In business, brands are important. They give your products and services a distinguishable personality. A branded product carries with it a recognizable mark, logo, slogan, or any other distinctive feature that immediately identifies one vendor’s goods or services as different from those of others. Without a recognizable brand name, a company can quickly fade into anonymity, becoming just another supplier in the vast array of competitors who all want to win customers by being different from the competition. However, if a company is able to establish its own unique brand identity, then it not only becomes distinguishable from competitors but also builds a level of trust and loyalty in the customer’s mind.
Traditional advertising approaches such as television advertisements, radio announcements, newspapers, billboards, and billboards are not very effective ways of branding a product because they do not allow for a brand to be expressed or to become part of the viewers’ everyday lives. Television advertisements, for example, cannot tell a story that is captivating enough to make people want to look again; instead, they just display a series of repeated images that fail to affect their minds. Radio announcements are also very expensive and can thus only be used in the most populated areas or on holidays when many people would be listening. But a more effective way of creating a brand identity is through the use of branded content. This type of content allows a company to create a sense of connection with its target audience, engaging them in a dialog about the products or services offered by the company.
Branded videos and other audio clips have been proven to be very effective in branding a product. A branded video can easily be placed in any number of places, which allows viewers to access it multiple times every day. And because videos can be rewound and paused as often as needed, they provide a way for a company to remind viewers of certain events or themed commercials without having to make a full-fledged commercial. For instance, a company can remind viewers of a certain video clip whenever they watch Spongebob Squarepants, or they can reference the footage during a financial report.
Another example of human branding that is more subtle than a commercial or promotional campaign is the way that something heavy such as a pen is branded with a particular logo or symbol. A pen that has the logo of a certain pharmaceutical company, for example, may be branded using iron crosses. Iron cross tattoos have become very popular over the past decade and are now used primarily as a body art, but they can also be placed on clothing, bags, and other branded items. Iron is very significant in Christian symbolism, so this kind of branding is very important to any company that wishes to have a spiritual message attached to their products or services.
Finally, another example of human branding occurs when an individual is targeted based on the content of a quote, adage, or even an entire sentence. The Internet has made this process much easier than it used to be, as it is now possible to simply put quotation marks around a specific term or quote in order to target anyone who uses that word. This is called citation needed branding. For example, if you saw somebody wearing a t-shirt that said, “I’m allergic to bees,” you might want to search for a different saying, which may be, “Bees cause me allergies.”
Branded websites are a great way to get a lot of exposure for your business without spending a lot of money on advertising. In most cases, a simple unbranded template will be just as effective as a branded website. It’s important to remember, however, that your branding efforts need to work in tandem with all of your other marketing efforts. Branded websites are often seen as an afterthought. If your other marketing strategies are not as strong as your website, you should not expect to see much traffic coming from your branded content.