What comes to your mind when you hear the brand name Apple, Mercedes, BMW or Nike?
For example: Apple is more than an electronics company, Starbucks is more than a coffee shop, and RedBull is not just an ordinary energy drink, you know why?
All this is related to the brand idea that has been formed and strengthened over the years, until it reached in your mind its current state, and built inside you a perception that is greater than an ordinary product.
You may now be asking yourself what does a brand mean, and what are the most important terms and basic concepts associated with the idea of a brand… This is what we will discuss in detail in this article, so that you come out of the article with an excellent idea of this famous marketing concept.
What is a brand?
A brand is a feature or set of intangible features and characteristics that distinguish one organization or company from another. A brand usually consists of a name, a logo, a symbol, a design, a sound, and more elements that we will describe in detail.
It also refers to the overall experience a customer has when interacting with a company, whether as a shopper, regular customer, social media follower, or just passing by, it represents a feeling inside the mind of the customer or target audience.
Remember our description in the introduction to Starbucks as “more than just a coffee shop”? This is the general feeling or impression that this company leaves on the public.
What is the branding process?
The research and development process to combine a unique feature or set of features with your organization's name, enabling consumers to associate these features with your brand.
Simply we can say that Branding is the process of creating a unique name and image for your company or product within the mind of the target audience.
The importance of the branding process
Why is it important to invest in this process and what will you get from it? You as a particular product owner definitely want an increase in purchases and sales.
The good news is that branding can be the vital factor for consumers when making a purchase decision, and even the reason why your products are more expensive than competitors.
According to a 2015 Nielsen global survey, nearly 60% of shoppers consistently buy from brands they know, and 21% said they bought a product because they liked the brand.
Branding gives your company an identity that goes beyond its product or service, it gives consumers something to relate to and emotionally connect with.
Branding makes your business unforgettable, and it also brings pride to your employees; When you design a brand for your company, you are not only giving an identity to your business, you are creating a workplace that has a good reputation and is highly regarded.
Now that you know the difference between branding and branding, we will go through all the terms related to branding, which you will need to know in order to understand the idea well.
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The most important terms related to the concept of brand
1. Brand Awareness
Brand awareness refers to how well the general audience and target audience know your brand. A high rate of awareness of your brand indicates that your products/services are popular, worthwhile and popular; Thus people seek to deal with it.
Caring about brand awareness is very important; How will consumers be able to buy from you unless they know your brand?
2. Brand Recognition
Brand recognition means how well a consumer or customer can recognize and identify your brand without seeing a company name.
This is done through your logo, company description, specific song, packaging or advertising, this concept goes hand-in-hand with the term Brand Recall, which means the ability to think of a brand without any visual or auditory identifiers.
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3. Brand Trust
Brand trust indicates how strong customers and consumers believe in it. Does your company deliver on marketing promises? Fulfilling marketing promises is vital in a world where people feel mistrustful and insecure about trust.
Statistics show that only about 25% of people feel confident in major brands.
You have to be honest with your customers and consumers or they will never come back to you, remember that losing your customers' trust is the first stone in your brand's grave.
4. Brand Valuation
It means the commercial evaluation of your brand in the marketplace and to users, and this evaluation is often derived from consumer perception and appreciation, as well as their trust and love for you and your brand, given the value you provide to them through your products or services.
A strong brand can make your business invaluable to investors, shareholders and potential buyers.
An example of this is Lambda school, which is innovatively solving the problem of university education loans in Western countries, and in two years it received $ 74 million in financing in its Series C funding round, a large number for a brand that started two years ago, right?
Herein lies the value of the brand, as investors rush to seize this opportunity, when they realize it is worth it.
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5. Brand Identity
Do you remember when we explained a little while ago that the brand is the intangible characteristics in the mind of the target audience that characterize some companies?
Identity is the opposite, it is all the tangible characteristics of your five senses such as music, colors, images and packaging of a product (anything that can appeal to your senses is associated with The trademark is the identity of the trademark).
If you want to build a strong identity for your brand, you should focus on all the elements that the customer or consumer can interact with, from the logo (Logo) to the materials and packaging of your product.
This term falls under another term, Brand Touch Points, and refers to any consumer interaction or exposure to a Brand.
6. Brand Essence
It is the main defining characteristic of the brand, it is an intangible trait that separates you from the competition and puts you higher in your target audience, or as it is said, out of the crowd.
for example:
The essence of Coca-Cola is happiness
The essence of L'Oreal is feminine confidence
The core of Volvo is safety
The essence of Visa is that it is everywhere
The essence of Red Bull is adventure
7. Brand Personality
It means the set of attributes that a brand possesses that give it a human character, in other words, it is a process of embodying the brand's appearance as a person.
Having personality for your brand goes beyond identity, it is more about the look, style and human characteristics of brands.
Those ingredients that make us associate with a brand and choose to buy a product from it rather than its competitors because we feel it expresses us or makes us stand out.
But for many companies, creating a brand personality is not easy. Brand personality is made up of five key factors: solidity, sophistication, efficiency, excitement, and loyalty.
While some companies have failed to find their brand personality, others have been incredibly successful, and have built great marketing strategies around these core dimensions.
One of the most famous examples of building a strong brand character is RedBull, which is known to its customers for its courage and dynamism.
RedBull is an inspiring company about two different types of customers, one is the professional athlete who needs to get through tough challenges, and the other is the fun-loving person who needs a little energy to get through the day and have fun.
In fact, Red Bull is known for “giving wings,” as its famous phrase says in all of its ads, “Red Bull gives you wings.” The company’s recent marketing efforts have focused on the brand rather than the products, and it also organizes sports nights and music parties to reach your customers and build a strong bond with them.
Also among the things that Red Bull is doing to consolidate its brand is a very famous and exciting competition called Can you make it to travel around the continent of Europe without money, you only have a number of Red Bull bottles, and you have to barter to get a ride or to get food or other things you need during Travel.
How do you create your brand personality?
An important point to keep in mind is that the availability of your company's brand personality is a point of distinction among your competitors; Because her personality will be difficult to copy, character formation should be part of a strategic discussion for your brand.
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Ask yourself, what should my brand personality look like?
Little tip: Remember when I said earlier that customers love your brand because it expresses them and their aspirations. So by getting to know your customer closely, you can shape your brand personality in a way that reflects your customer's personality, aspirations and hopes.
You can shape your brand personality using the framework developed by Jennifer Aaker, after you define pre-set attributes based on your vision and customer aspirations.
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8. Brand Vision
It refers to the ideas behind the brand, which help guide the future. When you want to express your brand vision, it often reflects and supports your business strategy, differentiates you from competitors, resonates with customers, energizes and inspires employees and partners, and leads to the flow of ideas for marketing programs.
In the absence or superficiality of this vision, hglcssm drifts aimlessly, and the marketing efforts of the company's personnel are likely to be ineffective.
For example, Tesla has a vision that it wants to anticipate the future, so all its efforts are focused on discovering and predicting the future, and what life will look like in the future.
For example: Tesla was planning to explore Mars and bring materials to Earth that would help build a better future.
Rather, it is trying to design and present products that go beyond the limits of our current reality, such as electric cars and the electronic chip that Elon Musk, the founder of the company, announced at the company's last conference, through which he aspires to control the human mind.
You see, they are products that we did not expect to exist before, so that our wildest dreams about them were what we used to hear in science fiction films.
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9. Brand Voice
Just as in humans, the brand's voice is the unique way an organization or company communicates with everyone. In the past, some people thought that Nokia's basic ringtone or other sound effects, volume tone, etc. was the brand's voice, but this is a misconception.
Brand voice is uniformity in the choice of words, attitudes, as well as values while addressing the target audience or others.
It is the way and manner in which the company conveys its personality to the external audience.
There is a very important difference between a brand's voice and tone, as many people get confused between the two.
Let's emphasize an important point, which is that the sound is constant and does not change, while the pitch of the voice changes.
To illustrate the difference more, here is an example: You as a human being in fact your voice does not change but Your tone can change depending on situations, right?
The tone of your voice when you are happy is different from your tone when you are sad, the tone of your voice when you are excited to perform a certain action, or describe something you liked is completely different from your tone when you are lukewarm without enthusiasm.
As we said, the brand is human-inspired, so its voice is constant, but its tone can change when announcing a new product, or when interacting with various customers on social networks.
Remember that tone changes to reflect different situations, so your customers should not feel that your company's tone of voice is the same in all situations.
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10. Brand Position
This term refers to the way your customers perceive your product or company among competitors or the unique characterization your brand occupies in your customers' brains.
This point makes customers perceive a particular company in a distinctive way by associating emotions and feelings with it.
For example: Snickers chocolate does not promote itself as a product that you eat when you are happy or when you crave some sweet, on the contrary it promotes its product as the way to eliminate your hunger, as it always says in its advertisements (Gaan? Make you Snickers).
11. Brand Promise
Promise refers to the expectations of customers and customers about what they may receive or get from your company, whether services or products, the product may give advantages that go beyond the limits of the basic problem that it addresses on the ground.
For example: Apple products have a symbolic aspect where the owners of Apple products are known as the elite of society and the aristocracy, so this is a promise from the company that it will provide you with this symbolic value through its products.
In conclusion of the above:
I would like to draw your attention to an important point, which is that building a brand is a long-term process and strategy, carried out in multiple, deliberate steps over several years, not overnight.
Now that you know the most important terms around this concept and the difference between them, you can start laying the foundations to start building your brand.
Tell us Are you ready to invest your efforts in building your brand now?
