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Why Brand Building Is Important To A Successful Lead Generation Strategy
In this article we look into why brand building is important to a successful lead generation strategy
Brand building is a vital part of the lead generation journey. This is due to the fact that brand building helps to build trust between you and your potential customers or leads.
It may not be obvious at first, but brand building can can significantly increase your conversion rates. Moreover, good design and brand building can make customers want to do business with you over your competitors.
Let’s start exploring why brand building is important to a successful lead generation strategy, and beyond.
Table of contents:
What Is A Brand: The Definition
To put it simply, a brand is essentially anything a human being comes up with. It’s a word, a name, an image, a number – basically it can be anything you could imagine. It’s easy to overthink what a brand is, but at it’s core, a brand is anything that is designed to be recognised by humans.
Brand building combines almost every aspect of marketing into one complete package by providing your target market with a comprehensive message that encompasses your business and what it has to offer them.
As above, this can include everything from how your target audience receives your content, to the colours and themes used across all of your marketing collateral. This ultimately creates an impression upon potential customers and ultimately influences their purchasing decisions.
Brand building is also about instilling trust within your target market; through reinforcing positive thoughts that help associate them with your brand such as authenticity or perceived value.
What Does It Mean To “Brand” Something?
Branding something means simply designing it with the end goal of having humans remember it and recognise it. That’s all, really.
What one human may find memorable or easy to recognise, another human may get wrong.
Humans are very good at “filling in the blanks” so to speak, which is why it’s often easier to remember a shape as opposed to a colour, or a short and quirky brand name as opposed to a long and overly formal brand name.
What Is Brand Identity?
Brand identity is what defines the appearance of a brand including its logo, colours, fonts, imagery etc. Brand identity is an important aspect of brand building.
This is because brand identity characterises what you are trying to portray about your organisation, product or services.
Your branding is applied across all aspects of marketing including social media, SEO and paid ads.
What Is Brand Recognition?
Brand recognition is how likely people are to make a purchase from your brand as opposed to an alternative.
Brand building helps to establish trust and also builds customer loyalty because people will be far more likely to make purchases from your brand if they have already recognised it as being superior in some way.
How Brand Building Helps To Increase Revenues
The bottom line: strong and effective branding helps to increase sales revenue and allows your customer base and potential customers to identify with your brand quicker and easier.
Brand building allows people to remember your brand more easily.
This means that all of the sales materials, advertising and marketing you do will be better remembered by potential buyers because they will have already “seen” your brand before.
Brand recognition is how well customers recognise your brand name when it pops up again in their daily lives (whether through advertising, a purchase or a store you sell in).
6 Ways To Effectively Brand Your Products And Services
There are a number of clear, concise and effective branding elements that you can utilise to make your brand more memorable and recognisable by potential customers. This will help to further demonstraite why brand building is important to a successful lead generation strategy.
Below you can find 6 ways to get started on your brand building today:
1) Logo Design
A strong logo will help to distinguish your product or service from competitors. That’s a fact. But it’s not enough on it’s own to create a brand that burns into peoples minds.
It’s important to have a logo that is easily recognisable and unique to your brand.
This can be achieved through a number of different methods, such as using a specific colour, a clear design or utilising an interesting font choice.
These are just some examples of how you might achieve this with your logo.
2) Choosing A Clear And Memorable Name
Naming your brand something catchy and memorable will make it easier for people to remember your brand.
You want people remembering your brand name easily when they think about purchasing what you offer (or when they see advertising for it).
It’s important not to get too creative with the name, though – it should remain simple enough that people can recognise its meaning at first glance.
Some people like short and concise names while others like longer names with more detail.
3) Clearly Defining Your Brand Personality
In order for your brand to be memorable, it needs a personality.
In other words, it should have some sort of unique characteristic that people can recognise.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that the personality has to match how you actually are as a person (or how your business operates).
People want brands to be exciting and dynamic; they don’t always want something boring and predictable.
Some businesses like portraying themselves as “cool” or edgy while others like portraying themselves as warm and welcoming.
It’s up to you how you’d like your brand personality to be perceived by potential customers, but make sure that your branding is clear about how it wishes to come across!
4) Make Sure Your Branding Is Clear And Easy To Recognise
Most people want to buy from brands that are easy to recognise and understand.
This means how you use your branding should be clear and informative so customers know how to identify you!
For example, if your logo is simple enough, it should be recognisable without any additional symbols or other design aspects which may confuse customers.
Make sure that the colours you choose for your brand tie together nicely as well because poor colour coordination can ruin how easy it is for customers to recognise your brand.
5) Consider How Your Product Or Service Will Be Used
If people are going to make a purchase from you, how will they feel when they use what you provide?
While some products might need less definition (for example , how people feel when they use a mobile phone), other products might need more definition so customers know how to best utilise them. For example, how people feel when they drink coffee.
In this way, you can choose how you want your product or service to be perceived by potential customers.
6) Ensure That Your Brand Comes Across As Clear And Well Organised
It’s important that you make your branding looks polished and well organised. This includes how you might use your logo, font choices and colours.
How something looks can influence how someone feels about it.
If you want to be viewed as a brand that is reliable and trustworthy (or exciting or warm-hearted), then ensure that these attributes come across in how your branding looks (for example, how it’s displayed or how large or bold certain aspects of it are).
Can I Generate Leads Without A Brand?
The simple answer is no, you cannot be a high performer in the lead generation space without building a brand. Brand building is a process not just a final product.
Branding itself is the foundation on which the entire lead generation campaign stands on and without it, you will be simply winging your marketing efforts with no actual plan in sight.
If there’s no memorable brand to speak of, your chances of being remembered by your prospects and hence them visiting your website again organically diminishes heavily.
Why Brand Building Helps Lead Generation
Your brand is what ultimately forms the foundation of any lead generation strategy and is also the most prominent factor in determining your conversion rates.
Brand building not only increases awareness in your target market, resulting in increased traffic to your website, but provides you with more customer engagement on your content, and when done right it can also lead to more sales.
Branding not only contributes to increased visibility but it also influences brand preference. Brand preferences are largely influenced by emotional responses associated with branding components such as logo design, colour schemes or even just how a company’s name sounds when spoken out loud.
This is an intricate process that requires attention to detail at every step including planning, execution and post-launch analysis. This part of your marketing strategy is all about knowing who you are selling to and how your brand speaks to your potential buyers, and making the two connect.
An effective brand will serve as a guide to not only help you determine the kind of content that should be shared but it can also provide information about who your target audience is, what they want from your products or services and hence how you should be marketing to them.
Finally, with a strong brand, promotion opportunities become plentiful while new business becomes easier with reduced customer acquisition costs. This is because having a strong brand gives you more credibility within your industry while showcasing that you have been around for some time.
How Brand Building Impacts Lead Generation Campaigns
When building a brand, you’re essentially focusing on creating an honest and authentic representation of your business. Brand Building provides you with the opportunity to create an identity for your company that is memorable and relatable while also distinguishing it from the rest of its competition.
When generating leads, a strong brand can help to differentiate yourself from the many competitors, and reduce the likelihood of your competition adopting the same brand name or colour scheme as you.
Your brand is about creating an identity that helps to set you apart from your competitors and hence improves your credibility.
An effective brand should be flexible enough to encompass all of your marketing properties including blogging, email marketing, eBooks & whitepapers while also serving as a standalone entity; instilling trust and providing additional value to your potential buyers.
The Different Types of Brand Building
At it’s most basic form, there are two types of brand.
Personal Branding
Personal branding is about representing yourself as a brand. Branding is about the presentation of your business to others, whereas personal branding is about presenting yourself in a way that makes you more memorable and promotable.
Regardless of whether you are an individual contributor or hold higher management roles within your organisation, having strong personal branding can help to increase your visibility which can have an impact on your career advancement opportunities.
Personal brand building can help you to become more promotable by highlighting your strongest skills and talents while also distinguishing yourself from the rest of your competition within your industry.
Business Branding
Business branding differs from personal branding in such that it is about creating a strong and memorable presence for your business which ultimately makes it more trustworthy and will help to instill trust within your target market.
Branding is typically considered as the entire process of building awareness, generating interest and encouraging repeat purchases from customers.
A Branding Strategy For Lead Generation
Your brand should be represented across all marketing channels including your blog posts, social media profiles and even on your email signatures. Well thought out branding provides a strong foundation which can have varying degrees of impact depending on the marketing channel(s) being used.
To Summarise: Why Brand Building Is Important For A Successful Lead Generation Strategy
In subsequent articles we will be looking into some of these different branding strategies for lead generation as well as some examples to help further illustrate this.
For now, just remember that branding is about creating an honest and relatable representation of your business while leading towards a successful lead generation strategy.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this article, read our article on ‘What Is A Brand Ambassador?’