This Is Why Your Business Needs to be a Brand

The days of cold, sterile, corporate imagery are over. For businesses to succeed in the changing digital-driven world, your business needs to become a brand, and fast. Up until recent years, many business owners often couldn’t explain the difference, but the landscape has quickly changed with the advent of social media. This is because customers are now more “in touch” (or able to be, at least) with companies than ever before.

At the same time, the digital world has changed the way everyone communicates with each other and that has led to the need for a new approach for representing your company and building connections with consumers using the technology that’s at your fingertips.

Another change brought about by these advances? The fact that small businesses can compete with huge, multi-national corporations to some degree through the strategic use of SEO, brand awareness campaigns and, you guessed it: digital marketing. Whereas big-budget companies used to be the only ones able to afford newspaper, radio, and television ads in many major cities, now small businesses are popping up to target people far beyond their local region. And they no longer need a huge budget to service an entire country or the entire world with their product. That’s the connected power of the internet and social media.

But, at the end of the day, no matter how great your product is or how excellently you have targeted your digital marketing campaigns, if your business is not representing itself as a humanized brand that customers can connect with, you aren’t going to get very far. Today people want to buy from brands that they can trust. Studies have shown time and time again that a person is willing to pay slightly more to buy from a well-known competitor than they are a fresh startup who’s just leaving the gate, but that in no way should make you believe that you can’t compete as a newcomer on the market.

What it really means is that you need to put in the time and effort to put a brand to your business. Inject a real personality into your social media campaigns, your logo, your web design and the way that you present yourself at every corner and your business’ brand will begin coming to life--and that’s exactly what needs to happen.

In order for a person to connect with a brand they need to be able to get to know the people behind the company. This could mean putting faces to the names of your customer service reps, or sharing the story of your business’ founder, or telling your customers about who’s behind those products they love so much.

By putting a face to your business you are able to instantly humanize your company. This will make your branding efforts even more powerful and it will make connecting with your business even simpler. That, in turn, will make buying into your business that much easier for your customers.