Research on Branding-Consumers live in a world where brands are an ever-present fact. The average person, from the moment they wake until they go to sleep, sees an average of 6,000 to 10,000 ads from brands every day. So it’s critical that you, through research, understand how your target audience responds to brands and their products.

After several studies on research on branding, it’s quite clear that knowledge, experience, gender, ethnicity, and culture are factors that heavily influence how customers react to a brand. And this is why you need to research extensively so you can build a brand with a personality that your target audience can instantly connect with.

In this article, we’re going to be exploring several researches on branding and what they mean for your brand.

1. Brands Mean a lot to Customers

Brands can make the lives of their customers simpler, smoother, or even more fulfilling. Brands allow customers to communicate to others—and themselves—who they are, what they admire, and what they want to be.

In the book Unconscious Branding by Douglas Van Praet, we see brands are more than just products; they’re also a source of social recognition for customers who might either choose to draw strength from high-end brands like Mercedes, which appeal to the rich, or low-cost choices like Target and Ikea, which offer a sense of style typically reserved for the more affluent.

A 2017 study by Reimann, Nuñez, and Castaño revealed the extraordinary ability brands possess to protect their customers from physical pain. Brands provide customers with a soothing sense of social connectedness, which helps them deal with pain.

Brands mean a lot to their customers and for this reason, they’re never considered independently of other relationships because the mind of every customer is always evaluating brands compared to something else. Now you know why the arguments between iPhone users and Android users may never end.

In today’s post-Covid world, where customers aren’t just looking at logos, but for brands with purpose and values that stand for causes they sympathize with, you must carefully shape your business so it delivers a compelling message that personalizes your brand and communicates emotionally with your target audience.

2. Brands Inspire Customer Loyalty

Great brands are known for how well they inspire loyalty from their customers. They do this by providing customers with a sense of family and community. These brands aren’t just addicted to consistently delivering outstanding customer service, they also pay attention to details that could improve their products.

As an entrepreneur, you need to constantly evaluate your approach to customer loyalty and how it can either elevate to dethrone your business. If you want to grow your business’s revenue, then it’s important that you first focus on increasing the loyalty of your existing customers instead of acquiring new ones.

Accenture, in 2017, reported that 66% of consumers spend more on brands they’re loyal to. This only goes to show that setting up a meaningful customer loyalty improvement program is critical to your brand’s revenue.

One brand that’s highly efficient at inspiring loyalty is Chewy. The brand always goes over and beyond in satisfying the needs of their customers. They’ve been known to surprise several customers with paintings of their pets.

Winning the loyalty of your customers should be a priority. Bain & Company captures this in a study that showed that customers spend 61% more after staying with an online brand for 31 months. Brands like Chewy, ALDI, Amazon Prime, GoPro, and Spotify have inspired intense loyalty in their customers that it’d be really difficult for these brands to become irrelevant.

And just the same way these brands set the stage for their success by getting short, unique, and exciting names that represented them perfectly, you too can quickly get a unique name to represent your business from a trusted business name generator.

3. Brands Depend on Customer Recommendations

Communication is the lifeblood of any business, so it wasn’t surprising for us to learn that peer recommendations have become a driving factor for brand success. Word of mouth is an important part of marketing, and it can take many forms in today’s modern world.

Social media has taken center stage in peer-to-peer recommendations. 77% of brand conversations on social media are people looking for advice, information, or help. And that’s why any entrepreneur hoping to start a business must establish a strong customer community online.

In 2019, Villarroel Ordenes conducted an extensive text mining study of social media to discover that certain elements like visual images, alliteration, and repetition will make customers share a brand’s message more frequently.

This just goes to show how important informative and emotional content is to a brand’s online posts. Entrepreneurs must learn to adapt their messages to each social media platform to suit the needs of their audience.

GoPro uses Facebook to advertise their brand, reach out to new consumers, and communicate with existing ones. The company also uses Twitter for new launches and consumer communication, YouTube for videos with tips and demos about how to use their devices, and Instagram to showcase the functionality of their cameras and promote user-generated content.

According to marketing week, B2B brands fare better with customers through emotive rather than rational marketing messages. So your business needs to understand how to start great conversations with its audience, and also respond to questions and provide solutions in a fun, calm, and honest manner.

Crown Your Research with Action

All these research on branding would remain research if you don’t transform them into the results your brand needs, and the only way you can do that is by acting on them. So step out and use this information to your advantage. The world is waiting for your business.

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There are many different reasons for rebranding one’s business and the entire practice is often very beneficial for the brand’s success later on. If there’s a need for rebranding it’s already clear that the company has to turn things around for the better.

However, the process of rebranding is not a simple one as it requires you to include your existing and potential customers in the planning. After all, you don’t want to lose your audience once you complete the rebrand.

Why Do You Need a Rebrand?

It’s extremely important that you, as a business owner, know precisely why you need to rebrand your business. This is a significant change that will transform everything about your company and you can’t take up this task on a whim. Essentially, if there has been a considerable shift in your business model and services or even a name change, it’s time to consider a rebrand. Anything less significant could only result in a revenue drop.

Keep in mind that you have to stay on top of the entire change through different departments within your company in order to ensure thorough work and complete transition.

Create a Rebranding Strategy

Before you start throwing ideas around, make sure to sit down with your creative teams so that you can devise a comprehensive rebranding plan. After all, changing up your branding doesn’t only involve a new name and adding new products/services to your website; it requires work on a much bigger scale as you’ll have to work on website design, logo, the colors you wish to use, the message you want your brand to send, the image of your brand, your online presence, the new content that matches the rebrand, and so on. Go over these aspects step by step with everyone involved in the process.

Publicize Your Rebrand

Once you’re done with coming up with the details and practices involving the rebrand specifically, it’s time to bring the change to your target audience. Of course, your goal is to inform your existing customers about the rebrand, but also attract new prospects. That said, social media is the best possible outlet for you to market the rebrand. Essentially, you want to shout about this from the rooftops! Don’t forget to utilize email marketing with the lead list you already have so you can contact them directly.

With the power of digital ads, it’s possible to customize your demographic and place the news about the rebrand and your offers right in front of your target market. Aside from digital strategies, this might also be a good time to consider some forms of traditional marketing as well, such as print ads and press releases.

Reward Your Loyal Customers

As mentioned, your business rebrand will hopefully bring in a lot of new leads but you should never forget about your existing customers. In order to engage them in the whole event of the rebranding so that they go out of their way to inform themselves about the change, it would be a good idea to offer them some incentives.

Regardless of whether you’re offering pool cleaning services or others, make sure that your existing clientele knows they’re still very much appreciated by presenting them with effective deals and discounts. This is how you can turn attention to your business once again and make your spruced up brand memorable and recognizable.

Prepare for Transparent Communication

Now that you’ve gone out in the open with your rebrand, it’s important that you’re ready to take up customer queries and questions. If they value your products/services, your customers will have plenty of concerns and worries. This is precisely why it’s so crucial you’re very transparent and public about the change and the reason for your rebrand in the first place. That said, make it a point to boost your communication efforts and customer care via phone calls, chats, social media, and email. If you want to retain your audience even after you rebrand your business, it’s your responsibility to provide them with the necessary information in a comprehensive and timely manner.

Rebranding is undoubtedly a very serious and significant step for your business, but the way you handle this transition will prove whether the step was in the right direction or not. Make sure that your employees and creative teams know the ins and outs of the rebrand so that you can count on a thorough and smooth process. Also, don’t hesitate to make the change public and turn it into an integral part of your marketing strategies until you can be 100% sure the rebrand is fully completed.

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