How to leverage branding to make your business grow

The companies listed in Fortune 500 made it there thanks to well developed and resilient brands. 

They came up with robust brand strategies and found ways to deliver messages to people and win their support and loyalty. 

Tech companies focus on fostering values to which their consumers can relate and which are apparent at every touchpoint. Branding is evident in the way products and services are developed, sold, and marketed. 

Even though thousands of new companies appear each year, good branding is what can help your company hold its position and remain sought after in a competitive market. 

You can hire a marketing team with the help of the Qubit Labs offshore software development centre, to take care of your branding strategies or dive into the topic yourself.

In any case, it is necessary to grasp the subject itself to understand how you can make your company stand out; so, let's get down to business. 

What is branding?

It's rather challenging to come up with a definition right away because there are thousands of ways to explain branding. It is more than a logo, tagline, or visuals, though these factors are associated with your brand.

If you imagine your business as a person, the brand would be its personality. It would be the way it introduces itself to other people and the way they perceive it.

Branding is how this "person" builds relationships with one's friends, gains their trust, and becomes significant in their lives. 

A brand is a set of ideas, associations, emotions, and values in potential customers' minds. Branding is how these factors are formed; its goal is to multiply the service's or product's value in a consumer's eyes. 

It helps to distinguish your company and convey to the people why your offers are the better choice.

Branding helps clients understand what they can expect from your company and whether your values and priorities align with theirs.  

Why does branding matter?

Since social media gave companies numerous opportunities to reach their customers, businesses went head over heels in terms of creating unique marketing tactics to attract people on a global scale. 

Yet, the more companies on the market, the higher the likelihood of stumbling upon repetitive approaches that annoy people instead of capturing their attention. 

The question is: “how do you make sure your customers want to find out more about what you’re offering?”

When it comes to branding, you need to follow a comprehensive approach and focus on details, not just a logo. 

Here are several reasons why it’s necessary to focus on your branding strategies at the outset to reap the benefits in the long run.  

Branding establishes recognition and trust

Your company might be offering innovative solutions, employees using the best apps for personal task management, and the managers looking forward to making a breakthrough in the industry.

Yet all of these might be worthless if customers don’t know what your company cares about and what values it prioritises. Branding is exactly what can help your business to get in the game and build connections with your clients.

Share employee success, tell stories, and use social media – these all aid in making your business more transparent and more “human.”

It’s necessary to show that you care about your customers, inform them about any updates, and make sure they know they can rely on you.

People will feel an emotional connection with your brand when they see you care about what matters to them and represent it in your performance. 

Branding attracts new clients

When applying correct strategies, you won’t even have to put effort into drawing the audience’s attention.

Branding ensures a positive impression of your company amongst customers, dependability, and consideration of the company’s name as a trusted one.

Thus, the well established brand will speak for itself, relying on word of mouth as its advertising technique. 

Branding improves employee retention and satisfaction

When an employee knows that he/she works for a company that doesn't throw empty phrases around but proves it with actions, they will be proud of their work.

The sense of belonging to the company increases the employee’s desire to contribute to the business's development and put effort into delivering high quality tasks. It makes their work more fulfilling and exciting. 

Branding creates business value

The previous points are the components of this one since everything you do to make your company stand out adds value.

Being unique means being memorable, which implies making customers interested, hence generating value. It’s crucial to keep the message consistent unless you want to lose what you’ve been working on.

Social media and blog posts are your trusty assistants in delivering the right messages to the right people.

How to build your tech company’s brand?

Although the stages might differ for each company, some general steps and nuances have to be taken into account by any business.

●   Market analysis and a brief creation. It’s necessary to evaluate the situation on the market and emphasise the key trends.

The company comes up with something like a technical task for the team of managers, designers, copywriters, and other specialists. The information is gathered via surveys of the targeted audience, interviews with the employees, and tests among focus groups. 

●   Positioning. The service/product is positioned by identifying the targeted audience, its expectations, and distinctions from the competitors. The company determines the product’s strengths, which can help it make a breakthrough. 

●   Developing the brand platform. The strategy addresses a handful of questions, including “what values does the product/service brings,” “what associations it aims to raise,” and “what are the main promotion channels.”

●   Naming. The company’s name has to be concise and memorable; it can also reflect the business and product essence.  

●   Design and identity. It implies creating the corporate style, creating the unique style for advertisement materials, and developing a website. 

●   Communication strategy. During this stage, the company defines the key communication channels, both for offline and online presence.

It develops standards, methodologies, and content plans, which are the basis of constant interaction with the customers. In this case, communication can be interpreted not only in the literal sense but also in the aspect of being present in the information area. 

●   Guideline and brand book. These are the documents, including the rules regarding brand usage. Brand book implies describing all the main components of your brand, while a guideline is a detailed manual for using the brand’s graphic design. 

Branding is a comprehensive process that improves interaction with the audience and adds value to the products and services. A well thought out and properly implemented branding strategy will define the business’s position on the market. 

Wrapping up

A company that specialises in Internet-related services and products is just an average business. Google is a unique approach, clear values, transparent processes, well considered communication, and recognisable solutions.

Google is not just a company; it's a brand. Its heavy investment in company branding made it stronger on the market, distinguishing it from other similar businesses.

This doesn't mean that you have to spend millions on branding; it's more about defining what makes your company unique and delivering clear and consistent messages to customers.

Strive to find a balance between self-promotion and trustworthiness, and average consumers will become your lifelong customers.