By Femida Baiga

A brand is an identifiable entity that makes some specific promise of value. Branding is used to create emotional attachment to products and companies. Your branding efforts can result in feelings of involvement; a sense of higher quality; and an aura of intangible qualities that surround the brand name, mark, or symbol.

Successful branding builds strategic awareness, so people not only recognize your brand, but understand its distinctive qualities that make it better than the competition. Branding is more important today than ever due to ever-increasing advertising clutter, media fragmentation, product commoditization, and the seemingly limitless choices available in just about every product category.

As entrepreneurs, we need to work hard to ensure we’re offering customers strong brands that are clearly differentiated and provide clear, real value and unique benefits. Here are just a few benefits you’ll enjoy when you create a strong brand:

• A strong brand influences buying decisions and shapes the ownership experience.
• Branding creates trust and an emotional attachment to your product or company that causes your market to make decisions based, at least in part, on emotion--not necessarily just for logical or intellectual reasons.
• A strong brand can command a premium price and maximize the number of units that can be sold at that premium.
• Branding helps make purchasing decisions easier. In a commodity market where features and benefits are virtually indistinguishable, a strong brand will help customers trust you and create a set of expectations about your products even when they don’t know specific product features.
• Branding will help you "fence off" your customers from the competition and protect your market share while building mind share. Once you have mind share, your customers will automatically consider you first when they think of your product category.
• A strong brand can make actual product features virtually insignificant. A solid branding strategy communicates a strong, consistent message about the value of your company. A strong brand helps you sell the value and intangibles that surround your product.
• A strong brand signals that you want to build customer loyalty, not just sell products. A strong branding campaign also demonstrates you’re serious about marketing and intend to be around for a while. A brand impresses your firm's identity upon potential customers, not necessarily to capture an immediate sale but to build a lasting impression of you and your products.
• Branding builds name recognition for your company or product.
• A brand will help you articulate your company's values and explain why you’re competing in your market.

Femida Baiga is the president and founder of The Retail Line, which has offices in the U.S., China and India. She helps businesses with branding custom products at very competitive prices. Learn more about her services at www.theretailline.com.