It can be very important to communicate your branding to your customers as part of your marketing strategy so that they understand what kind of business you are and whether you are someone that they want to work with.

In this article, design agency, The New Fat take a detailed look at what effective business branding looks like and how this can help to support your marketing strategy.

What is branding?

It doesn't matter what type of business you run; you will always want it to be recognised. This might be to help show what industry you are in, the standing of your business or how to make it different from the competition.

All of this comes from your branding. A strong brand means that you have identifiable features that will make it much easier for customers to recognise your business, your products or your services.

It can be easy to think that once you have come up with a name, logo, tagline and brand colour, you have completed your branding exercise, but this is not the case.

Your branding can also incorporate the values of your business and the customer experience, whether this is through direct interaction with your business, reading about it through other sources or interacting with it on social media.

Once you have thought carefully about your branding, it is very important to consider how it can impact your marketing strategy.

Customer recognition

There are certain brands that we all recognise, even if we don't see their name. This might be because they are synonymous with a particular colour, font or even a style of advertising.

We know who they are because they have potentially spent years developing a brand that will be recognisable immediately. It is this same level of customer recognition that every business should be striving for through their branding.

By creating a brand that customers recognise, they are more likely to consider you as a choice for their next purchase. You will become a familiar sight that allows them to build a sense of trust and loyalty, even if they have never done business with you before.

Word of mouth marketing

When your branding consists of nothing more than a few visual features, it stops short of everything it is capable of achieving. However, if your branding chooses to tell a story to your customers, they are more likely to repeat it to other people.

That story might involve how the business was formed, the ideas behind the products, or purpose for the business. This story should be woven through all of your branding ideas, so that people can find it easy to understand and communicate. Once this story resonates with people, they are more likely to share it with others.

Advertising effectiveness

As a brand becomes recognisable, customers are more likely to be interested when you put new content out into the world. This means that any new advertising campaign is likely to be met with a sense of curiosity and people will pay attention to it.

Once you have their attention, your advertising is more likely to be effective and can help to drive new sales. This means that a well-established brand can automatically help to make any advertising campaign more successful.

When you start to think about your next marketing campaign, try to remember to put your brand at the front and centre of it, to make it more recognisable and effective.