How Branding Can Take Your SME to the Next Level
Branding is one of the most important tools you can use to secure the success of your company, especially at the SME level, and even more so when your brand is young and not yet well established. While the international markets and markets local to Hong Kong are subject to upheaval and change at times which can put any business at an advantage or disadvantage, it is smaller businesses that tend to be less cushioned against these market fluctuations.
The good news is that SMEs can call upon several sources of assistance, and will be able to make use of a whole range of tools to help make them more resilient to adverse changes in economic conditions. There is no one size fits all approach to handling your business and the right path for your business depends on several complex factors, but it is vital that you carefully consider your approach in order to achieve your goals and enjoy the benefits.
Before we get into branding and other associated marketing activities that can help your brand to develop and find success, it is important that all the other aspects of an SME are in check. Most importantly, a company needs to be able to guarantee excellent customer service by at least having a plan in place, and needs to ensure that their product is of an appropriate quality for the price being asked.
Once a manager, director or CEO is confident that their products are top notch and they either have customer service capacity arranged or at least planned for, they need to then look at their branding and wider marketing strategies. This is because when branding and marketing are done well a company can see fast results, which means they need to be able to handle an increased number of customers, sales, and enquiries coming through the business.
Defining a strong brand
A ‘brand’ is a collection of identifying features and attributes that set a company apart from others in a similar niche. Branding in HK relates to pretty much everything that the customers will see of the Hong Kong-based company, such as their blogs, products, websites, any PR it takes part in, its social media channels, and any images, written content, emails and correspondence that a customer will be exposed to.
All these things work together to create a complete ‘personality’ for a company, something that customers should find relatable and easy to understand. It needs to culminate in a cohesive message that is consistent across all the various channels that the company is engaged with. If the branding is applied inconsistently then this gives the wrong impression of the company, and does not inspire confidence among consumers.
The benefits of good brand communication
A business owner or manager might have a solid idea of how they want their brand to look and what they want to achieve with it, but this is unfortunately not enough to make gains in a competitive market. The application of these principles and ideas needs to be effective so that brand communication is clear and gives the impression that the brand on the whole is trustworthy. The more effectively a brand message is communicated among customers and potential customers, the more likely the company will be to gain a larger market share.
The very last thing a brand should be is boring, especially if it is in the B2C sector selling consumer goods and therefore needs to attract attention. This doesn’t necessarily mean that only the loudest brands will manage to be successful, it just means that a brand needs to be well defined, efficiently implemented, and needs to give the target market what they are looking for from the brands they are considering spending their money with.
It can be tricky to get the balance right between showing off and maintaining respectability, trustworthiness and confidence, and this is why branding and marketing agencies are so popular for startups, SMEs and enterprises in Hong Kong. Their expertise and insight on the region’s markets means that they can access invaluable data to inform short and long term strategies to ensure a brand is resilient, lasting, trustworthy and successful into the future.