Why Branding Matters

It conjures up images of John Wayne leading a cattle drive across the Red River and into Oklahoma. Branding.

But whereas brands in old westerns would help sort out the cattle once the Duke got to Dodge City, your company and product branding tells customers and prospects who you are on both a rational and emotional level.

What I have found over the years however is that many mid-sized companies, especially those B2B companies selling industrial or technical products, fail in establishing their brand identity. They get enamored with their product and features, but not with their brand.

Branding is the starting point for thousands of marketing decisions that go into creating an integrated marketing strategy. While the ultimate goal of marketing is to drive qualified leads to the sales channel, the first step in doing so is establishing the company or product brand in the mind of a prospect. Before you can get into the mind of a prospect, you must have already created your brand personality.

You may be thinking, "we sell technical products by the part number, there is no brand personality to what we do." Actually, there is a personality to your product brand and you are allowing your customers and competition to define it. Taking a page from PR 101, if you are not out telling people who you are, somebody else will.

As you consider your brand personality, consider the following:

• Branding tells the world who you are. The market is cluttered, but here's the chance to stake your claim to key ideas. What specific adjectives would you use to describe your company or product line? What do you want a prospect to think when they see or hear your brand? What sets you apart from competitor A, B, and C?


• Branding forces your company or product to define what they are. If you don't think that there is an emotional element to branding, bring in board with new company logos to your next executive staff meeting and watch the reaction. Creating a brand personality forces choices as to what your product or company stands for in the eyes of a buyer. I have seen simple branding definition exercises become the spark that ignites a larger strategic discussion about what the company or product line is trying to accomplish.


• Branding should be consistent across your on-line and off-line marketing. The colors, tone, words, or images that are used to define your brand should be consistent from your web site and interactive marketing to your sales channel support materials and training to your traditional advertising and PR. No matter how a prospect interacts with your brand the message should be the same, with each marketing element reinforcing the other.


• Branding is too valuable, don't be shy to call in the pros. I will repeat again, branding is the starting point for thousands of marketing decisions that go into creating an integrated marketing strategy. It may be worth the few thousand dollars you'll pay a professional marketing / branding / advertising firm to work with you on creating your brand. Ask to see their work for other clients first including tone boards, the process they went through to define the brand, and how the final product was used across both on-line and off-line marketing elements.

Take the time to define your brand. You may not drive cattle to market, but you may drive new customers to your product.