Do Micro and Medium Enterprises Need Branding?

06 March 2024

A good brand is undoubtedly more than a name, logo design, or attractive packaging. Branding encompasses everything about your business and helps differentiate it from others. In practice, a brand doesn't even need to have an expensive logo or design. Within a brand, there must be accurate, tangible values reflected. Even if not visible, a good brand can be felt by someone through the products or services provided. Besides being necessary for forming identity, increasing awareness, and building a positive image for the brand and company, the main goal of branding is to build customer loyalty. 

By having great branding, we can differentiate ourselves from competitors to gain consumer trust. Without branding, customer loyalty will be driven by uncertain factors such as price, location, or placement. The simplest example is buying vegetables, such as spinach, from a vegetable vendor for Rp 2,000 per bunch. However, in some locations, we can find branded spinach being sold twice or even three times the price of the spinach sold by the mobile vegetable vendor. Despite being identical products, they differ in terms of branding. Apart from creating a situation where the brand plays a role in differentiating the identity of the same product in the market, this is where the power of the brand comes into play. A brand can provide customers assurance and trust regarding the goods or products they purchase.

Branding is more than just a logo and advertising

Once we publish a logo to consumers, we successfully implement branding. However, branding is more complex. Several elements need to be considered and implemented so that consumers can grasp what factors ultimately give them a reason to purchase the products being sold. There is only one way to know what consumers think except by communicating with them. Market research is a crucial thing to do in revealing consumers' thoughts, feelings, and expectations. 

Returning to the example of the case of spinach which already has a brand, of course, having a brand is not enough. After establishing a brand, it is essential to increase consumer awareness of the brand consistently. A high level of understanding can be one of the parameters that make it easier for us to convince consumers to buy our products. The brand owner must consider what differentiates their spinach from others. Is their spinach healthier? Is it grown without artificial chemical fertilizers/organic? These are essential factors to consider regarding the strength of the spinach product and its relevance in addressing the unmet needs of consumers compared to other spinach in the market. 

Once consumers are aware and understand what makes them confident and willing to buy, we must ensure they can easily access and purchase our products. Their affordability to buy our products must be guaranteed. When consumers become familiar with our branded spinach and realize that the spinach they usually buy is non-organic and has negative health impacts, our branded spinach, which is naturally grown without artificial fertilizers, can address this significant consumer problem. When consumers start looking for this branded spinach to purchase at their usual vegetable vendor but find it unavailable or only available in certain places, will they make every effort to buy it? There may be consumer segments that will go to great lengths to purchase this branded spinach, or many consumers may ultimately give up on buying it. Ensuring availability and guaranteeing easy access for consumers to obtain our products is a solid basis in marketing. Especially in a digital world that is growing everyday, availability is not only related to product availability but also the availability of comprehensive information about our products across all communication channels we have.

Prefer Soft-Selling in Content Creation

The use of persuasive messages is usually more accepted by consumers today. Especially with the messages conveyed with stories that concern the pain points consumers face in their daily life towards the products offered. It will have a direct and substantial impact on the development. 

New brands usually focus on the product, purpose, usefulness, and when and where it can be used or purchased. These are simple yet essential things to convey. For established brands, communication needs are more about refreshing or reminding consumers of memories rather than explaining the product itself. Sometimes, there are no plans to deliver new messages to consumers yearly. Sometimes, consumers prefer to be reminded of what they already believe in rather than being offered something new that could backfire on the brand. For these established brands with a robust and loyal customer base, even small changes can affect the brand's perception and decrease loyalty if the new elements encountered are irrelevant or meet their expectations. 

The last thing that brand owners or marketers must emphasize is consistency in communicating their branding strategies. Instilling a competitive spirit in convincing consumers always to consider our brand as their first choice is crucial, especially if there are already many brand options in our product category or brands with a significant influence and a large market share. Staying in your comfort zone is not an option. To smooth and make your branding strategy more effective, efficient, and impactful for your brand, involve consumers in developing your brand strategy by conducting market research beforehand. Market research with accurate analysis will bring a powerful strategy. Ultimately, if you are not the consumer of your product, then the instincts of marketers or brand owners may only sometimes align with what consumers think.