What makes effective branding so vital to success? When done correctly, the right brand identity helps establish a company within its industry and helps you compete with other companies who offer similar services. A strong brand brings instant recognition to the corresponding company/product and is vital to establishing a customer base, which is necessary to ensure future success.

Image: YouTube, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix — all provide streaming services while remaining distinctive due to their brands.

A strong, consistent brand is important to define your company’s identity. Having a vision for your company is vital to developing your brand. The good questions to ask when developing your brand are:

• What is my mission? 
• Who is my target audience? 
• What message do I want to convey? 
• What services or product(s) do I want to offer?

Once you have answered the questions above, the next step is to develop your brand identity. A good brand should include a logo, which is a symbol or word mark that is easily recognizable. A brand can also include a tagline, which is a phrase or idea that is also associated with the company or product. A color scheme is typically part of a brand as well. Determining a color scheme involves some industry research. Fast food restaurants often use similar colors to make it easy to identify the industry (i.e. McDonalds, Burger King and Carl’s Jr. all use a similar color palette). Other industries might use completely different color schemes to differentiate between competitors (Uber and Lyft would be a good example). Additionally, fonts, icons, photography or illustrations can also contribute to creating an overall “feel” for your brand.

Image: Chobani’s brand was designed in-house which included logos, fonts, colors and illustrations, among other elements, to be used together for brand consistency.

Keep in mind that the strength of your brand will determine how quickly your customer base recognizes your company. As a franchise owner in an established brand, part of what you are paying for is instant brand recognition and brand consistency at a corporate level. Using an advertising agency that follows established brand guidelines across all platforms will help keep your franchise on par.

Consistency is a big part of successful branding. One way to ensure consistency is to always deliver messaging that aligns with the identity and mission of your brand. Brand consistency builds trust and loyalty with your audience and keeps customers returning to a product or company that they not only know and love but also trust with their business. In a competitive and saturated marketplace, a strong brand is more important than ever.