Running a business can be both incredibly rewarding and worthwhile while also being taxing and complicated, with obstacles appearing in your path out of nowhere and needing to be dealt with promptly. Seemingly small mistakes can have serious consequences, while a good idea at an opportune moment can soar you upward. That is the magic of managing a business, how much is in your control and sometimes how much isn’t, and the dance of balance between the two. Nowadays so much of everything is focused online, in the digital world of ones and zeros, that some may think that physical branding as a concept and practice is dead, or is no longer useful or worth it, but that is completely wrong. If you want to build a recognizable, successful brand, then physical branding is vital, and here are some reasons why.
What Is It?
First of all, what is physical branding, and what does it entail? Fundamentally, it is about showing what your company is all about, and what you are, through real-life experiences. Our senses are how we interact with the world after all, and even though we may understand or know something intellectually, until we see and interact with it, it simply will not feel real. Branding can not just exist online, and through things like packaging, affordable postcard designs, merch, or other apparel, you create immersive interactions that draw in an audience and potential customers. Often you will see companies that have fantastic options right in front of them to build a brand, whether it is physical or digital, and they just don’t grab the opportunity. What is great about branding is that it really is not that expensive and mostly works through word-of-mouth and recognition, free marketing that just snowballs from person to person.
Brand Consistency
When you establish a brand, you want your message and image to be clear, and unconfused. Anyone who sees it in one place will immediately recognize it somewhere else, and that is the whole point of branding, creating an image of your business that echoes, as it were. When you have brand consistency, you tell a story, and if you know what you are doing, or hire someone who does, your branding will be simple but effective. You build trust this way because you let customers know what to expect from your brand, and one of the things that turns off so many consumers is confusion, whether it is about the products, prices, or the brand itself.
Wider Audience Reach
One of the priorities in a business is constantly expanding your consumer base, getting a broader audience reach, and getting your customers to reel in other potential customers. When your physical and digital branding go hand-in-hand and work off of each other, you give your target audience more ways to engage with your brand and make it that much more memorable. If anyone asks them about a brand they can recommend, they will think of yours much quicker than a company they bought once from and can not even remember the name of, and that is the power of a strong, thought-out brand. It’s not just about supplying a product, but about connecting the product firmly to your business, to you; the product is you, or an extension of you.
Emotional Connection
Practically everything that concerns marketing, branding, and so on is built on foundations of psychology, of how humans act and react to certain words or images or phrases, and what kind of emotions or sensations they trigger. Branding is a huge part of this, where you create tangible, real-life touchpoints for people who have a sensory experience that makes them feel more connected, familiar, and comfortable with your brand. Emotion is a vast resource and opportunity, and often it trumps logic and reason. Every piece of branding is an investment, and it has been proven that %70 of customers who had an emotional connection to a brand spend almost twice as much on ones they were loyal to, as opposed to %49 of less engaged consumers.
Increased Revenue
You may not have known that selling to an old, familiar customer is three times as cheap than selling to a new one, and recent studies have shown that people who already bought from a business are likely to come back and buy again, which in turn increases their customer per value. Existing consumers are the lifeblood, the lifeline of every company, which is why retention campaigns should always be on the list of priorities. Steam is perhaps the best example of this, they are quite literally a monopoly in PC gaming, not because they constantly churn out updates or try to “fix” things that are not broken, to begin with, but because they have an incredibly loyal and committed customer base that simply will not go to another competitor. Steam’s prompt and attentive customer support, clear and transparent policies, and practice of actually working for their customers puts them head and shoulders above any other companies, without necessarily spending any more money.
Employee Motivation
Running a business is not just about keeping your customers happy, but your employees too. If your employees are not ok, it won’t be long before your customers are not either, it is a two-way street, and that is another reason branding is important. Your workers should feel like they are part of a cohesive whole, even if they work alone or from home or the like, they should still feel that they are a part of the brand and that everything they do helps the company forward, and themselves. It has been shown that excellent branding can lower the costs of hiring and training by as much as 50%, which is an incredible amount in this numbers game. When your employees work better, the managers communicate better, which means the wheels are turning in tandem and everything just works.
Good branding is just one piece of the business puzzle, but if you do it well, and strategize, it becomes a significant piece that makes other pieces easier to find and fit.
