If you have a business in the New York City area and are thinking about updating or rebranding, you may have read or heard that a branding agency is an ideal solution. But maybe you think it’s not worth it because your company’s marketing team can do the job. After all, they all work with the same stuff, don’t they?
The short answer is marketing and branding are two completely different things. The first concerns how you market and sell products and services. The second is about shaping your reputation, mission, and values. Basically, what your company stands for, why it is unique, and why your customers should do business with you and not your competition.
An industry saying is that marketing strategies come and go, but branding is forever. Branding will make your company known and can be the key to successful e-commerce.
Branding is Storytelling
One of the big changes in consumer behavior today is that they no longer want to deal with faceless companies with no past. Instead, they consume brands with a personality—an individual story they can engage with because they share the same views/opinions.
Good branding begins with the ability to use a brand to tell a story. Within this concept, brand storytelling creates a narrative that engages your audience and allows them to better understand your goals or values.
A storied brand usually answers the following questions:
- Who is the owner or spokesperson of the company?
- How was the company born?
- What does the company do, and since when?
- What are the values and culture of the brand as a whole?
- Who is your target audience?
- What is the company’s main objective behind its products or services?
It may seem complicated at first, and that’s precisely where branding agencies come in. A great firm begs customers to give them the material they need to craft a strong, cohesive message. A branding agency in NYC can help you get to the point you need to be with e-commerce.
Charting the Course with Branding
All brands should look for ways to connect with potential audiences. The purpose may be the most obvious, like an increase in sales numbers. But maybe they want to improve their brand image, attract more traffic to their website, or have more social media metrics and engagement.
A multi-channel, focused solution allows you to find customers everywhere, both through physical and digital imprints. But for the strategy to work, you must follow these steps:
- Do market research before anything to define your audience correctly.
- Identify what kind of audience you want to reach; instead of “adults in their 20s to 60s,” be really specific like “middle-class couples in their 30s and 40s.”
- With an audience defined, it’s easier to collect behavioral data to understand customer preferences.
- Based on the behavioral data, you’ll know which type of campaign is most effective.
Branding agencies help chart your business’ long-term course by giving you direction on how to reach out and collect customers. Business owners should seek agencies that work with integrated marketing strategies, which combine various marketing strategies (social media, print, radio, TV ads, etc.) so that these channels work together, instead of each one for itself.
Agile Agencies are Your Friends
Branding agencies can increase your company’s chances of breaking through and reaching a big audience. But how can you find the best option? In summary, the agency you are looking for must have all or some of these characteristics:
- The ability to produce quick, short campaigns as needed
- Respond quickly to changes in the market
- Try new things but know which formulas worked better
- Use concrete customer data to know where to increase marketing efforts
A great branding firm takes this to heart and focuses on the customer experience and its bottom line. They will work with you throughout all stages of the campaigns you run together and stay agile.
The Investment is Now; Good Branding is Eternal
There are many cases of famous and recognized New York brands that have been on the market for decades (sometimes even centuries), with loyal customers who consume their products without question, even if they have to pay more for them. Good branding can become eternal.
If marketing thinks about the here and now, then branding takes a long-term approach. It doesn’t exactly work to increase your sales overnight, but a good branding strategy will build brand awareness and loyalty among new and old consumers. Selling more is a direct consequence of this. Good branding, therefore, is priceless.