A short, practical talk by Nataliey Bitature on branding fundamentals for individuals and organizations. Covers the need for mission and vision, consistent visual identity (colors, logos), customer experience design, and how consistent branding builds loyalty and word-of-mouth. Emphasizes that small businesses should build brands early (examples: MTN, Coca-Cola) and that branding drives marketing channels and operations.
Branding. Branding is incredibly important for every kind of organization and business. You need to think about not just the colors and the logo, but the mission and vision behind your brand. Your brand is your representation to the world. So when we talk about personal branding, it's all about how you carry yourself, the kind of impression that you make, because that's going to be your reputation among your network, among potential employers, potential clients. So when you think about an organization's brand, it's even more important because this is how you're going to connect to your customers. Yes, the colors are very important. You can even look at a color wheel and see which colors evoke which emotions in people so that you can understand that blue is about loyalty and purple is about eccentricity and yellow is about joy and sunshine and uplifting. So that you associate the right colors with the right brand, so that you build your brand based on your vision, on the mission of the organization, so that this is how you connect authentically to your customers. It's important that you're very consistent with your brand, that you don't change your message or your goal or how you present yourself such your customers can learn where to find you and rely on. I will always find this brand in this supermarket of this kind of thing. And I know it's always the green packet. And that's how you build your brand and your customer loyalty. So if it's also a service or something else that you provide, they know they can count on certain values that your company or your organization is going to provide. It's very important that you do this proactively and purposefully. So when you're starting a company, you have to about the customer experience. How do you want customers to feel about your brand when they think about this company? Fruits? Do they think, oh, great service, always smiling, always on time. These are nice people. They always bring fresh fruits. I can trust them. If that's what you want to encompass, then you have to write that down as your brand mission and vision so that you understand this is what's important to you and your customers. And then you build consistently in an authentic way so that your customers can understand I can count on this brand to deliver these values and associate that mental link with you. This is how you get their loyalty and even get them to spread word of mouth and talk about your organization and bring even more customers to you. Branding is very important, especially in busy markets like ours where there's so much competition and so little branding, you don't have to wait till you're big like MTN or Coca Cola to have a brand new. It's important that you also have a sense of pride about your logo, your colors, your T shirts that your company wears. It makes everyone look more professional. It ties everybody together. It helps your customers understand and connect and spot. Oh, this is from this organization. When you see a big yellow billboard now, you know that's mtn. You know you're going to look up and see what's the latest promotion that they have. And that's something that you can capture even in small businesses. And the sooner you start to do that, the sooner your customers will stop choosing others over you. Just because they can get bananas anywhere doesn't mean that they should get bananas anywhere. If you sell bananas, you want customers think of only you when they get bananas. So you have to find a way to do that in a consistent way that's not invasive to a customer that you're calling them every two days. Do you need bananas? Do you need bananas? You need to deliver the experience and the brand in a consistent way to the customer so that they associate you with. With the brand that you are projecting on purpose, not by accident, that they always just happen to call you. You have to work at this. And this is why branding is so important. It also drives how you do your marketing. Is it about how you interact with your customers? Is it online? Is it in person? Do you need to give flyers? Do you need to all wear T shirts? Do you have promotions and events? These are the things that are the channels for you to reach your customer, but they're all driven by your brand and how your brand interacts with, with customers. And that's also something that the more you're consistent with, the longer it will last and the better it will work. So think about your brand and choose what you do and how you do it in a proactive way.
