What's a brand?

A brand is the characteristic, or collection of characteristics, that sets an organisation apart from others. A brand is usually made up of a name, tagline, logo or symbol, design, a brand's voice, etc. It also refers to the total experience that customers have while engaging with the company - whether that is as a customer, a client, a social media fan, or just a passerby.

What is branding?

Branding is the process of researching, developing, and applying a distinguishing characteristic or set of characteristics to your organisation, so consumers begin to associate your brand with your products or services.

For example, Coca-Cola's trademark is one of the most recognised logos and colour stories worldwide. The classic red-and-white letters, bright artwork, and signature fonts have endured for more than a century.

Having stood the test of time, Coca-Cola's branding is proof that consistency, success, and efficient branding are powerful, something consumers have grown to appreciate.

That is, branding is an iterative process that requires getting inside your prospects' hearts as well as the heart of your business. This is important for many reasons -- and we cover those below.

The Importance of Branding

Your brand is perhaps one of the most important assets your organisation has. It gives your organisation a personality, makes your company memorable, drives consumers to buy from you, supports your brand marketing and advertising, and gives your employees a sense of pride.

Branding may be a crucial element for consumers in making their purchasing decisions. In fact, one study by Capgemini found users who felt connected with the brand spent double as much as those who did not.

Branding gives your company a powerful identity that extends beyond your products or services. It gives consumers something to relate to. A strong brand makes your company memorable. It is your business face, helping consumers differentiate between your company in all media branding.

Branding supports your efforts in intangible marketing and advertising. It helps your promotions pack an extra punch, adding consumer awareness and influence.

Branding Terms to Know

Brand Awareness

Brand recognition refers to how familiar the general public and your target market or audience are with your brand. High brand awareness results in brands being called "trending", "buzzworthy", or "popular". Brand awareness is important because consumers cannot think about buying from your brand unless they are familiar with it.

Brand Extension

Brand extension is when companies "expand" their brands by developing new products in new industries and markets. Think of a Honda lawn mower, or a Martha Stewart bed. Brand extensions enable companies (or individuals) to use their brand recognition and brand equity to generate multiple streams of revenue and diversify their product lines.

Brand Identity

Brand identity is the identity of your company and the promises that you make to customers. It is what you want your customers to walk away with when interacting with your brand. Your brand's identity is usually made up of your values, the way that you communicate about your products or services, and the feelings that people will have after engaging with it.

Conclusion

In really simple terms, the product is what you are selling, the brand is the visual identity or perceived image of the product you are selling, and the brand is a strategy for creating this image. That is why your branding strategy and branding management plan are so important.

I hope that this post has helped you get a better understanding of what a brand means. If you have any comments or suggestions on how to make this article better, feel free to share your thoughts by getting in touch.

Branding Agency To Support Small Businesses

At Red Kite SEO, we are a specialist Digital Marketing Agency, located in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom. We help small business owners to boost their websites so they can rank on Google. Services we offer are Digital Marketing, SEO, Web Design and Paid Ads (PPC).

We help by setting up the foundations to build online brand recognition and affinity for a local business. Our promise is to help clients rank above others in their industries and in the locations they serve. For honest advice and to speak to us about your site, please contact us!

What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimisation?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. To put this in a slightly simpler way, SEO means taking a piece of content on the internet and optimising it to get it displayed near the top of the page by a search engine such as Google when someone searches for something.

The world of search engine optimisation is complicated and constantly changing, but the basics are easy to grasp, and even a little SEO training and knowledge can go a long way.

Search engine optimisation is the science and process of improving your site so that it is more visible when people are searching for products or services. It is a crucial marketing task that makes a site or a business visible online.

How does SEO work?

Major search engines like Bing use bots to scan pages across the internet, going from one site to another, gathering information on these web pages, and placing it into an index. Think of the index like a giant library, where the librarians can pull out the book (or web page) that helps you find what exactly you are looking for at that moment.

Next, algorithms parse pages within the index, taking into account hundreds of engine rankings factors, or signals, to determine which pages should show up in search results for any given query. In our library analogy, the librarian has read every book in the library, and she can tell you exactly which book has the answer to your query.

Our SEO success factors could be considered proxies for aspects of user experience. This is how search engines assess how much of a site or webpage is capable of giving searchers what they are looking for.

Unlike paid search ads, you cannot pay search engines to rank highly in organic search, meaning SEO tool experts need to do their job. That is where we come in.

What is Effective Search Engine Optimisation?

Search engines use sophisticated algorithms that have a lot of different requirements in order to rank sites. To have higher rankings, a website must have many things, including:

Good content: This means content needs to be original and must provide value for readers. It should also be updated frequently - search engines penalise online content that has been stagnant for months (and, also, why would people visit your website if there is never anything new on it?). The best SEO companies understand how important content is, and they provide clients with quality content, along with related photos and videos.

The right keywords, as well as the right number of keywords. A common SEO technique in building websites used to be taking as many relevant keywords as possible (and also a few that were not as relevant) and stuffing it as much into the text as you could. Now, search engines punish that kind of "keyword stuffing".

Quality backlinks. Backlinks are links from other websites, which lead back to your company's site. But those backlinks need to be of "quality," otherwise, they are not going to help your SEO rankings at all (or they could even hurt your search rankings in negative ways). This means backlinks should be on sites that are relevant and ranking well on their own, among other things. A professional SEO company, like SearchEngineOptimization.com, can show you how to utilise quality backlinks.

These are only some of the things considered in ranking sites. However, the biggest thing that you need to take into consideration when you are building your site is organic SEO. The idea behind it is to build the website to be ranked high due to high quality -- it has to be good, no tricks or tricks some SEO companies may try. The search engine optimisation company that you choose needs to try and provide you with high-quality sites, keeping in mind these algorithms.

Benefits & importance of SEO

People are searching for all sorts of things, whether vaguely related or closely related to your business. These are all opportunities to engage with those people, answer their questions, solve their problems, and be a trusted resource to them.

More website traffic: When your site is optimised for search engines, it gets more traffic which equates to increased brand awareness, as well as…

More customers: To get your website optimised, you need to target keywords - search terms that potential customers/visitors are searching - meaning that you get more relevant traffic.

Better reputation: Ranking high in Google gives your business instant credibility. If Google trusts you, people will trust you.

Higher ROI: You are investing money in your site, as well as in a digital marketing campaign, which leads to pages on your site. A top-performing website enhances the fruits of these campaigns, making the investment worthwhile.

Get Your Free Website Consultation

As you can see, working with an SEO or digital marketing company has many benefits. If you are looking to boost the rankings of your site, boost your brand recognition, or simply get more leads, a digital marketing company can help. Just be sure you pick the right one for your company!

At Red Kite SEO, we offer a free Website SEO Review, which is a basic website audit that will help take care of your digital business. We will take a look at your digital strategy, as well as any potential website improvements to help with your online presence. Get in touch with us.