Hi, I’m Erina from the Do-Business team!
Do you know what is Branding?
I got great inspiration from a businessman (also a YouTuber) who owns several successful businesses in Japan which I will share his thoughts about ‘The importance of Branding’ with you in this blog.
In a conclusion, he says ‘If you want to sell something, don’t sell them’. It is the clue to understand ‘The importance of Branding’. Let’s take an example, think about a beautician who can earn 1000 yen for one job and a beautician who can earn 50000 yen for the same job. How could their income has that much difference when they do the same amount of work?
So, the 49000 yen differences can be made because of “Branding”. The latter branded his work maybe by creating a luxurious atmosphere for his place and provided a cup of free wine for a customer who visited him to have a haircut. It’s also possible that he had won some kind of a haircut award and become famous for that rare skill. In the contrast, the former just sold his skills of cutting hair, which every other beautician does.
Branding is important since it is the key to ‘be approached’ by the customers, and that is the great difference with ‘Marketing’. Marketing is an analysis to approach a specific target and it can also be different from ‘Advertising’ which is an analysis to approach a lot of targets. Having said that, branding is a point that the customer is attracted and makes them want to approach our specific product. It is similar to ‘uniqueness’ and not ‘luxury’. If you succeed to have good Branding, you don’t have to do other necessary things like advertising and PR, because people will automatically be attracted to your Brand and they will spread your brand all over the internet or mouth to mouth. And there is various way of Branding, like Corporate Branding (how to connect to public, HP, logo, CEO, partnership), Product Branding(price, material, package), Marketing Branding(media, SNS, story, target), Sales Branding(how to sell, choosing partners and customers).
Moreover, if you have good Branding, you can avoid having a price competition. Failed businesses tend to fall into a negative spiral that starts with price competition. Price competition creates service competition, and service competition creates more cost for the company and a decrease in profit ratio. Then the company has to cut its costs and advertisements and the share will decrease as well. But, if you have the right branding, you won’t be in the price competition in the first place because you have a one and only brand.
I thought having an original story and being authentic are similar to Branding, but Story can be more important since we did not create them and that way, it is very original and makes the company unique. However, Brand will continue to change its meanings with time and makes the company survive, and that way it is a vital essence for the company too.