Growing your brand - how important is it for you?

A telling example of the power of a brand name can be Polo shirts. Go to any Walmart or Target and you can pick a decent shirt there for $10-$18. The same shirt at Macy's is $25-$50 just because it has the Polo logo on it. It seems like people will go to great lengths to get what they want just because they like the brand.

What brand are you growing? Do you have a brand? As internet marketers we tend to talk about a lot of things except brand name development. Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on that.

 

Great topic.

Branding will be important once you have reached critical mass in your market. Note that it is your customers that create your brand because they are the ones that associate your products/services/company with a "value." What I am saying is that a company's so-called "branding effort" usually consists of a logo and other name recognition efforts that do not result in the company's ultimate "brand". It is the feelings/beliefs of your customers that constitute your brand. A logo simply makes it easier to identify a good brand, when it exists in the mind of the marketplace.

Polo shirts have achieved a strong brand because its customers (and the people that they communicate with) associate the shirt with a "value." It could be that the shirts are well-made or perhaps provide an "air of distinction" or whatever value the customer deems important. Putting a logo on their shirts did not make the brand. It was the quality/image/whatever that the company focused on over the years that created the brand.

My point is that true branding is very difficult to do and the best thing that a company can do to enhance its brand is by consistently providing value to its customers and increasing its presence in the market through sales.