable business tone, per color psychology.

Tagline

A brief, catchy, and witty phrase that makes a statement that distills your position among competitors.

Font Style

Lettering choices that are clear, aligns with the message and personality, and set the right tone for business.

Jingle

A catchy and brain worm type of riff intended to enhance sensory immersion and brand memorability.

Mascot

A character that adds personality and represents the brand values and mission and guides interaction.

Packaging

The container in which customers see products for the very first time is a key part of the brand experience.

Guidelines

A manual of best practices to implement all brand assets in a way that supports the brand strategy.

The process of brand asset design involves research, theorizing, creating assets, testing, evaluating feedback, and then starts again with research. Three iterations is usually a sweet spot. Less than three means the assets are not as good as they could be, and 6 or 7 iterations start having diminishing returns. Instead of becoming clearer, there is a tendency for the design to lose power to compromise, confusion, and complexity.

We assist small to medium sized businesses, in avoiding early mistakes in branding that may cost them dearly down the line. Brand assets that support your specific brand strategy must have consistency in tone and presentation, in order to reinforce each other in creating greater depth of sensory immersion and emotional engagement of the target audience, and enhance the memorability of each engagement with the brand.

Final Thoughts

In an age where attention is scarce and competition is everywhere, branding is your secret weapon. It’s not just how you attract people-it’s how you keep them. Companies that invest in strategic branding are the ones who stand out, survive, and scale.

Branding isn’t just design-it’s destiny. If you’re serious about growth, it’s time to treat your brand like the business asset it truly is. Reach out to us now. We are here to help.

Frequently Asked Branding Questions

When people within your customer base have become aware of your product and it’s unique benefits, branding it clearly with a fun, differentiated name will make it so they instantly recognize your offering among your competitors, increasing the chances they purchase your product.

When a brand is established, consumer perception is that the product delivers the brand promise, and other products are somewhat of a gamble. They may work well, but probably not. Products labelled with the brand can command a higher price than competitors offering a similar product, and people will be glad to pay it, and be proud of their purchase.

Interesting Fact:

In the early 2000s, Volkswagen launched a super sedan called the Phaeton, with specs that rivaled the Bentley Continental at half the price. It was the very best VW could offer. But sales fell very short of expectations... You would think that an established brand like VW, at a far lower price, would take away Bentley’s business. But Bentley’s sales were relatively unaffected. The reason is because Bentley is a very strong brand in the segment of luxury cars, where VW is not.

Strong brands develop a following. Customers who have become believers in the brand, fall in love with it, and return to purchase more products consistently. Even friends of the believers have more openness to try the product their friend loves so much. Customer loyalty to brands can be very intense, even to the point where customers can demand a say in the product and development of new products and become angry if they are excluded. It seems like a problem, but it is the contrary. That type of following makes a company extremely stable and allows it to be very profitable.

Interesting Fact:

Kraft Foods was sued over the trans-fat content of their Oreo brand cookies. They agreed to change their recipe to remove the health-risk in their product, only to find an enormous outcry from their loyal customer following, who did not want any alteration whatsoever to the product they loved so much.

When new competitors come into a market, they often are very loud and seem to advertise everywhere, and often try to entice people to try their product and gain new customers by offering lower prices than the established suppliers. Those who built their business based on the argument of price are now vulnerable to the new competitor. Those who developed strong brands will lose the least customers.

When a brand is strong, customers are more likely to remember the product and name, and when they speak with friends who are looking for a similar solution, they share their positive experience with the brand, which translates into greater sales.

When brands take root and become strong, competitors often try to take advantage and impersonate the leader with similar graphics and names. Imitations come out of the woodwork. A brand can receive trade protection from the Patent and Trademark Office, and beneficial rulings in courts of law, including injunctions for those encroaching on the brand and settlement proceeds for damages.

Strong brands are short and memorable, so when they are advertised, people have a greater tendency to remember and share the advertising message with others. Short strong brands also take up less space in ads, which is actually very important. Cluttered ads are less effective.

Studies of Recruitment officers around the world have shown that the brand recognition of the employer has great, favorable influence in the application process. The reputation of a brand that delivers on its promise to the consumer, conveys status upon the employees. The best candidates want to work with the strong brands.

To create a strong brand, we must focus on three things: (1) Market / Industry research, (2) Formulating a brand strategy based on data, and (3) Implementing the brand promise into product features, market communication, and the culture of the organization.

A well designed website must captivate the target audience instantly with a strong visual appeal, then provide the user with a satisfying experience finding what they are looking for, with intuitive navigation, and good rate of flow that converts guests to our desired next step with efficiency. The design must also be optimized for SEO, accessible for impaired users, compatible with mobile and other screen sizes, be free of deprecated technologies, robust in security, and lightning fast.

We require payment as a retainer for the scope of work, which we in turn use to pay for the professional time and resources used creating your design. We need your timely direction as we colaborate building your site. Once the design is finished, we will need you to supply the content (text, images, videos), per guidelines we give you, to fill the available space on pages.

There is an onboarding phase to SEO, in which keywords are researched, a plan is prepared, and modifications are made to the site being optimized. The process can take between 1 and 4 weeks depending on the complexity and magnitude of the project. Once that is completed, the off page SEO, which is an ongoing process, can begin implementation. Usually, customers see growing results within 10 to 25 weeks from the point implementation begins. Direct advertising, through social media, YouTube ads, and search engine PPC, produce instant results, but have a higher cost structure.

There will always be work required to maintain favorable search engine ranking. SEO ranking is similar to the movement of a big ship. When the right things are done, the forward movement begins, eventually getting closer and closer to the top position in search results. But if the right things are not done, the results start being lost. When that happens, it can be hard to recover an upward momentum.

It is impossible to quote an accurate price without a scope of work. That being said, companies that have an established brand and their own in-house online marketing team with a qualified web designer and some SEO / PPC specialists pay hundreds of thousands yearly to maintain the team. With us you can have the power of that team for a fraction of the expense.

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