In today’s competitive world, having a good product or service just doesn’t cut it anymore. To really stand out, businesses need a brand identity that sets them apart from the crowd.

How can great branding turn a good business into a truly great one?

First off, great branding is all about creating a memorable impression on your audience, but that takes more than just a funky logo or catchy slogan. Important as those are, great branding is actually about making sure that your brand values, personality, and unique selling points come through loud and clear in everything you do.

Get that right, and your customers are more likely to feel an emotional connection to your brand, that keeps you in the back of their mind as well as coming back for more of what it is you sell.

Establish yourself as a thought leader

Another way that great branding can set you apart is by establishing you as a thought leader in your industry. By consistently sharing your brand message through social media, blog posts, and other channels, great branding can position you as an expert in your field.

This not only builds trust with existing customers, it creates demand and attracts new customers who are looking for industry leaders.

Position yourself as a luxury

If you position yourself as a luxury or premium option, something else that great branding can do is to create a sense of exclusivity that appeals to certain types of customers.

Take Aston Martin’s recent update to their logo. Not only do the subtly elegant tweaks to the logo bring a sense of modernity to the great British brand, but it cleverly retains the heritage and sophistication it’s built up over the years through both colour and font choices.

Promote exclusivity

By creating limited edition products or services, you can generate a sense of urgency that motivates customers to buy before they miss out.

Let’s take Apple as an example. They create so much hype around their annual iPhone release that not only does it appear on news channels, but also creates a sense of want (even need) and demand from their fans by drip feeding the product into the market. And all this is achieved not only by great product design, but by how the Apple brand has evolved over the years to be synonymous with premium and exclusivity.

Become recognisable

Last but not least, great branding is all about creating a unique and recognisable visual identity. Your logo, colour palette, fonts and imagery style should all work happily together to create a distinctive look and feel for your brand. This is especially important in industries where products or services are pretty similar across the board, and where a visually distinctive brand can help customers remember you when it’s time to make a purchase.

Let’s take both Skoda and Volvo’s recent attempt to realign their identity to appeal more to a digital savvy, eco-friendly audience. Both companies sell cars, obviously. But how they’ve approached their brand updates is noticeably different, given that they are ultimately trying to achieve the same thing. Skoda have gone fully simplistic by taking a clean typographic approach and losing the logo mark part of their identity. A bold move, some might say. Whereas Volvo have retained their strong identity (their brand symbol of strength and resiliency – taken from the ancient symbol of iron) but refined and slimmed it down to make the overall logo look more elegant and sophisticated.

Tell your story

So, there you have it. Why great branding is so important to tell your brand story and to resonate and empathise with your audience. With a strong brand identity, you can make an emotional connection with your customers, establish yourself as a thought leader, create a sense of exclusivity and scarcity, and differentiate yourself from the competition. And who doesn’t want that?

Find out how we can take your brand to the next level. Get in touch with the team today.