Why Branding Is Worth It
Branding is worth the investment
because branding results in
increased market share.
If you have no competition, and will never have competition, don’t spend money on branding.
If you’re a startup with no money and you’re not advertising yet, don’t spend money on branding, but also don’t try to do it yourself. You don’t need a logo. Start saving, start talking to your customers, and begin slowly working out the details beginning with your messaging (not visuals).
If you think your company’s success is not influenced by your branding, and you think that your branding does not affect how your customers think and feel about your product or services, don’t invest in branding, because you won’t see the value in it.
For most other companies, invest in branding, it’s worth your while.
Branding increases market share. That is a well proven fact with well over a century of professional branding as proof. However, we don’t need to look at history to prove that branding increases market share. We know from our own personal experience that the way we think and feel about a company or product is affected negatively or positively by our experience. The buying decision is emotional. It’s irrational. It’s true that we support that decision with rationalizations, which sometimes override our emotional response. However, in most cases, our minds are made up before we have a chance to rationalize the outcome.
The experience created by brands influences the buying decision,
and in turn, a company’s market share.
The experience created by your brand is a result of what we at Kolke call your brand touchpoints, which consist of the variety of ways a person can touch or interact with your company. They include things such as your messaging, logo, graphic design, advertising, web and social media presence, and so on.
Branding includes the exercise of identifying and crafting your key brand touchpoints.
Your communication through your touchpoints needs to be consistent and effective.
Consistency /
If you are not communicating the same thing across your touchpoints, you message may confuse your customers. For example, it’s very common for a company to have an awesome product that is presented in a poorly designed package. What’s happening is there are two touchpoints at work. The experience provided by the actual product and the experience provided by the packaging are at odds.
Effectiveness /
The key question to ask is “Do my brand touchpoints provide the right experience to the right people?” Branding takes into account psychology, styles and trends of how your demographics are communicating. More importantly, it identifies ways to communicate that your demographic will find interesting and appealing.
How do you know if it’s working? /
Branding has a long-tail ROI cycle. In the short term, some of your customers may even react negatively to a new brand image. People don’t like change. Over the long run, however, if you do it right, you will hear from your customers how well you ‘get’ them, and the numbers will show it too.
Bottom line. A company that excels at the branding exercise will outdistance their competitors.
– Tim Kolke, Managing Partner, Kolke Creative