Building your brand is one of the most important investments you’ll make for your company. Your brand determines how current and potential customers perceive your product and its purpose. A well-built brand can lead to exponential returns over the years.
Branding your company involves more than just creating a mission statement and getting it out to the public. Building your company’s brand directly impacts your revenue streams, or the lack thereof. Here is a more in-depth analysis of building a brand and what it means for your company.
Benefits of building a brand
Building a company brand gives people a reason to connect. People ultimately do business with companies who demonstrate shared values. A comprehensive company brand can potentially resonate with large audiences and attract new clientele.
Building a brand is also a form of marketing for your company. It helps your company build and connect with a loyal following of potential clients. Brand building is also a fantastic building block for startups, and it can help turn around a failing corporation, drawing in new audiences and more revenue. It also helps send a consistent message across all mediums.
Branding mindshare versus market share
Branding mindshare basically refers to brand awareness and affinity, which is that warm and fuzzy feeling consumers get about a specific product. Mindshare is converted to market share through sales. For branding mindshare to really be successful, there needs to be an existing point of purchase and a predetermined awareness of a product or service.
This can be difficult for smaller companies, especially those beginning to build their brand. Branding mindshare should have a consistent message across all mediums and should ultimately result in customer acquisition. For smaller companies, branding should be a byproduct of sales.
How much to invest in branding
Branding is a journey, and it is different for every organization. The cost of branding will also be different for each business based on their current financial position within the marketplace. One rule of thumb is to invest about 10 percent of gross annual profits into marketing, which includes branding. However, some companies may have the financial resources to spend more.
An investment in branding is always a good investment if done properly. As with anything, and especially branding, you do get what you pay for. The minimum amount that should be set aside for branding is about 25 percent of an annual marketing budget in any fiscal year.
Considerations regarding brand investment
A decent branding strategy typically has four separate components. These components are assets, vehicles, distribution and management. A branding asset is any content that shares a message or value about the company.
It may be a document, logo, slogan or anything else that is made specifically to convey the company message. A brand’s vehicle is the way those messages are packaged. The content may be shared on a website, in a video or even a poster.
If it gets the message to the customers, stakeholders, partners or prospective clients, then it’s a vehicle. The brand’s distribution method accounts for the amplification of said vehicles. For instance, paying to boost a post or purchasing an advertising spot on a bench are both parts of the distribution.
The brand management component accounts for the cost of caring for and managing the brand. This may include vendors, human hours and even tools to ensure the success of the brand.
Allocating associated costs
Of course, there are associated costs with each brand component. The amount of those costs depends on the vehicle utilized and the position of the company in the market. For instance, newer companies will need to spend more on distribution to boost awareness.
A more established organization may opt to invest more evenly in the brand components across the board. It is important to budget each component ahead of time and pay special attention to the metrics that will show if your company is on target.
Company branding is not cheap, but it does provide a substantial, and sometimes even exponential, return. It is one of the best investments you can make in your company. While it may be difficult to allocate resources specifically to branding, Reliant Funding can help.
We are dedicated to providing the short-term capital that business need to overcome obstacles in today’s market. If you are ready to secure the fast, flexible capital needed to grow your business’s brand, contact Reliant Funding today.
