For customers to buy from you, there needs to be trust in your brand and your products

Customers need to feel confident that your product or services will deliver the right benefits and that they will deliver the promises that you claim in your marketing.

A brand becomes strong because many customers buy the brand, are loyal to the brand, repeatedly buying it, and will recommend the brand to others.

The greater the number of loyal customers, the greater and stronger a brand becomes.

A strong brand indicates that many customers trust the brand, and this sends out a strong signal to others, encouraging them to purchase, possibly for the first time.

If, for instance, someone finds your business name in a search on Google, along with your competitor names, they are more likely to click on your link than the others, if your brand is recognised as being stronger.

Strong brands always enjoy strong product sales and a strong demand.

If you were to stop marketing and advertising your products completely, would you still enjoy strong sales?

If you were to, that signifies a strong brand and that must be your goal.

For a new business, there will obviously be much marketing required to put the brand and its products in front of eyeballs, but as the brand and sales grows and the reputation becomes strong, so demand will automatically increase and become strong, too.

Then, when strong brand status is achieved, and the demand increases, so the need for marketing can be reduced, thus reducing the costs.

75% of purchases are based on emotions. If a target customer feels good about a brand, they are more likely to buy from it.

When customers show loyalty to a brand, that is an emotion, and the clever brands use emotion to get their target customers to buy from them. Using brand advocates or brand influencers can be one way to drive a purchasing emotion. If someone sees somebody, who they know or admire endorsing a brand, they are more likely to buy.

It is also possible to include emotion in the messaging of a brand; The Nike brand, for instance, signifies that their shoes enable a ‘freedom to dream’ lifestyle rather than just a good pair of shoes. When someone wears a pair of Nike shoes, they can enter the world that is portrayed in each Nike advertisement.  

You don’t need the megabucks of Nike to create a strong emotion, you can do the same by highlighting what the emotional benefits are of your products, by building this into your brand, through consistent marketing, over time.

To be a strong brand, you don’t just need large armies of customers buying your products but, you also need to create highly effective methods of marketing that really draw target customers into your brand, and which resonates with these people. 

If you are to grow as a business, and if you are to have a good long-term future, you need to grab more than your fair share of customers and you need to grab more customers than your competitors.

Most trading markets are crowded with many products from many suppliers, meaning you need to be more visible and ‘stand out’ more to your target customers than the competition.

Part of ‘standing out’ is to show your target customers how different you are to your competitors and how much better you are.

Take coffee chains, as an example. Starbucks have a particular brand identity which is different to Costa Coffee. The exteriors and interiors of Starbucks is very distinct and different to Costa Coffee.

By standing out in the right way, you should achieve greater numbers of customers, greater numbers of sales and greater business growth.

Having a strong brand will thus make you more competitive.

For customers to buy from you, they need to understand your products and services well and they need to understand the benefits of buying from you.

In fact, they need to understand everything about your brand, extremely well; the better the understanding, the greater the chance of choosing your brand over another brand.

The most successful strong brands all have a strong brand identity, where most, if not all, target customers know the brand and understand what the brand stands for.

The greater your brand identity, the greater your sales potential.

As part of your brand identity, you should show everyone what your business purpose is, along with your values and ethics.

This is a strong way to attract the right customers to your brand.

If, for instance, your business has strong ‘green credentials’, you are more likely to attract customers with similar beliefs and similar credentials compared to competitors with less ‘green credentials’.  

Being a strong brand with a high number and a growing number of loyal customers, all buying repeatedly, can give you great pricing power, allowing you to charge higher and premium prices compared to your competitors.

Most customers are looking for value rather than cheapness and will pay more for a good product that offers high value and possibly higher value than the competition.

Apple, for instance, commands good pricing ability due to its brand strength.

Greater pricing power means greater profits and greater sustainability.

Having a strong brand and a strong reputation can also allow for more successful product launches.

Customers are more likely to buy a new product from an existing strong brand than from a weaker, less-known brand.

This will be due to the trust that that the brand enjoys; customers will think that the existing products and services are good, so this new product should be good too.

Being a strong brand will also give you the benefit of having a large army of loyal customers that you can potentially market and sell your new product to.

Apple, for instance, benefit greatly from a large army of loyal customers, most of whom will be curious about the features of a new Apple product.

Any brand can replicate Apple’s success, if they manage their brand awareness in the right way, thus enabling new launches successfully.

The greater number of products in your product portfolio should mean greater sales and greater profits for your business. 

Good and talented employees, especially millennials, increasingly want to work for good and growing businesses, that are financially stable.

They would think that they could grow as the business grows and should receive good training and good guidance.

Many good employees also want to be associated with brands that are well appreciated by their customers and others, that are driving meaningful benefits and making a difference to peoples’ lives.

Good employees would derive great pride from working for such businesses.

If you are to grow your business in the best way, you need the best talent to help you. Furthermore, once you have trained your employees, you want to retain them, reducing or eliminating the churn in employment.

Employees who are fully engaged with the businesses that they work for are 21% more likely to stay with that business.

This will obviously save on costs and resources.

Having a strong, positive culture is massively important for the prosperity of any business. In fact, true business success is not possible without a truly strong and positive culture, where business owners, colleagues and employees can grow together, boosted by strong morale and a strong team cohesion, prompting the growth of the business.

This can add to the stability of the business and can be something that can be detected by customers, aiding the experience.

Furthermore, it has be shown repeatedly that a good culture that is strong and positive is good for boosting productivity levels.

Having a strong brand can greatly enhance the feeling of ‘worth’ for employees and this can greatly reinforce and strengthen the culture.

Only a good business with a strong brand will attract the best shareholders, investors and partners and you need these, if you are to progress in the right way and at the right pace.

Such people will see branding strength as the right criteria for their involvement and their support.

If your branding is weak, you will not be able to attract the best.

Being a brand that is recognised as being strong will give you stronger negotiating power with partners, suppliers and others.

To be associated with a strong brand can create good kudos for a supplier, too; the best suppliers want the best brands as their customers and partners. This good kudos will allow them to grow, too, as a brand.

Being a strong brand will give you massive negotiating power to get the best prices and to be able to ‘knock input prices down’.

Furthermore, the stronger your brand becomes, the greater your negotiating power becomes too.

So strong branding should mean a better choice of suppliers wishing to do trade with you and lower input costs, adding to your gross profit margins.  

Strong branding is good for boosting profitability, adding to it in several ways, as discussed above:

• Lower customer acquisition and retention costs

• Less marketing costs

• Lower costs for new product launches

• High productivity for your team

• Less churn of employers and lower training costs

• Increased negotiating powers and lower input costs

Having a strong brand also means that your business can survive downturns in trade such as during recessions etc.

The covid pandemic saw many weak brands collapse while the strong brands were able to survive and were even seen to grow.

Having large armies of loyal customers and great purchasing trust ensured the strong brands still enjoyed high sales, even when some of their armies saw a shrinkage in customer numbers.

Greater cash flows and stronger balance sheets can also be the consequence of strong branding; good cash reserves can cushion a downturn in sales.

A good cash-flow and a strong balance sheet should be the aspiration of every business, this adds long-term stability to the business.

Long-term stability must be your goal. 

As you can see there are many great benefits to having a strong brand and I hope you can see how powerful these are to building a strong, stable and profitable business.

If you don’t have a deliberate strategy for building a strong brand, I strongly suggest you create one today, with the goal to formulate a good and a powerful brand image and brand identity that will induce trust for your target customers to buy.