What is a Brand? What is Branding?
What are brand values? What is brand awareness? What are customer touchpoints?
There are numerous terms used to describe the ways a company creates and builds its public image, differentiates itself from its competitors, and connects with its target customers and clients. As a business owner or manager, understanding these is extremely important.
KEY INSIGHTS
- Every business needs a unique brand, and branding actions must be undertaken. This requires an understanding of some basic branding terminology.
- Some common branding terms to know and understand include brand identity, brand voice, brand attributes, brand assets, brand story, brand positioning, and brand support.
- An experienced branding agency offers comprehensive branding services, including brand management (which covers a myriad of branding and marketing solutions). Twelve12 in Irvine/Newport Beach is a top branding and marketing firm that stands out for all the right reasons.
There is an enormous number of terms that apply to branding, and it can all become a little overwhelming for non-marketers when these are used. Understanding at least some of the basics makes the business ownership and management journey a little simpler – whether you intend to DIY your branding or outsource it to an expert branding firm like Twelve12.
What is Some of the Branding Terminology I Should Know?
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Brand
This is an umbrella term for how consumers perceive your business; the feelings and thoughts it triggers and how it differentiates itself from your competitors to establish a robust market position. “Brand” encompasses everything associated with the business/company/organization – identity, stories, expectations, reputation – and ultimately reflects what consumers say it is.
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Brand Identity
Your brand identity covers the verbal, visual, and sensory elements that communicate the unique personality of your brand and distinguish it from your competitors. Your colors, fonts, logos, voice (including tone), visuals, sound, and written content combine to create a recognizable and consistent market presence.
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Branding
This is the practice of actively and intentionally molding your brand’s identity. It refers to the strategies and tools used with the goal of influencing how consumers perceive your brand. Visuals and brand voice define and describe your brand’s essence and are applied across everything from your website to marketing materials, social media, and customer care.
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Brand Values
Values are the internal brand attributes that underpin its core purpose and inform and establish its philosophy. They are the beliefs and principles that guide its decisions and how it operates in terms of everything from customer service and interactions to employee treatment. These values should help you set yourself apart, build trust, and unite both your teams and your fan base.
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Brand Attributes
Who are you as a business or other organization? These descriptors (characteristics that represent your brand’s essence) are your brand’s attributes. Examples include “Experienced”, “Transparent”, “Innovative”, “Creative”, “Collaborative”.
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Brand Story
Storytelling underpins every successful brand. Your brand story is the narrative you create to communicate your purpose, identity, values, and messaging; it must be relatable and crafted to captivate and engage your target audience.
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Brand Assets
These are the components that comprise your brand identity. They include identifiers and other features such as your logo, color scheme, font/typography, tagline/slogan, imagery, brand voice, and brand story.
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Brand Logo
Your logo is a unique and original graphic that represents your brand and helps visually identify it instantly. It is a symbol that may include images, text, or a combination of the two. It should be simple, timeless, distinctive, and representative of your business and its offering.
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Brand Awareness
How familiar are your target customers/clients with your brand? How strongly do they associate your brand’s name and identity with the products or services you offer? How memorable is your brand with your target audience?
This is brand awareness.
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Brand Positioning
How do you establish and communicate the role and unique place your brand/business occupies compared with your competitors in the minds of consumers? This is brand positioning; it occupies a particular place in the consumer psyche.
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Brand Guidelines
These are used to maintain your brand’s visual and tonal integrity as they apply to your logo and other unique design elements as well as content across your website, blog, customer communications and messaging, social media, and more. It strives to build trust with your customers, clients, and prospects.
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Brand Strategy
This is an extended plan that covers building and managing your brand, defining its target audience, market position, values, identity, and messaging. It functions to drive growth, create value, and foster loyalty by guiding decisions to create consistency across product/service development, marketing activities, communication and messaging, and customer care.
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Brand Audit
A brand audit examines the current position of your brand in its marketplace. It considers its industry, customers, competitors, and evaluates its strengths and weaknesses with the goal of revealing challenges to be addressed and opportunities to be exploited.
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Brand Support/Management
Support and management of your brand provide ongoing strategies to strengthen and underpin it. It can include brand strategy, website design and development, search engine optimization, content creation (content writing, blogging, video production), social media marketing, digital ads, traditional marketing, public relations, and more.
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Customer Touchpoints
These incorporate all the ways a consumer encounters and interacts with your brand, and may include everything from your website and social media profile/s to ads, packaging, signs, emails, customer service, SMS marketing, videos, and your offering itself.
Get Comprehensive Branding Help with Twelve12
Based in beautiful Orange County, Twelve12 is a leading branding agency, and we are here to help you! Whether you’re starting a new business, rebranding, or just want a fresh take to step up and grow your business, we can take your brand to the next level – from logos and design to brand management and a plethora of wider marketing solutions.
Discover the Twelve12 difference – check out our branding services and get in touch today!
