Branding is the process of associating a particular “brand” with particular goods and services of a particular company. A brand is basically a label, logo, catch phrase, design, or any other distinguishing feature that represents one seller’s goods or services as different from those of others. There are many forms and ways through which brands can be applied to products and services. Branding can be in the form of physical symbols, brand names, colors, fonts, images or even smells. The brand helps customers distinguish your product or service from those of your competitors.
In branding, there is no escaping consequences. There’s always a price to pay if you want to have an effective brand. There are some consequences that are tangible and there are some consequences that are not so tangible. There are some places that we pay more attention to than others, and some places that we tend not to notice. If your brand does not get attention then this is the fault of your branding.
The simplest brand-name punishment is to pay attention. Noticeable by everyone. The more attention that you pay to your branding then the more visible and prominent it will become. Branding is the most important part of a business and without branding no business will survive. When a customer identifies your branded item with a specific set of experiences then it is easy to build a positive perception of your brand.
Another way of punishing your brand for poor performance is to create a corrective example. For instance, your brand might have gotten a pretty bad reputation over the past few years for bad business practices. It is up to you to take a look at your business practices and identify what needs to be changed in order to correct the bad image that has been created. One way of creating a corrective example is to hire someone to perform an audit of your business practices; another is to create a documentary film about your brand that examines the strengths and weaknesses of your brand.
Google is one of the largest search engines in the world and one of the most popular places online where people go to find information. Google’s homepage includes a branded search box; if you place your brand name into this box when somebody searches for something then you will receive credit for having a part in that person finding your brand name. It is not widely known but a lot of website owners to place Google branded keywords into their website; many times they do not even manage to rank high enough on Google to receive any credit. In order to avoid getting credit for the branded keywords you place on your website you need to place them at the very top of your Google listings.
If you own a website that contains branded keywords you can use the Google tools to analyse the amount of competition for each individual branded keyword phrase and the amount of direct traffic that actually come to your website. If you enter a list of these terms into the Google tools you will be able to see how many other websites are targeting the same phrase as yours and how many of these websites have actually been visited already by someone looking for your brand name. In order to receive credit for traffic that has actually been sent to your site you should include as many of these sites as possible in your site links – if you only have one or two it is unlikely that anyone will ever visit your site from this.