What is Branding?

Why is it so important in a marketing strategy.

For businesses that are starting to want to understand the rules of the game of online presence, these are pains because today, often, there is a tendency to get confused about many aspects, one tends to mix meat with fish, to make mistakes in the use of tools and therefore to confuse the ideas more than to clarify them. Added to this is the unwillingness of entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized businesses to understand that sales success does not only depend on a good product and its price, but that the determining factors of commercial success are multiple and articulated and now increasingly pass from what is called "brand identity". And from here, the activity aimed at stimulating the visibility and identity of a brand is called branding.

Around the term Branding, there is still a lot of confusion today, unfortunately. Yet it is one of the most profitable, performing and long-lasting marketing activities there is. Up until just 10 years ago branding was thought of as a simple combination of names, symbols, slogans, signs and designs. Basically, according to many, branding was the design activity of the brand made up of the sign, the lettering and the pay-off or claim, in some cases more evolved, which identified the product or set of products sold by a company on the market. certain company. In commercial competition therefore, the brand had a marginal importance compared to the product and the complex set of processes that revolved around production or rather so it was thought to be, in Italy in a particular way. The particular nature of the Italian industrial fabric made up of small and very small businesses has certainly not helped the diffusion of a different vision of things (but on this it would be necessary to open another chapter and we would be partially off topic).

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The reality is slightly different today and I would also add finally.

And in a world where commercial competition and marketing are essential elements of a company's existence, branding takes on an absolute leading role, perhaps, in many cases, even more than marketing itself.

Meaning what? What does it mean?

It means that today the perceptive and engaging and therefore emotional aspect is much more driving force than the inductive aspect (push-marketing) in companies' business models. That is, the perception that the consumer has when he hears, sees, reads the products or the brand of a company and therefore unconsciously assimilates the positive or negative values ​​is today the real drive to purchase.

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In practice it means that the word “brand” or “branding” is a moving target and evolves with consumer behavior.

We can consider the brand as the mental image that the consumer forms of the company that the brand represents, being influenced by all those elements, communication, creativity and BEHAVIORS that revolve around the brand itself.

And beware, I emphasize BEHAVIORS.

As Seth Godin wrote in "The Purple Cow" if I remember correctly, we are at a point where the evolution of marketing is now mature, which we can define as follows:

• Old marketing: sell what you produce
• New marketing: produce what you can sell.

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The importance of branding, clearly written

Branding has such a profound effect on the operational, management and commercial strategies of a company that it clearly and unequivocally DESIGNES the identity of the company itself in its purposes (mission), in its vision of the world (vision), in its relationships ( corporate social responsibility) in the collective imagination of the consumer (brand identity).

Which implies that the Brand does not only serve to circumscribe one's interests, values ​​and competitive ability within one's target market (market leadership) but to being seen in reality as the sole provider of a solution to a problem or need. Therefore the objectives that a good brand strategy (brand positioning strategy) must consider can be summarized in the following points:

• Always be very clear in communication. Don't be smoky, don't give rise to misunderstandings, don't confuse the public with discordant communications, don't raise doubts. Be simple, direct, transparent.
• Confirm your credibility. Don't be indulgent towards your mistakes, don't hide them, rely on certificates of esteem, reward the consumer who trusts them.
• Stimulate the consumer to talk about your products or services by involving him emotionally (those that Seth Godin defines as "sneezers" that have nothing to do with influencers, those must be avoided as the absolute evil)
• Motivate the buyer to buy to make him fall in love with the product/service offered. Therefore giving added value, making people understand that that product/service is the real and unique solution to the problem without any deception.
• Customer loyalty.

The last point, that of customer loyalty, is very interesting because it is precisely there that branding joins marketing in a real harmonious process of company management.

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Concluding

Why basically, if we want to simplify everything we wrote above, if a brand could speak and if it were to present itself to us it would say this:

1. Hi!
2. I am ………..
3. I exist because ……….
4. If in reference to who I am and why I exist you also like me, you can buy me and speak well of me to others.

As consumers begin to identify with the brand, it will live in the hearts and minds of customers and potential customers, adding up their perceptions and experiences at the service of those who have not yet confronted that brand and fueling a positive, long-lasting driving force. absolutely independent of the specific sales strategies of direct product marketing.

I remember a very old video by Mauro Lupi, former CEO of one of the first and most important Italian Web Marketing companies (Ad Maiora) in which he exhorted companies to open up to the public, to let the public enter the factories to stimulate socialization and positive relationship with the company regardless of the fact that this somehow had to activate sales processes that would have been activated in a completely natural way anyway. Too bad I can't find that video anymore. Patience.

Today branding is a structural activity of the company. And if it is not yet, in many cases, it will become so in a very short time. The need to reduce costs and bring prestige to budgets will lead companies to explore models and methodologies that other companies that are actively competing on the market today have already adopted for many years. A strong brand is invaluable as the battle for customers intensifies day by day. It is important to invest time in researching, defining and building the brand. After all, the brand is the true promise of value to the consumer. The brand or trademark is the main protagonist, together with the consumer, of marketing communication and tells its story, capitalizes its experiences, becomes its memory because if marketing is tactical, branding is absolutely strategic.