“When people use your brand name as a verb, that is remarkable.”
-Meg Whitman
The importance of branding in your business marketing strategy can’t be overstated — even for small businesses in small city would be highly required considering today’s competitive environment. Your business brand influences every aspect of your customers’ perceptions of your company. Branding builds trust, recognition, loyalty and reputation.
According to Accenture, 66% of consumers say that a brand’s culture and transparency attract them to buy from a certain brand, and 62% want companies to stand up for the issues they are passionate about.
This illustrates the impact of strong branding. Your brand has the potential to say so much about your company: its products or services, its customer relations, its employee relations, the promises it makes, the promises it keeps, its values, and even its societal goals.
Example 1 –Consider Nike, a brand that leverages its strong brand identity across all its marketing strategies. Nike’s brand recognition extends beyond the iconic red swoosh of its logo. Even its short and powerful slogan “Just do it” is immediately identifiable to the majority of consumers.
Big Business Organization
Example 2 –Consider MBA Chai Wala, a brand that leverage its strong customer relations / connect which is helping them to build such a iconic brand in few years’ time starting from small kart till providing franchisee to different states businessmen’s. It has very catchy brand name & business branding is done such a way that people can relate them self with it. They are portraying their brand image in such a way if people talk about chai which is most famous drink in India then their brand must strike in customers mind due to their brand positing marketing strategy. They started their journey from a small kart then they did their business branding word of mouth communication which lead towards good business / profitability they moved towards opening their own café post making good customer recall they started distributing their franchisees which is a major hit now you can relate this example how small city businessman used branding ( Marketing tool) to make his brand so iconic & having presence in pan India which was started from small city / small kart to international level café
Small City Business Organization
Key reasons why business branding is required for small city business –
- Business branding will help in improving customer recognition which will lead towards having edge over competition & help customer in taking purchase decision for our product.
- Business branding will help in generating new customers for our business.
- Business branding will help in building strong financial values. This would be quite helpful when we want to expand our business from city level to state level & from state level to pan India this will help in generating funds if required for expansion of business modes can be – IPO, Angel Funding’s, HNI Investments, etc.
- Business branding will help in inspiring our employees.
- Business branding will help in creating trust in the mind of customers which will help in creating more – more satisfied customers which will lead towards business expansion & word of mouth marketing which is most accepted strategy to get new customers.
- Business branding will help in differentiating our offering & big players offerings who are investing heavily in marketing so on local level we can create awareness of our brand so that people would be knowing it.
- Business branding will help in telling customers about our business DNA.
- Business branding will help in creating referrals clients because strong brands generate huge referrals clients.
Many small businesses make the mistake of overlooking branding efforts because they think of themselves as a business and not a brand. Brands, they think, are the big fish in the pond with huge budgets and national recognition. Resigned to their supposed small-fish status, small businesses do little more than come up with a fun logo and some flashy business cards. But branding is important for businesses of all sizes because it increases their value, gives employees direction and motivation, and makes acquiring new customers easier.
Classic Case why business branding is important for small city business –
A friend of mine owns and run a printing press, a small business with fairly good returns. He made the right contacts and reached out to those he felt were the relevant persons to drive the business. He purchased a huge MOZ machine and got a big office plus staff to run his operations.
A few years later some guys set up a print company and posted it online. The had an office with only 4 tables and a few staff. Each of them always wore the company branded apparel and they were very active on social media.
More people started patronizing this new business and corporate organizations also found this new company much easier to find and do business with. Everybody perceived this new business to be more credible and reachable. My friend’s business has suffered a major dip in patronage, while that new business has grown and even recently got some international funding to expand their operations.
My friend has lost 80% of his client and all efforts to with them back is providing harder by the day, he has downsized his workforce and is now toying with the idea of selling the machines and closing shop.
My friend limited his branding to business cards and word of mouth/referrals, and a reliance on ‘his works would speak for themselves’. The new business was visible online, they engaged on the social media, they were walking signages all which made it easier for them to reach a wider market which has yielded greater returns for them.