How Does Branding Help Both Buyers and Sellers
Branding is simply creating a memorable design, logo, name, or symbol that’s easily relevant to your company.
But, how does branding help both buyers and sellers? In a lot of ways. While it’s easy to imagine sellers benefitting from branding, there are a few benefits that buyers also enjoy.
For sellers, branding builds trust, helps stand out in the pack, leads to customer loyalty, and more. Whereas, for buyers, branding makes the buying process easier, provides peace of mind, and adds value to their lives.
In this article, I’ll be diving into the benefits branding offers to both buyers and sellers.
Let’s get started.
What is a Brand?
A brand is a way a company’s customers perceive it. It’s a feeling evoked by a company’s logo, slogan, design, or name.
Think of Apple as a brand.
It has created a sense of belonging in the minds of its customers. This is why it doesn’t have to spend a lot on keeping its existing customers. And, its customers won’t leave it even if you paid them.
Value of Branding
Branding lets you exhibit your products’ unique characteristics that set them apart from the competition.
You can create a memorable impression in people’s minds. Your customers know what they should be expecting from you when they think about you.
Moreover, branding gives your business credibility, consistency, customer loyalty, and eventually leads to more conversions.
How does branding help customers?
Imagine yourself in the supermarket looking for a packet of salt. You see a few options including the brand you’ve had a great experience with recently.
Would you risk selecting a new product, or would you go with the same brand that has won your trust before? Exactly!
While branding can help a business in many ways, there are numerous benefits branding offers to customers as well.
Let’s look at them.
Brands Save Customers’ Time
Imagine sifting through a laundry list of great smart TVs on Amazon. There are just too many options to choose the right one. It can easily get overwhelming.
You’ve had a great experience with a Samsung TV in the past. You apply a filter to the list and get a list of only Samsung TVs, thus reducing the time needed to land on the right one.
Branding makes the decision-making process so much easier. Leaving home knowing what you are going to buy in the supermarket can be a stress reliever for most shoppers.
Brands Provide Safety
People don’t want to take risks when it comes to their money. And, it can get overwhelming when the investment is fairly big.
Brands provide safety to users that want to avoid the risk of buying a lower-quality product.
It’s a predictable and safe option when you know what you can expect from a brand because you had a positive experience with them in the past.
Imagine going out with your family and needing a hotel to stay the night. While looking into your options, you come across a hotel that you’ve had a great experience with. It becomes your natural and safe choice.
Brands Add Value
Ask yourself, why do people prefer brands over generic products? Is being pricey the reason? Or do they add value to their lives?
It can be a combination of quality, reputation, trustworthiness, and the feel and look of a brand’s products.
Successful brands charge premium prices for premium quality and their stature in society.
Brands Deliver Consistent Quality
It’s not easy to establish a good reputation and a long-term customer base. No brand would want to lose their customers, especially not because of inconsistent product quality.
Brands tend to deliver consistent quality to maintain a positive image and retain a loyal customer base.
It’s Easier to Find Information about a Branded Product
A branded product has all the information a customer would want to know. If not, you can easily find it from their outlets.
Plus, you can easily find branded products in the market. And, knowing about a product is necessary to make an informed decision.
Benefits of branding to sellers!
Strong branding can help sellers in a variety of ways. Let’s discuss them one by one.
Branding Helps Sellers to Stand Out
When you are assigning a symbol, name, design, or slogan to a product, you make it identifiable and unique from the competition.
A customer that liked your product in the past can easily recall it when they need it again. Without a brand, that one-time buyer won’t convert into a long-term customer just because he/she couldn’t recall it.
By creating a strong brand identity, you can capture the market that prefers consistent quality. This way, you can easily take over your competitors that don’t have an effective branding strategy in place.
Branding Creates Loyalty
Effective branding coupled with a top-notch service/product creates loyal customers. People tend to stick to a brand once they have a good experience with its products.
Once a seller has a loyal customer base, they won’t have to invest much in acquiring new ones. The existing happy customer base acts as brand advocates. This can help a lot as people tend to believe recommendations/reviews more than advertisements.
Branding and customer satisfaction go hand in hand. You can’t maintain a strong brand image if your customers are not satisfied.
This makes them a huge asset to your brand. As consumers tend to believe customer testimonials and online reviews before going through with a purchase, your loyal customers can bring you leads on autopilot.
Branding Make Scaling Easier
Establishing a strong brand takes time and effort in the beginning. But, once you successfully achieve that, it’s easy to scale up.
For instance, if you would like to introduce a new product with your brand name, it would be quite easy for you.
Once you have an established customer base, you won’t need to market your new product to the new one.
The trust you have already developed will continue to work for your business even if you introduce a completely different product.
Plus, branding makes it easier to grow your business in multiple localities. You would have a brand voice, logo, signature, or color tone that you can use in new locations.
Branding Makes Advertising Easier and Cost-effective
Branding is important because it gives a face to your business. Without a brand, it can tricky to advertise a business.
Plus, once you have an established brand, you won’t need to run advertising campaigns for brand awareness. The only thing you need to do is put yourself out there when there is a new launch or an attractive limited-time deal.
A Brand Can Charge Premium Prices
In return for the peace of mind, security, consistent quality, and ease in purchasing, a brand can charge more.
People pay more to get all the benefits that a branded product brings with it. This way, brand sellers can have better profits than non-branded products.
How is branding done?
The branding process has three major parts.
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- Brand Strategy
- Brand Identity
- Brand Marketing
A brand strategy helps you define how your brand is unique and likable for your target audience. This is where you create your brand voice, do competitor research, define your target audience, and decide on your brand message.
Brand identity is the next step where you showcase your brand to your audience using elements like a logo, design, message, or experience.
These elements are applied throughout a brand consistently. Brand identity is making your business recognizable.
The next and the last step is brand Marketing. You market your brand identity using different digital marketing channels like SEO, PPC (pay-per-click), email marketing, and social media marketing.
What makes a brand successful?
While maintaining product quality and top-notch customer support is imperative, a successful brand doesn’t stop there.
A brand that stays in the good books of its customers and continues to grow keeps a strong emotional connection with its customers.
According to research, emotions play a vital role in decision-making. A brand that keeps a strong emotional bond gains long-term loyal customers.
One way to do that is by sharing your brand story and try to connect with your customers in a more meaningful way.
By doing so, you’ll develop more loyalty and love for your brand.
Final Thoughts
So, how does branding help both buyers and sellers? To sum up:
Sellers can benefit by charging premium prices and having a loyal customer base. This customer base then acts as brand advocates for the brand, bringing new customers.
For buyers, the major advantage is consistent quality, peace of mind, and an easy decision-making process.
Branding doesn’t need a lot of your resources either. The branding process is threefold. First, you create a branding strategy, then work on your branding identity, and lastly, market it through different channels.
A successful brand maintains quality and top-notch customer service while also keeping trust and an emotional bond with the customer base.
