What is branding- all you need to know

You may be asking yourself, What is branding? When it comes to branding, where do I start?  Isn’t having a decent logo and website enough? What more could there possibly be to branding?”

Or maybe you think professional branding is too expensive to justify the cost right now. Trust us, it’s much more expensive in the long run, to not have a strong brand.

Your brand becomes a sales tool for your team and the lens through which vendors see you. It also influences how your employees feel about working for you. With so many competitors out there, it’s the only thing that will both get you noticed by consumers and keep those customers coming back for more. But first.

What is Branding?

Branding composes of all those attributes that clearly defines and identifies a company, product, or service in the mind of a user. It goes beyond logos and colors. It is a way of defining your business to yourself, your team and your external audiences. It could be called your identity as a business. How you brand your product decides how your users perceive it.

These few definitions may be difficult to grasps now

But, let us see some very simple examples

Example 1

If I give you to pieces of paper with colours, green and yellow. Then I ask you to write your MTN number on one, and your GLO number on the other. On which of the papers will you write your MTN number ?. Where will you write your GLO number?. I guess you choose yellow for MTN and green for GLO.  (97 % of persons will do that)Why? MTN has built a brand around yellow, Glo has built a brand around Green.

Example 2

When last did you see UBA bank painted blue? When last did you see a FIRST BANK painted Red ?. You may never see such a thing ever in life. These companies have their brands around their colours and they stick to them.

With the above few examples, you can understand how branding makes a company or business stand out from the crowd.

Any action you take to build your brand: from defining your brand voice and tone, designing your logo, creating your business cards, website, packaging, emails to brainstorming your ad campaign messages, and design is all branding.

At Zfrica.com, we can build your brand, to help your business stand out once and for all.

Components of a Solid Branding

A solid brand strategy needs to encompass most of the following sections, and answer the following questions:

Note: You must not have all at once, you can add more and more as you keep developing your brand identity

Your purpose, mission, and values.

• What do you believe in?
• For Eg At Zfrica.com, our purpose is to assist businesses to grow.

Objective.

• Why does your brand exist?
• What problem do you solve?
• For Eg At Zfrica.com, we assist businesses to grow, by providing them with almost all digital assistance required for business growth

Positioning statement.

• What do you do?
• How is that different from your competition?
• For Eg At Zfrica.com, we offer you digital services like Logo design, Website design, CAC business registration, Printing Services, etc Our commitment goes beyond offering effective solutions tailored to your needs. We harness the power of digital technology to streamline your experience, enabling hassle-free online orders and significantly reducing the need for physical presence stress.

Target market.

• Who do you serve?
• What are they like: educational background, careers, where they live, gender, income, interests, and hobbies, where do they shop, what are their daily challenges?
• For Eg, Zfrica.com serves the general public, as long as you have a business you want to grow.

Brand Identity.

• Your logo, colours, fonts, and style.
• The tone of voice — are you formal or casual? Funny or serious?
• Messaging strategy.
• If your brand was a real human being, what would their personality be like?
• For Eg For Zfrica.com, these are captured on our website. Zfrica.com

Advertising methods.

• Will you advertise on Facebook? Instagram? Google? All of them?
• Traditional media like TV commercials or radio ads?
• Magazine or newspaper ads? Other industry publications?
• Retargeting or display ads?
• Will you work with social media influencers?
• For Eg, Zfrica.com utilizes all these mentioned above  in her advertisement

Product and packaging design.

• How will your visual identity in these items reinforce your brand values?
• Does your actual packaging fit your values, too? For example: if you’re eco-conscious, are you ensuring all your packaging is recyclable?

Corporate culture and management style.

• How will your offices be laid out?
• How will you manage employees? What can they expect from their leadership team?
• How will you communicate with your team?
• What is expected of your employees at work?

Pricing.

• Are you a luxury brand with a luxury price tag, or a brand for everyone with an affordable price tag?
• How often will you hold sales, and do you have any signature sales?

Any other thing that can add uniqueness to your business should be part of your brand strategy. In our next post, we will look at the importance of branding