Content

27. november 2023

What is branding?

Branding is the range of initiatives and tools that companies/organisations/individuals use to increase awareness of themselves and differentiate them from their competitors.

Indhold

Konsistent Få værdierne til at leve Gode råd Eksempel Sådan måler man det Budget Positionering

The purpose of branding is therefore to position yourself in the market in a recognisable and credible way that sets your brand apart from other brands.

The word “branding” originates from the days when cowboys branded their cattle so they could clearly recognise them. That is the same thing you want with your branding: to leave a clear mark on others that they associate with you and your business.

For this to succeed, it must be possible for the outside world to recognise a company/organisation/person based solely on the name, design, and the like. In addition, branding also involves spreading awareness of what the given company/organisation/person delivers and stands for.

Alignment between internal and external identity

If, in the following, we take branding of companies as our point of departure, the aim is ideally to create coherence in different audiences’ impressions of the company, and to ensure that the company’s core story, values, vision and mission are expressed in everything the company does and says.

It must not just be nice words on a piece of paper that do not exist in reality. In other words, there must be alignment between internal and external identity and communication—otherwise the company loses its credibility.

Your values and vision must not only live on paper

Branding is therefore not solely an external effort. For example, our vision at Morningtrain is that “we contribute to a world where kindness is good business”, and our mission is that we “By promoting our culture based on self-leadership and relationships in perfect balance with efficiency and talent development, we create impactful business development and extraordinary digital solutions that deliver value for our customers”.

To live up to our vision and mission, we implement various internal initiatives such as paid exercise every week, investment in our employees’ professional and personal development, and monthly wellbeing check-ins.

In addition, all employees at Morningtrain know our vision, mission and values because we have actively worked to raise awareness of them. This way, they become part of everyday life in the company—not just words on paper.

This also applies externally when we meet our customers, where we always approach them based on our vision that kindness is good business, which is why we practise honest, dialogue-based customer management. This means, among other things, that we do not simply try to sell all our services to the customer if we do not believe it will create value for the customer’s business.

Another example is that we are also not afraid to say thank you and goodbye to a customer if we find that they do not live up to our values—for example, by not treating their own or our employees properly. Because kindness must be good business.

Good advice for branding a company

1 – Write down your core story, vision, mission and values:

As described in the previous sections, you cannot avoid identifying your core story, vision, mission and values. These must serve as a kind of “guiding star” for your branding work.

In other words, you need to have written down—in a core story, mission, vision and values—who you are and what your company stands for and aspires to. After that, there is substantial work in communicating it internally and making it come alive in the organisation.

2 – Create a set of personas for your company:

When we look at external branding, it is also about getting crystal clear on who your products/services are aimed at. Here, it can be beneficial to create so-called “personas” for some of your typical customers and the values they live by.

A persona can also be described as a customer profile. All your external communication should always be based on what can create value for your customers, and to know this you need in-depth knowledge of your typical customer segment.

3 – Get crystal clear on your visual identity

An important part of branding your company is your visual identity: How can people recognise your brand from your colours, typography, images and the like, and distinguish it from other brands?

Some of the best examples of visual branding executed to perfection are companies such as Apple, McDonald’s, Google, IKEA and Nike. Most of us can probably recall their logo and know what they offer.

Make sure you apply your visual identity consistently across all your marketing activities.

4 – What are your USPs?

Your USPs are your “Unique Selling Points”—the unique benefits your products or services provide your customers that they do not get from competitors. In other words, why should your customers choose you over your competitors?

At its core, branding is about communicating what is unique about your company and your products/services.

Examples of USPs could be free shipping, 24/7 customer service, use of recycled materials, and the like. But they can also be more value-based USPs, such as how you treat your employees or your donations to charitable initiatives.

5 – What added value are you selling?

In addition to your USPs and the specific products/services you sell, you should also consider what added value you are selling to your customers. This is a major part of branding, as it helps differentiate you from your competitors.

And in a world where the supply of products and services is enormous, it is important that you find a way to differentiate your company from competitors. Otherwise, you risk “drowning” in all the offerings.

The added value you sell will often be linked to the image or identity your customers become part of when they join your customer base. Because if you look at branding at an individual level, branding can be used to create an identity for the individual.

An obvious example is designer bags from, for example, Gucci, which help give the customer an image of being able to afford luxury.

Another example is the difference between Apple users and Android users—both in terms of MacBook vs. Windows PC and iPhone vs. Android smartphone. For some, this has almost become a kind of “religion”, and many have strong opinions about why they choose one or the other.

Mercedes is for the CEO, and Volvo is for the family man…

As a continuation of the above section on the added value and image that customers buy into when they purchase a product/service, car brands are an obvious example.

Different car brands are often associated with different personality types, values and lifestyles. For example, many people probably associate a Mercedes or an Audi with a CEO or a somewhat “flashy” type. A Volvo or Volkswagen, on the other hand, is more often associated with a family man who prioritises safety in the car.

A Tesla is for the environmentally conscious, a Ferrari is for the speed lover, and a Fiat 500 is for the young high-school girl who has just received her first car from her parents. Yes, I know it is a bit caricatured, but admit it—you have many of the same associations with the brands mentioned.

How do you measure branding?

If you work in a company’s communications department, you probably have a manager or a board that wants to see clear results from your branding efforts. But is it even possible to measure branding?

Both yes and no: It is important to remember that branding is a long-term effort intended to create an emotional relationship between your company and your customers—rather than generating direct sales and conversions immediately.

A simple way to measure your branding is to look at the number of brand searches on Google. You can see this, for example, in Morningscore, Ahrefs or similar SEO tools.

For larger brands with significant resources and budgets, they can also conduct market analyses based on, for example, online surveys where consumers answer questions related to their awareness of the brand.

A third way to measure your branding is to look at your so-called “brand loyalty”—in other words, how loyal are your customers to your brand?

Do the same customers buy from you multiple times? How long does a customer stay with you? And what is your Customer Lifetime Value? (How much do you earn from a customer over the entire period they are your customer?)

Finally, you can use ROI (Return on Investment) or ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) as an indicator of how your branding efforts are performing if you choose to run a branding campaign on, for example, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Ads. However, you should read more about the pitfalls of this way of measuring efforts.

However, this should only be included as part of the assessment, since branding, as mentioned, is a long-term effort that is not achieved solely through a branding campaign on social media or Google Ads. But these can be a supplement to the broader effort.

What does branding cost?

If you are sitting there waiting for a figure, let me warn you that I am not going to give a specific amount for what branding costs. It depends greatly on how far you are in your branding process.

If, for example, you are only now about to develop a core story, mission, vision, values and visual identity, and you want help with this from an agency, branding can become an expensive undertaking. It is a time-consuming process to create the foundations of a company’s brand, as it naturally needs to be thoroughly developed and well thought out.

If, as part of your branding efforts, you choose to run branding campaigns on, for example, Google Ads or social media, there is of course also a cost associated with this. However, it is worth noting that a large part of branding efforts can advantageously be rolled out organically on your social media, and it only costs the hours you spend creating content and engaging with your followers.

A broad budget range is anywhere between DKK 100,000 and 20,000,000

Position yourselves on your social media

Thought leaders on LinkedIn

If you are, for example, a B2B company, LinkedIn is an obvious place to position yourselves within your industry. Here, you can advantageously talk about the values your company stands for and how you put them into practice in everyday life.

This can be, among other things, through everyday stories, success stories, employee profiles and the like.

In addition, LinkedIn is also a good channel for positioning yourselves as “thought leaders” within your field. That is, you can be first movers on the latest updates and developments in your industry, thereby building a credible brand.

Build a trust-based relationship on Facebook and Instagram

Where LinkedIn is particularly good for B2B, Facebook and Instagram, for example, are obvious for B2C. Here, you as a brand can get very close to your customers and thereby build a long-term relationship.

Especially on Instagram, the many influencers are also a good example of how they use the platform to build their personal brand—a brand that more and more people later choose to use to sell their own or others’ products or services.

In this way, they start a bit from the back, but it works very well because they already have their followers’ trust, and followers feel that they know the person and what they stand for. This also makes followers more inclined to buy products/services from the influencer.

However, it is not only influencers who can benefit from Instagram and Facebook. Companies also have a perfect opportunity to show what added value they can offer their customers, and it is also here that companies can largely show their personality.

This happens, for example, through personal contact with their followers in the comments and direct messages. In addition, companies can showcase their products/services in different contexts and thereby truly show their customers how the product/service can create value for the individual customer.

It is also on a company’s social media that customers can create a shared “community” where they can share their enthusiasm for and experiences with the company and its products/services—for better or worse, of course.