Branding is one of the most important parts of any business. Whether your business is big or small and regardless of its industry, proper branding is key to your business’ success. By creating brand recognition in both existing and future customers, your business gains credibility. If you brand well, people who think of the products or services you offer will immediately think of your business. This gives you a significant edge over your competitors who failed to brand as effectively.
Defining “Brand”
Most people understand branding as a process involving advertising, design, and promotion. This is all true, but doesn’t address one of the most important characteristics of creating a brand. Branding is complicated because the process actually occurs in the minds of those who see your promotional materials. Your potential customer recognizes the patterns of your brand, therefore essentially creating a personality for your business in their mind. The right branding strategy facilitates this mental process in the minds of your client base.
As technology advances, branding has changed. The way we share information today has made branding more important than ever. We also now have opportunities for branding which were inconceivable even ten years ago.
How Technology Has Changed Branding
Transparency. With the rise of the internet and social media, significantly more information than ever before is now available to the general public. Most conversations around privacy have centered around personal privacy. However, businesses are learning that attempting to hide scandals and negative press is much harder today than it was before the rise of Facebook and Yelp.
The best choice for your business in this new age of openness is to take advantage of information availability. Now that customers can easily find your dirty laundry, it’s best to not attempt to hide it. This gives your business a reputation for honesty.
Instant feedback. Today, technology makes it possible to track every single hit, click, and keystroke on your website. This enormous amount of data can give you an instant understanding of what’s working for your business and what isn’t. However, it’s in reading the data that the difficulty lies. Many businesses become overwhelmed by the amount of data, and end up not being able to use it well.
Remember that feedback from individuals is as important as data about your web site’s usage. Don’t get bogged down in the massive amount of data flowing in. This data can only help your business as you gain a greater understanding of what your clients want.
Convergence. A few years ago, one of the most popular advertising strategies was the QR code. These codes could be scanned by anybody with a smartphone, and would take the scanner to a promotional page or business website. QR codes have died down as new strategies have become more popular, but convergence — the combination of different technologies in branding — makes previously passive viewers into participating brand loyalists.
“Converging physical branding materials with digital ones allows you to announce your message to your customer base,” stated a spokesperson from Best Displays Online. Don’t get so dazzled by the new opportunities technology offers that you turn your back on physical marketing — the two can combine into a comprehensive, high quality branding strategy.
Technology continues to advance every day. As more strategies for branding come into the world, keep your business on top of the game. You will stay ahead of your competitors and build your reputation as a credible, reliable brand.
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