Building a brand, when done right, gives you a lot more than just a flashy logo or graphic to put on business cards and marketing materials.
A brand is a representation of who you are as an organization. It includes your logo, but it also includes your mission, vision and values. Your brand embodies your approach to business and how you talk to your audiences. It is what defines you and sets you apart in the market. Business owners who place a strong focus on building a brand and defining their values are the ones who succeed.
A brand gives a face to a company and helps instill trust in your customers. The first half of this year shows that trust continues to be an increasingly important factor in how consumers make decisions.
Logo Concepting: Just a small piece of what goes into a brand.
Trusting Brands
Each year, Edelman Intelligence conducts the global Trust Barometer survey to gain insight on this subject. In 2020, they found that 70% of people say trusting a brand is more important today than in the past and they now look to brands to help contribute to solving society's problems.
Trust leads to stronger relationships between brands and customers. In fact, 75 percent of people with high brand trust say they will buy a brand’s product even if it isn’t the cheapest. They'll even purchase exclusively from that brand. In essence, if your brand is trustworthy, people will purchase whatever you're selling.
When times are good, you may be able to get away with a simple logo purchased for a few hundred bucks off Fiverr, invest money into advertising, and leave it at that.
But when things like COVID-19 or the Black Lives Matter movement come into the forefront, consumers start thinking harder about where they're spending their money. People use their buying power to be more selective with how they spend their money, directing it to brands that align with their personal values.
Brands Supporting Causes
People want to feel good about the decisions they make. That includes who they do business with. If you can give them that good feeling for making a purchase decision with you, it gives you an edge over everyone else.
I've definitely seen business owners who haven't placed a focus on that aspect of their brand struggle this year. Right now, consumers want to support local. They want to help fight racism and injustice. But they don't always know where to start. So when they can contribute simply by spending their money with brands who represent and align with those causes, they will do it and become loyal customers.
The world is in turmoil and people want more than just token words of support for these causes. They want real, meaningful change. There's an opportunity for businesses to be a force for good in the world, to help make real change, and to gain a loyal following as a result. It takes courage to stand up for these causes. There are real risks involved. You may say the wrong thing, or people may be offended. You may have to issue corrections or make course corrections. However, if you genuinely, truly want to care for and connect with your customers, that now means you also need to care for and connect with the larger communities your customers live in.
A great example of this was Telus' #StandWithOwners campaign from earlier this year. By giving consumers the power to help businesses they loved, without asking anything in return, Telus injected cash into the local economy by purchasing gift cards from local businesses based on user's social media posts.
Why Branding Matters
For me, branding is so more than just a logo. It's how you do business. It's what you say to your customers. Branding is how you treat your employees, and it's how you give back to your community. When a brand is well-built, it gives people a powerful reason to come back. People do business with brands that make them feel good about where their money is going.
