What is a Branding Agency?
A branding agency discovers what makes you stand out as a company, and then helps you communicate those ideas to your potential customer in an clear way. Their goal is to carve out your own space in the market by establishing your company’s assets around messaging, visual identity, and more.
Choosing Between Different Branding Companies
Selecting a branding agency for your company can be overwhelming, as this is one of the first steps towards growing your business. A great way to start is by asking questions! Outline your branding goals, ideas, and challenges, and ask the candidate agency to describe their plan for your company. Ask about past branding projects that are similar to yours, and always ask why they feel they are the best fit for your company.
Understanding the Importance of Branding
Branding is extremely important for your business to thrive. Not only does it help consumers to remember your company, but it allows potential customers to better understand what your company offers, as well as your company values. Without branding, there is no way for the consumer to distinguish you from your competitors; even if you are the best choice for their business.
What is a Branding Strategy?
In the simplest terms possible, a branding strategy is just a step-by-step plan to connect your brand with your dream customers by establishing the deepest connection possible at every touchpoint. It will have an impact on every part of your business, with the purpose of supporting specific, predetermined goals as defined by your overall marketing strategy. When designed well and executed correctly, a branding strategy has the capacity to improve your customer experience, competitiveness in the marketplace, and financial performance. Through a successful branding strategy, the evolution of your brand will help to define your company’s character and make it memorable to the consumer.
Personal vs. Corporate Branding
In short, a personal brand is built around you. It revolves around your personality, what you do for a living, your interests, and potentially many more things that make you unique. Generally this means you brand your business with your name. A corporate brand is built around a completely new identity that you create for your company. In both cases, a brand is built to represent a business, but in the case of personal branding, the business is the individual.
What is a Branding Guide?
A branding guide is a document that summarizes your brand, establishes consistency for your brand, and helps communicate what your company stands for. At their core, they offer clear-cut rules for how logos, images, colors, fonts, messaging, and other aspects of your branding are used in advertising. They can also include things like simple greetings to be used by your sales team, the company purpose, or even its core values.
Branding vs Marketing: What's the Difference?
Marketing and branding, while different, are actually very co-dependent. Branding defines who you are as a company, and is used to express what your company believes in, why it exists, and helps to shape how the consumer feels about you. Marketing is simply a set of tools and strategies used to get your brand in front of the consumer in an effective manner. A brand is made much more valuable through effective marketing — and vice versa!
What is Digital Branding?
With consumers being bombarded by advertisements every day online, it’s important that you find a way to foster a meaningful connection with them via your online presence. This means tailoring your websites, apps, social media pages, online videos, and more, to your potential consumer. It’s all about establishing your presence, and telling your story to differentiate yourself from your competitors.