Branding is one of the most important factor for any business that wants to succeed online. It is the quickest way for any business to express to its prospect customers, what it is and what it can offer.
Inaccurate branding of a business can make it hard for the prospects customers to understand the business and buy from it.
It’s very simple to understand the importance of branding if you keep your eyes open and look around. You will see hundreds of examples of successful branding all around the world.
When you hear the phrase “Just do it!”, what do you think of? You instantly recollect the brand Nike. When you hear some new gadget in market with a little ‘i’ in front of it you know that its an Apple. And similar applies to other big brands like Samsung, Sony, Microsoft, Google, Ferrari and Disney.
So if they all are doing it and making billions doing it, it must be something very important and something that all we should apply to our businesses.
Branding is not just for big giants, but it can help any business whether small, medium or large to grow and succeed.
So, if you are about to start a new online business, then its better you consider branding it.
Some points that’ll help you understand the importance of branding:
1. Branding makes your business known in the market:
“Just do it”, “Save Money, Live better”, “Think Different”… when you hear these taglines your brain automatically starts thinking about the brands behind them (Nike, Wal-Mart and Apple, if you were thinking).
Why?
It’s all because, they are the perfect example of successful branding. You see their advertisements at least 10 times a day whether it is from a TV ad, road-side hoardings, newspapers, website banner ads or from facebook ads. They have been successful in hard wiring these taglines to our brains and these have helped them make billions.
Just think about it, when you are in a store wanting to buy a new pair of shoes and see 10 different shoe brands, which brand will grab your attention first (given that Nike has done some good branding in your area)? Of course, Nike.
So if you want to make your online business known in the market then its better to start branding it now. Just find your target audience and think about how can you hard wire your brand to their heads, so that whenever they need some help related to your industry they’ll come to you rather than going somewhere else.
2. Branding helps people to perceive your business and company:
Branding is not a just about a unique tagline saying something about your product and company. It is much more than that.
It is a means for people to perceive about you, your business and your company. It helps them know about what your company stands for, what your company aims to do and how it will attain its goals by providing more value to them.
The best example I can give of here is of Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. I have been reading his blog for last 1 year or so and all I can say is he’s a damn good guy. He provides high standard information on his blog and earns over $80,000 per month doing so. And with all this he’s very down to earth.
And that’s what I like about him and that’s how I perceive him – good guy who provides great information and that’s why I buy the stuff he recommends.
You see the magic here.
So, if you are starting an online business, you should should sit back and think of how your brand should be perceived by your customers, so that when they start reading your blog or come to your website, they start trusting and respecting you and will want to come back again.
3. Branding adds value to your content:
If people do not know value your business, then it doesn’t matter if you have great content on your website, no one will care about it.
Branding adds value to your content. There are hundreds of businesses out there that are producing same great quality content each day, but what sets one business apart from other is the branding and the perceived value it has been able to build for itself.
I call this perceived value as the quality of content starts having less significance than the value it is able to generate due to the branding of it.
Its not always the content that creates the value but the branding.
Say you have a new cola in town that tastes a lot better than Coca-Cola and is cheaper too, but what do you think will people prefer? They’ll always go with Coca-Cola as the perceived value of Coca-Cola brand is far more than its product itself. So no matter how good your new content maybe, unless you have some branding to support your content, it’ll have very less to no impact.
So, to be able to add more value to your online business and blog content, you need to make people recognize your brand and attract them towards it.
Of course, content is still the king because, let’s face it; if you have absolutely horrifying content, people will get pissed of and it’ll create a negative image of your brand.
So overall, I think you need both good content and powerful branding to be perceived as a high value brand.
Good Content + Powerful Branding = High Perceived Value
4. Branding increases loyalty
Nothing can be better for an online business than a bunch of regular and loyal visitors. When you have established yourself as a good brand, people become more loyal to you as they now start trusting you.
Its simple: When a new iPhone launches and you have been using an old model of iPhone for quite some time, you go and buy the new model. You know Apple is a great brand and you can trust them with whatever new product they launch. You have been using their products for a while and liked the quality of service they have been providing, so you become loyal to their brand. You buy more stuff from they because of this and hence they make more money.
In a nutshell…
If you want
- your online business to become well known in the market,
- want your visitors to perceive you as a valuable resource
- and increase the loyalty of these visitors
then branding is important for your business.
I’ll be writing a follow-up post to this post in a couple of days to discuss some tips on how you can brand your online business or blog. Just opt-in to my newsletter below to make sure you don’t miss out reading it.
P.S. – The reason I named this blog Gyantastic was for the branding purposes only. So, if you ever hear Gyantastic again anywhere on the internet, you’ll know they’re talking about this blog! 😀
Take care and leave a comment below to let me know what you think.
