In an informal survey of 10 marketing professionals, most likely you will receive a different answer from each individual about what they think a brand is.

The majority of the answers you receive will sound more like abstract poetry than a definition of a brand.

Marketing practitioners will use terms such as essence, feeling, narrative, and connection to emotion in describing their personal view of what a brand is.

Unfortunately, these abstract definitions do not help to run a business.

In fact, the misinterpretation of the spirit of the brand is one of the main reasons why the market misunderstands this concept completely.

Rather than viewing it as a business or marketing concept, many founders treat it as a design process; many small business owners identify it only with their logo; and even the most experienced professionals mix the end results of this process with the actual process itself.

This confusion creates product confusion for the consumer, as the same product looks different on the company's web site, their social media, and in the actual product.

Let's remove the industry ambivalence and get to the core definition of the business.

A brand is a value that creates wealth for the company.

It is a decision-making rule of thumb the company uses to maximise return by creating a path towards revenue-producing activity.

What a brand really is? (Brief overview)

The perception of a brand is not determined by what the company says it is.

It is the combination of many impressions or perceptions that the audience has in relation to the brand.

It is the "gut" feeling the customer receives when they see the name of the company, when they engage with the product, and/or when they read reviews of service.

If there is only one thing to remember, it should be the following clear distinction:

• Brand - The overall impression that people have of the company's business.
• Branding - The systematic way in which the company creates and shapes the audience's overall impression of the company.
• Brand Identity - The collection of physical assets (and assets with sensory appeal) that are utilized in the branding process (such as logos, imagery, messaging, etc.)
• Trademarks are the legal way of protecting your brand identity from being confused with other brands in the marketplace.

The way we perceive a brand

You cannot touch a brand, but it is still real.

It is entirely psychological.

When someone considers many options in a market, their mind will seek shortcuts to make decisions efficiently.

When someone examines many competitors in any industry, they are overwhelmed by the amount of information and must create a way to organize that information meaningfully.

In other words, they have to create a way to organise the information in a methodical and meaningful way.

Trust is the foundation of the consumer's relationship with a company

The way a consumer experiences the same level of product quality, the same customer service culture, and the same visual cues repeatedly leads to trust.

This is why trust is the most valuable asset a company can have, and when companies establish trust, trust builds on itself.

This is called brand equity.

By establishing trust in a product, consumers are willing to pay a higher price for the same product and may even continue to buy from that company even if there was a public error or reputation issue.

No one owns a brand, but a brand belongs to the audience

A brand is not owned by the company that produces it.

The only way a company can have ownership over a brand is through their trademark, domain name and physical product inventory.

The power of a brand comes from the consumers’ perception of the brand.

For example, if a company has a value statement that says "World Class Customer Service," yet their customer support takes four days to respond to an email, then the brand is viewed by the consumer as "Slow and Unreliable".

If a consumer makes their purchasing decisions based on the most recent advertising message of the brand, then that marketing message will always take precedence over the branding message of the company.

What the brand doesn't represent

In order to have a complete understanding of what a brand is, we have to clarify what it isn't.

Many companies waste their resources trying to establish a brand based on an idea that does not exist within the brand or within the marketplace.

The many misconceptions about logos

Logos can be used as a means of identifying a business; however, this is not the only function they serve.

Logos do not dictate what the business says or what it represents.

Changing a logo and not changing how your business operates, or what you do for customers, will result in nothing.

You cannot simply put on a new shirt and expect to be given a promotion.

A marketing campaign can be temporary. Marketing campaigns are given a start date, a finish date, and are generally focused on getting specific results as outlined by those dates.

Campaigns are tactical in nature and create a sense of urgency.

Your brand is not temporary; it has a consistent and long-lasting nature. If campaigns are analogous to weather, your brand represents climate.

Products typically go through distinct "life cycles"—they can become outdated or damaged, and will need to be replaced when the need arises.

There is no singular product that defines a strong brand.

For example, Apple is more than the iPhone. Apple represents consistency in expectations of a sleek, user-friendly, high-quality product.

Should Apple begin to produce and sell automobiles, or televisions, consumers will already have certain expectations from Apple, based on its history of innovative products, before they see any information regarding the specs of the products.

How your brand identity looks like

Brand Identity is the physical and digital representation of how a business defines its "strategic direction."

A company's brand is ultimately defined by the types of products it sells, but because the underlying concept is abstract in nature, there are concrete tools that are available to help businesses shape the way that individuals perceive their business.

Together, these tools make up the Brand Identity System.

What are visual cues and assets?

Visual Cues and Assets are the first things that most individuals will recognize when they are exposed to your business.

They include how a business identifies itself visually, including Typography, Colour Palettes, Photography Style, and Logo Marks.

When using these elements consistently, they will trigger Immediate Recognition for the brand.

It is common knowledge that a red can with white lettering denotes the meaning behind Coca-Cola.

However, the manner of speech is as consequential, if not more so, than the actual physical aesthetic of the brand.

In this way, Coca-Cola has an extremely unique voice through its marketing materials, which can still include an authoritative tone, whereas take, for example, an organic energy drink brand - as a start-up - would likely have a very different verbal identity when representing itself to potential customers.

The messaging architecture, therefore, allows for a consistent representation of the brand regardless of the format in which customers interact with it.

The experiential layer is where most brand identities fail.

The experiential layer describes the experience that the customer has while interacting with your brand, from the unboxing to the checkout to how the brand is represented whenever a customer contacts that company by voice.

A luxury retailer that uses low-cost packaging and a difficult-to-navigate website creates a jarring disconnect between its premium brand image and the actual customer experience, ultimately eroding its brand equity.

The theory is irrelevant unless it is applied to the way these brand identity elements function within the confines of actual, real-world business operations and models.

B2B or business-to-business models are contrary to B2C or business-to-consumer.

B2B is a considerably longer buy cycle for a business and carries a more significant total cost of ownership.

In many cases, when it comes to a B2B SaaS company, the brand is synonymous with two basic principles, reliability and integration.

The identity signals for these brands will often be in the form of highly technical White Papers, clean Software Interfaces, and aggressive Uptime Guarantees.

A business-to-business (B2B) buyer is not necessarily buying a product or service based on whether it excited them emotionally; they are primarily concerned with mitigating risk.

The brand is reassurance to the question: “Will hiring this vendor get me fired?”

Local business and community ecosystem

In the case of a neighborhood plumber or local independent coffee shop, the dynamic is different.

They don’t have millions of dollars to spend on recognition campaigns.

They form their opinions about a provider based upon something they can see and experience in real time.

What do the service vehicles look like? Do they arrive on schedule? Are invoices clear and easily paid?

For smaller locality businesses, local "word of mouth" and community reputation are major factors in forming a person's brand.

Reliability and consistency around the basic customer touchpoints will build higher levels of trust than any fancy presence on Social Media.

The constraints of personal branding

For Freelancers, Creators and executives, the challenge is that the product they are selling is a person.

Creating a personal brand requires the ability to create a brand that’s both authentic and compliant with professional boundaries.

For the visual aspect of the brand, the person may use a headshot as their primary image, with a standard format for LinkedIn and such.

The voice of the brand is the individual’s own voice.

The limitation with developing a personal brand is that the individual is limited in how many people he/she can have personal contact with, and thus must establish themselves as a thought leader and establish public associations around the personal brand.

Online search visibility and entity optimization

Today, the digital landscape has generated a significant change in how we build our perception of our own personal brand.

A brand can now be viewed as not just what a person think's about your personal brand, but also how the algorithms of the search engines view your personal brand.

Search engines, such as Google, no longer just look at the text of your website.

They look at the relationships of various entities through the establishment of those relationships.

1. The knowledge graph's power and impact

When Google recognizes a business as a unique entity, it treats that entity differently and gives it unique features in search.

This includes Knowledge Panels, proper sitelinks, and visibility on AI-generated results.

If Google's search engine is confused about the identity or purpose of a business, the business's visibility will be adversely affected.

2. Branded search as a trust indicator

Branded search volume is one of the strongest indicators of a healthy brand.

When searching for "best project management software," do people type in the brand name ("Asana") in the search bar or the name of a solution in general?

The search for a brand name allows the user to bypass the competitive search engine result page (SERP) entirely.

This shows that people have already made an early mental decision to use the brand.

A high branded search volume indicates that the entity has real-world authority to search engines, leading to a self-sustaining feedback loop that will usually improve a brand's position regarding non-branded search traffic.

3. The digital consistency and schema issue

To ensure internal and external representation align, a company must be careful and consistent when establishing its presence.

This includes implementing Organization Schema Markup on the website to clearly state to search engines what type of business it represents, who its founders are, how to contact them, and what their social media presence is.

It also requires that all directories used report the same Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP) information.

This creates inconsistencies in the digital presence of a business and confuses the human user and the algorithm.

4. A diagnostic checklist: Does your brand have strength?

Many founders are wondering whether their investment in brand strategy is paying off.

Since your evaluation of perception is a subjective measurement process, you must convert your feelings about your business into objective data points.

No need for expensive agency - audit basic metrics.

Reference points to review current brands:

Brand awareness

Does the target audience even know about your presence?

This is starting at the top of the sales funnel.

When you walk into a room with people who tend to buy from you, how many of them know the name of your company?

You can judge this using search volume trends on your name, how fast direct traffic is increasing on your website as well as tools like Twitter for social listening to measure the number of mentions of your brand created naturally.

If you do not have significant awareness of your brand, you have a distribution issue even with a fantastic visual identity.

Distinctive testing

Are you mistaken for a competitor?

Print your website homepage and put it next to three competitors you feel would be most competitive to you.

Hide your logos.

Are you able to tell what is your website simply by looking at the headlines or the images?

If your company sounds identical to all of the others in your industry, you lack any distinctiveness.

You are providing the marketplace with a product and not a distinct brand.

Truly distinctive brands require choices.

Touchpoint audit consistency

Is the path to purchase fractured as the user progresses through the journey?

Create a map that demonstrates how the user progresses through the experience from the first time they see an Instagram ad for your product until they confirm their payment.

Is the colour scheme the same? Is the voice the same?

Is it possible to tell if the company that created the homepage also created the email customer support system?

Inconsistencies in brand presence lead to subconscious hesitation.

Each time an error message is shown, linked text leads to no-content pages, or an image that is not branded is displayed, the perception of quality is diminished.

Measuring your brand's trust and recall rates

When your target audience has a problem that needs solving, do they automatically think of you?

Recall is a key measure of Brand Equity.

Recall is your mental real estate or "space in your consumer's brain".

Trust translates into conversion rates, customer retention, and your buyer's willingness to refer you to their contacts.

A strong recall and high trust are the foundation of a business's "moat".

The pricing cost of getting it wrong

Overlooking these 2 variables costs businesses significant money.

Without a recognizable brand, each dollar spent on marketing is less efficient since you are spending twice the amount of money on customer acquisition.

Each time you present your product/service to a new customer, you have to build their trust as if it is the first time you have introduced your product/service.

In addition to giving their customers a way to compare prices, weak brands also compete solely on price.

If customers cannot differentiate between your product/service and that of your competitor, the customer will always select the lowest-priced option.

This results in a downward price cycle and ultimately destroys a business's profit margin and inhibits its growth.

Conclusion: Building a brand asset rather than an illusion

Brands are the greatest asset a business can own, yet, they are often misunderstood and underutilized.

Every single interaction, visual, and promise made shapes your customers’ perception of your brand.

The brand you create will only be as successful as your brand consistency, your brand accountability, and your understanding of how humans use mental shortcuts in a noisy world.

Move away from focusing on just a clever logo or catchy tagline.

Instead, take an overall look at your brand as a whole machine.

Clean up your broken customer service loops. Create uniformity with your visual identity across all marketing channels.

Ensure that the product you are providing has the ability to fill the promise you are creating with your marketing messaging.

When you align what you say, how you look, and what you do, the market takes notice.

The market develops a level of trust with your brand-based on this alignment.

In business, trust will drive sales for you.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How can I describe a brand in one sentence?

A brand is how a person feels about you and the perception that collectively all people have of you, your product, or your services.

Can a small business have a brand?

Yes.

The size of a company's scale does not dictate a person's perception of that company.

A small business can create a strong brand through hyper-consistent local interactions, consistently delivering on their promises, providing reliable service, and developing open, honest communication with their customers; these traits create a higher level of trust than in large corporate advertising campaigns.

What is the quickest way to damage brand equity?

The quickest way to damage brand equity is to break a core brand promise.

If you position yourself as a luxury provider but provide terrible service and cheap products, the cognitive disconnect you create between your brand promise and your delivery will cause irreparable damage to your reputation with that consumer.

How does brand impact SEO and search visibility?

Search engines give preference to entities that demonstrate a higher degree of authority and trust.

The volume of branded searches, combined with consistent digital signals and clear recognition of your brand via Schema and Digital PR, creates a signal to search algorithms of your business legitimacy, which will likely improve your potential to rank well for high-volume, non-branded, competitive keyword searches.