How Branding and Brand Strategy Affect Consumer Behaviour

Branding is a word that gets used a lot, but we all have a slightly different understanding of what it is and how important it is to the success of our organisation.

Time and again, though, branding has been proven to affect customer behaviour—from avoiding certain brands to paying more money for others—and this is true regardless of the size of your business.

Before we delve into how branding affects your audiences’ behaviour, let’s quickly define branding—with apologies to Brand Experts. I know there’s a lot to branding and creating a brand, but that level of detail is for another time.

What is branding?

Branding is the process of creating a distinct identity for your business in the minds of your audience. It goes beyond just a logo or colour scheme—branding includes your values, voice, visuals, and the overall experience people have with your business.

In simple terms, branding is how people perceive your business. It shapes how they feel about you, recognise you, and remember you.

A sensory experience

Successful organisations realise the breadth and depth of branding. It’s not just a pretty logo and some nice words. Branding is a full sensory and emotional experience. I think of branding as a combination of marketing communications that impact our senses. 

But what does that mean? 

Think about a brand you really admire or like. The one you buy from repeatedly or aspire to buy from. Now read the following with this brand in mind.

Branding impacts how an organisation: 

• Looks
• Sounds
• Feels physically
• Feels emotionally
• Smells and tastes

Looks. Colours, logos, fonts, images, graphic design etc. This is how all our visual material registers with our audiences.

Sounds. Noise, tone of voice, music, silence, the words used, and the words not used. This is how our spoken and written marketing communications ‘sound’ in our audiences’ heads as well as physical sound.

Feels – physically. Texture, weight, quality. Cheap giveaways v quality ones. Sturdy leaflets v flimsy ones. This is how our physical products or physical marketing communications feel to touch or hold. 

Feels – emotionally. Happy, comfortable, engaged, edgy and challenging. This is how we combine our marketing communications to make people feel emotional whenever and however they engage with us.

Smells and tastes. Stinky, clean, freshly printed, sweet, sour. This is how our physical products or marketing communications smell and taste when people encounter them.

Even those of you who provide ‘online services’ can impact various senses in different ways.

Examples showing the depth and impact of branding

The impact of branding is best explained through real examples. These are genuine quotes about how different elements of branding have influenced the person saying them:

“It sounds silly, but I liked how when we went to their office, we were given tea in a proper cup and saucer, not a freebie mug. That little touch said, ‘We care about the details’.

Said about a Solicitors’ Firm.

“The navy blue [in their logo and branding] makes me feel that this is a serious business I can recommend to my bosses.”

Said about a business offering Cyber Security Training to Financial Firms and Banks.

“Your words are so clear and everything you write and say is easy to understand.”

Said about The Marketing Spaces!

“The website had densely packed text – it was too hard to read, too much effort, so I didn’t bother.”

Said about a Consultancy Firm.

These real examples show how different elements of branding impact people in different ways – and how the small touches matter. 

Let’s now look at three ways that branding affects buyers’ behaviour.

First impressions matter

Your branding helps your prospective clients form an instant opinion about your organisation. Before people begin to get to know you and your organisation, they’re forming judgements. Judgements based on the first impression created by your branding. 

Once that first impression has been created, it’s hard to shift and people’s following behaviours are affected by that first impression.

Here are some facts that highlight how important first impressions are:

• It takes 7 seconds to make a first impression. 
• It takes 90 seconds of initial viewing before people make a subconscious judgment about a product, so it’s important to nail your colours down before you begin product branding. 

These are from research carried out by Tailor Brands. 

First impressions are important. Why?

Because people are busy and time-poor, we all are. This means we want shortcuts to help us make our decisions. And the first impressions created by branding do that.

We feel more favourable, and therefore more likely to buy, from the organisation whose branding has created a first impression that resonates positively with us. 

Building good (and profitable) relationships

Good use of branding can build positive relationships. Not sure about this? Then consider:

• Which e-shots / leaflets / posters do you take the time to look at?
• The ones that are clearly laid out and easy to read or the ones with a poor layout, densely packed text and irrelevant images?

A good brand also knows that how people feel about your organisation is as critical as well as how you look and sound. 

The more a person feels your organisation resonates with their values and way of doing things, the happier they are to engage with you. 

This means that in a world of noise, they prioritise your communications over others’ comms. It means they stick with you when you make mistakes. 

In short, they feel like they have a valuable relationship with your organisation – and part of that is buying from you because you always give them ‘value’.

“I like buying The Marketing Spaces courses and workshops because I trust the Company – they’re open, clear and approachable in all their communications. It makes them less intimidating.”

(feedback from recent research)

This reflects a lot of feedback we get – that our branding position of being warm, honest, and very clear in how we speak about marketing is very well received by our audience.

This, in turn, helps to create and nurture good relationships with the people that want this type of branding (and, by the way, not everyone does!).

Your branding makes you stand out and more likely to be chosen

It’s crowded out there! 

So, as consumers and people making decisions all the time about how we spend our money, how do we decide who to give it to? 

There are many reasons, but they often come down to the following:

• Are they offering what we need?
• Do we trust that they will deliver what they say they will?

But we’re time-poor! 

So, when solution hunting, those first impressions created by your branding are vital. 

Furthermore, we’re more likely to choose a brand we already know, like and trust. 

It might be one we have never bought from before but been ‘in a relationship’ with them for a while.

It might be we’re just hunting around and the first impression your brand creates resonates and works. It’s your branding in its fullest sense that makes you stand out and more likely to be chosen.