Aside from creating a unique niche for your products and services, branding your company well is the most important investment that you can make in the success of your business. Although the quality of your product is what will make people purchase it, your brand is what will keep them coming back for more. Companies that do not brand have to compete for every single sale that they forget. Corbin is that do brand well retain loyal customers and the rewards that come along with that (increased ROI across the board).
Branding comes from corporate identity.
There are far too many articles about branding that do not address corporate identity at all. Corporate identity is the internal personality that a company creates for itself. This personality will emanate outwards into the brand. Trying to brand a company without a corporate identity is the equivalent of trying to heal a broken bone with a Band-Aid.
You can see the difference in branding and corporate identity in many cases. One of the most obvious is the PC versus the Apple computer. PCs are known to crash a great deal while Apple computers are the preferred brand for high-tech multimedia performance. The internal culture is similar at both companies: PC companies such as IBM and Microsoft thrived on increasing their market share through gaining monopolies regardless of product quality. Apple focused solely on the products and built its legacy through quality.
How do I know if my company has a corporate identity that I can brand?
If you can state the culture of your company in one sentence, then you know that you may begin branding your company using that corporate identity. If you cannot, then you have some work to do.
You can begin by realizing what your niche in the marketplace is. Does your company do better with price-sensitive consumers, or are your products viewed as a luxury? Once you realize why people are purchasing your products, it will go a long way in helping to organize your thoughts on branding. You can find what people are really thinking through comments on social media and on review sites. If you do not have this kind of interaction with your customers, build it so that you can see exactly what they are thinking about your company.
The other main aspect of identity is the internal culture itself. How do your employees work to accomplish things? Is there a culture of quality over quantity, or are you a volume based business? Do your employees work together, or is there a great deal of individual responsibility within your company? No matter what the internal values of your company are, they can always be spun in a positive way. This positive spin will help to create your customer facing brand.
Have a discussion with your human relations management team in order to quantify these many aspects of company culture. They should be able to present you with statistics that will help you to solidify your thought process.
