What is branding? How much has the term changed over the years? And why is it so important for businesses? These are some fundamental questions that every business needs to answer before they dive into the world of brand building. Because branding is not just important for businesses, it is essential for a business’s future.

What is branding?

Let’s take some time to break things down. Branding is term that refers to all the different way a company uses in order to establish a proper and positive image in their customers’ eyes. Branding is utterly connected with the marketing process of a company but not the same. Brand building is the strategy whereas marketing is the tactics that will follow to make that strategy work. We could say that branding is the umbrella term that hold the company’s tactics to promote their products, services and name.

Over the past few years brand building has seen massive changes. Before the year 2000 building a brand name used to refer the name of a particular product or services of a company. What we refer to, today, as ‘’trademark”. Today branding has taken a whole different meaning. It refers to ‘’the image’’ of the company itself. The trust that the consumers have towards the company and its products and services.

Build a strong company brand name

We can take the company NIKE for example. NIKE was just a company manufacturing and selling sporting equipment and sporting clothes. After working with famous athletes to advertise its products, NIKE managed to make costumers associate the companies’ products with the positive feeling they have towards those athletes. Now instead of being just a company, NIKE became the top brand of sporting equipment, utterly intertwined with quality and trust for its products.

Branding is essential for every company, whether we are talking about products, services or pretty much everything else. It is the way the customer perceives the company, its products and services. The better the branding the more likely the customer is to trust the company and refer it to others.  The feeling people get when they think about a company or a product will play the most important role in establishing the brand name of the company. A positive feeling can make the company’s future whereas a negative will surely break it.

If we were to break down the most important parts of branding then it would go something like this. Branding is:

• The promise of a good product or service
• The story behind the company and its products
• That one thing that makes the company different and special
• The feeling of trust created towards the company
• The symbols, logos and images connected to the company
• The positive feeling that will lead costumers to refer the company

These are the major point of branding but things do not stop there. Each point can be subcategorized to others and so on.  Branding building is the essence of the company. If the branding does not work, the marketing will not work and there for the company will not work.

Whether you company sells products or provides services, you need to establish a good branding building strategy and stick with it. Changes may come but the idea must remain. Find the right branding strategy for your company today and start building your future on it.