Brand recognition–sometimes referred to as “name recognition–is precisely what it sounds like: how well your company or product is known to the average person on the street. But why is it so important? Put simply, people need to know you and your product or services. Below we’ll talk about four of the cases where brand recognition not only matters, but is essential to success.
Branding Matters When You Sell Up
Whether we realize it or not, brands are built on an inherent level of trust. We go to certain well known name brands for the quality of their materials, the promise of their customer service, or their competitive pricing, just to name a few examples. If a brand builds up a certain amount of recognition, that recognition tends to come with a few perks. Surviving or even profiting from a big change and keeping your client base is one of those perks, and it can be a big one.
If you’re changing your products, or even selling off your brand, the recognition you’ve accrued matters. You aren’t selling inventory. You aren’t selling buildings. You’re selling a name. And with that name comes trust, client bases, and certain promises that clients expect. Your profit here comes from the recognition you’ve built more than anything else. That’s why branding matters when you sell or change how and what you sell.
Branding is Crucial to Product Changes
As Forbes.com puts it, “brands outlive products.” Having a trusted brand with a steadfast base clientele behind it can help a company to more easily make broad, sweeping changes to their product lines or the way in which they do business.
If your company makes such changes, what you sell and how you sell it should still be successful and bring in the consumers that you need precisely because they know that whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it right. They’ve known and trusted “the name” for a long time, and that name for them is synonymous with quality, value, or any number of related positive notes.
Brands are Essential to Breaking into New Markets Successfully
We’ve mentioned a bit about how branding is beneficial to changing the market strategy or even profiting when if and when a company may decide to remove itself from said market entirely. But there’s another big benefit to brand recognition, and that’s when it’s time to expand and try something new.
Thanks to the global online market growth of recent years, it’s easier than ever for a brand to be known throughout the world. If your company decides to branch out and sell products or services to a new part of the world, brand recognition can help it hit the ground running in a new area.
Many people hear about brands and the quality they offer, but can’t purchase what they want where they want it. When a beloved company finally decides to open up shop in this place, they often already have a built-in customer base that are also brand new! This is because brand recognition has helped the company’s reputation spread far and wide, and now new customers are already so familiar with the name, they’re ready to start buying right away. Brand recognition thus has a huge impact on increasing profits immediately in emerging markets.
Brand Recognition is Necessary For the Newcomers
And by newcomers, we mean start ups or small businesses just finding their feet. This is all about building that recognition that you need. Branding works in new advertising by crafting a blueprint for your company that provides its focus. That way customers can immediately get a sense of what you’re about and how you can help them best. It also works in your favor to build financial value, and even inspire employees to new heights.
The NY Times even explains why letting branding take a backseat to funding and structure is a mistake. Branding can truly be your key to success.
In short: branding is everything. There are times that it will matter more than others, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a scenario in business that is not affected or benefits in some way from brand recognition.
