A brand is more than a name associated with a product or service. More clearly defined it is a combination of sentiments and impressions about image, quality, lifestyle and status. It develops a clearly defined personality in the mind of your consumers. Thus branding allows you to convince consumers that there is no product or service on the market quite like yours. But for branding to be successful, your brand has to make a promise to the customer and then uphold it.
Successful branding starts with quality products and services backed by outstanding customer service. If this is not in place your hard-earned advertising spend will fall far short of achieving your sales goals.
A brand is the one thing that you can own that nobody can take away from you. While competitors can copy your trade secrets and even your products, your brand will live on. Moreover it adds value to your business, up and above the other elements and assets that your company is comprised of. This value is called brand equity and can even be quantified. If you owned Microsoft for instance and wanted to sell it, you would begin to value the firm by looking at the assets tied to the Microsoft brand. You would identify the cost of the offices, patents, staff etc. These only make up a fraction of what you can actually sell the brand for. The value of the brand far exceeds that of the actual physical assets.