We somehow instinctively know that people do business with well-branded retailers. We do business with Apple, Disney, the Gap, Crate and Barrel, and we walk away with a great shopping experience and want to go back. We know these companies are raking in boatloads of cash. Even if we don’t know the numbers, we know they are successful retailers, and we know we want to be a part of that greatness… however, ask most executives why they don’t spend money on building the brand, and they’ll tell you it’s “an extra expense,” or that “we don’t have the resources Apple does,” or that it’s “pure esthetics,” and we’d “rather improve our products or merchandising.” Since it is not considered “direct response,” many companies put it on the back burner only to find to their dismay that they have lost market share, and are being clobbered by the competition.

I’m here to bust all those myths, and tell you why investing money in Branding online is worthwhile, and will pay you back dividends for the long-term that can help your business grow and succeed in ways that a weak brand can’t.

1. Branding makes selling easier.
The main reason to invest in a Brand is that it makes conversion easier and it saves you money in the long run. Easy as that.

In a world of countless choices, 20,000 brand messages a day, billions of websites, you really do need to have a competitive edge. In a world where your business competes with global billion dollar companies, Branding helps you get eyeballs on your media spend. Branding helps you to “warm up” to customers faster, giving you a better chance of keeping their attention. Branding helps the customer figure out quickly if they need your business, and if they don’t need you immediately, makes it easy to remember you when they do. Also, brands help businesses show their care for their customers by improving the asthetics of their shopping experience.

There is a real reason big businesses spend money to develop their brand: BRAND = MONEY.

2. The branding process helps companies figure out who they are and their unique selling proposition.
The process of branding is not just a logo. A proper branding job needs to include core messaging, clear positioning, and differentiation in the marketplace. The outgrowth of this process is the visuals. The real value is the thought and self-exploration that branding provides. If done right, it will provide a clear message of what a company is about, what the position in the marketplace is, and will help a company develop a look and feel that is different than their competitors.

All of this information is crucial for all people involved with the company to not only “know” what their company is, but to “see” their typical customer visually through the process of creating mood boards, demonstrating personas and typical customer profiles. Once this is determined, business decisions can become easier because the branding process has clarified market and vision for the company.

3. Pretty pictures DO lure people in.
Let’s face it… pretty works. In a crowd of people who is your eye attracted to? The prettiest girl. In the mall which store do you want to investigate? The prettiest one of course! The one with all the cool branding, neat vitrines, and interesting decor.

Online, when consumers are shopping, which one do they instinctively investigate? Even though navigation may be awful, and the customer service information unclear, they’ll still gravitate towards a pretty site. It is in the nature of how the brain works— we are drawn in by pretty objects. To this extent, never forget the power of pure esthetics in decision-making. Your emotions have incredible power, and visually stunning brands bring people in.

When you are spending money for expensive acquisitions, remember your best defense against bounce rate is use of esthetics.

4. Emotional connection is crucial in attracting attention to your products.
Continuing on the previous topic, having the emotional connection is also crucial to luring people to explore your site. People are more likely to stay on a site that establishes an emotional connection than those that don’t. It’s the engagement factor; be it by humor, sadness hope or enthusiasm; unless your emotions are effected, you’re not engaged. When your site makes that emotional connection, users are less likely to bounce, and more likely to visit longer. The branding process helps you develop imagery and guidelines to effectively hit the emotions of your customers.

5. The next site is just a mouse click away.
Think about this: the easier it is for someone to shop at another store, the more likely they will. If I get in my car, and drive to the mall, find parking and go into a store, I’m going to be very unwilling to look elsewhere, because that would mean that I would have to look up another store, find out if they have what I want, get back in my car, drive and park… again. Unless I have a really good reason to, (meaning I could save a bunch of money, or they just don’t have the exact iPod speaker system I want), that is just WAY too much effort.

On the internet, the amount of effort to go to another store is minimal, and is usually only two mouse clicks and a few keyboard strokes away. If I don’t like a store, I’m a few seconds away from finding the next one. If I don’t like the price, I’m gone. Don’t have what I want? Later… Well you get the drift. This makes for an extremely competitive marketplace.

Effective branding gives users a reason to stay. The internet has become incredibly competitive with the proliferation of stores, and great Branding is truly one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd.

6. Effective Branding lowers your CPA cost.
If your CPA cost is $1, it stands to reason that you want each of those visitors to convert at the highest rate to make most efficient use of your advertising budget. For example, if your CPA cost on a keyword is $1/click, and your conversion rate on that keyword is 1%, it costs you $100/acquisition. If you increase your conversion rate to 3%, your cost per acquisition now lowers to $33. If you are spending $10k/month on PPC or any CPA strategy, this can increase your sales from 100 sales/month to 300 sales per month. With an average order value of $50, that just yielded $10k more in sales. After 2 or 3 months of this increase, you’ve paid for the rebrand.

7. Your company is more than the products you sell.
There was an experiment done by 7Up with their packaging to see how much “visuals” mattered in people’s experience of a product. They put the same soda in 2 cans: 1 was the original package, 1 was in a package where color had been altered (either more yellow or more green). In every case, people tasted the soda differently depending on the color of the package, more lemony when yellow, more limey when green. Our brains are used to taking in many factors when we shop, eat and live, that affect our perceptions. In order to help make sense of things, many subconscious factors run in the background. Too many details, and our brains get bogged down. And thus, we are affected by everything consciously, and subconsciously.

What this means to an online retailer is that subconscious factors are swaying a customer in one way or another in the interpretation of your business. Have a crappy brand experience? You are subtly, (or not so subtly), losing customers who, unaware to themselves, feel drawn to do business somewhere else. If your site isn’t “branded” or you just put up a logo you had a design student create, or added all kinds of mish-mashed expressions of the brand, (different colors, fonts, imagery, messaging, etc.), you are probably altering the brand experience for the worst, and consequently your merchandise and product line as well. The opposite is true—give people a great brand experience, and even so-so products, and they will believe the experience was better than it actually was.

8. You WILL get the return on your investment on Branding.
As I mentioned in bullet point 6, you can easily pay for a $30k branding project in the course of a couple months by simply making your CPA cost more effective. If you add this to other lead generating media buys, SEO, promotions, etc., you can justify the cost by the increasing efficiency of your marketing program. If you think branding is “expensive,” it is only expensive when you don’t get your return on your investment. Over the long haul, it’s more work and more money NOT to brand effectively.

Furthermore, if you have a well branded site, you will keep more customers, further lowering your costs per acquisition. On average, a repeat customer costs 50x less than a new one, so doing everything you can to keep current customers involved with your company makes financial sense. Branding helps you keep customers engaged. A company without a stunning brand will leave less impact on the customer.

9. Brand style guides help keep your maintenance cost down.
When building an e-Commerce site, you are constantly updating, rebuilding, and improving. In addition, you are using internal and external vendors, and constantly changing personnel on your site. Even people familiar with working on it need some easy point of reference to maintain consistency. This is where a brand style guide comes in.

Way too many small to mid-sized organizations think that style guides are too expensive and are for the “big boys.” While true, the big boys understand the value of a style guide, small companies need it as well. Here are a few reasons why a brand style guide is a good investment:

1. You can hire cheaper talent to do daily design work.
2. You can help better designers get something faster and more consistent.
3. Designers have a better place to start, so they spend more time on creating and less time on research.
4. It provides a reference for non design talent to know how to use the font styles, and what is expected of them.
5. You can use outside vendors, and they will be able to create branded consistent communications.

10. Branding makes your marketing efforts more efficient and helps you complete projects faster.
Once you have a brand and style guide, you can turn around creative much faster. A designer now has a toolbox to start with to create banners, eMails, new pages, new features, display advertising, etc. He doesn’t have to spend hours deciding on color palettes, fonts, and figuring out messaging. All of that has been explored and decided upon.

Marketers have a better criteria to decide if a particular communication is hitting the mark without adding personal bias. A common target has been established for the team, and thereby removes time spent on “creative detours,” letting you get to the point faster.

In conclusion, Branding is much more than a logo: it is a look, a feel, an emotion, a message, and a dream that companies stand for. It is the representation of the promise you make when a customer decides to do business with you. It is crucial to your long term success. A healthy brand is a reflection of a healthy organization in the 21st century.

Don’t let your business forget this most basic of marketing concepts, ensuring the long term success of your organization.