A Manufacturer Branding Agency Designer Perspective

Contrary to what you may have heard, branding is crucial for any company—even manufacturers. Branding has always been a key component of an exceptional company. If you look at the most successful companies in the world, which ones have clean, professional, and comprehensive branding? That’s right. Every. Single. One. Ignoring the importance of a strong brand can hurt your business. weCreate is a manufacturer branding agency, helping companies to develop and maintain a strategic, consistent image throughout a website.  In fact, we design some of the best manufacturer website designs in the industry. Let this be your guide to enlightenment in understanding the importance of your brand in the manufacturing industry, and why it’s crucial to work with a manufacturer branding agency.

To start things off, we’ve seen an exceptional lack of care when it comes to branding in the manufacturing industry. One can quickly search the internet and find a manufacturer’s website that looks like it hasn’t been touched in years. It’s easy to understand how this neglect can influence buying decisions. Many manufacturers that we work with simply don’t care about their brand because ‘nO oNe SeEs It AnYwAyS’. They couldn’t be more wrong. We live in the internet age where information is at the tip of our fingers and it’s more accessible than ever. Guess what? That information includes your company. We live in an era where having a website is an absolute must. We can prove from visible data that every manufacturer has potential customers by Google searching their services. When one of those searchers lands on your website, your brand is right there in their face, and it will make an impression. You may not see manufacturers in your area plastering their logos all over billboards and taking advantage of sponsorship opportunities, but brand awareness is still key for your target audience. If you’re not doing it, your competition will be.

Marketers love to use the old adage that “your website is your first impression” and they aren’t entirely wrong—but what’s really making the impression on your website? The brand. The brand is the true first impression. Before you read any content or try navigating through the site, you have already subliminally gauged what kind of company it is through the colors, taglines, and imagery was chosen. If you don’t have a good brand to build around, your website is going to look templated or worse—generic. Take a look at one of weCreates’ clients. We took their old website, and completely rebranded them as a company and portrayed it onto their new website.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve been toying around with the idea of rebranding your company using a manufacturer branding agency. Either the logo your nephew made you back in 2008 while he was in art school is no longer doing the trick for you, or you’ve recently decided to freshen things up a bit because your logo doesn’t quite fit in with the emerging design styles. Here are a few key points to help you understand how vital branding is in the world of manufacturing.

A Good Branding Agency Sets You Apart From Manufacturing Competition

The beauty of entering the advertising market for a manufacturing service is that… well, to be frank, there’s not much competition. Don’t get us wrong, manufacturing companies certainly do market and advertise their services, but it’s a relatively easy market to compete in due to the pure lack of quality when it comes to branding. This might sound harsh, but if you spend five minutes Googling local manufacturing companies, you will certainly see the truth! Having a professional-looking brand can speak volumes when you’re going up against your competitor; and when your competitor’s website is subpar, you become a huge favorite—think the Brady-Belichick era Patriots vs the 2017 Cleveland Browns.

Think about this for a moment: how many times have you gone to a website and left within mere seconds because it looked dated and you couldn’t find what you were looking for? The site you visited may have been the perfect fit for your needs, but since you couldn’t navigate the site with ease, you left. If you’re reading this article and you question the look of either your website and/or brand in the slightest, then you have probably been a victim of that exact situation. The reality is that most companies have missed out on obtaining a new client through the poor user experience on their website or lack of quality branding.  We can prove our branding services by looking at your website data and analyzing things like bounce rate, and search queries that led to your website. If you would like to learn more about this topic, check out our article on SEO For Manufacturers.

Good Branding Helps Boost Awareness & Recall of your Manufacturing Company

One of the keys to growing a successful company is simply building awareness that the company exists. If you have a strong brand that is recognizable to a potential customer, you’re already a step ahead of your competition. Half of the battle is being memorable. If your company continuously comes to mind when a potential customer is searching for a service, you already have a foot in the door. Being an option from the start without your potential customer even needing to browse the internet is a major advantage. Think of it this way: you’re in the market for a new pair of sneakers. 9/10 times Nike is one of the top companies that would pop into your head. Yes, you can argue that Nike is literally everywhere, Nike is nothing like manufacturing, and Nike has a massive marketing budget—but here’s the thing: they didn’t always have that. They obtained that level of recognition and their strong reputation through exceptional branding and successful marketing.

If your company desires to be perceived as the best, you need to have the same focus on brand building. If you want to compete with the best in your industry, you need to portray your company in a light that represents it as the best. In summary, a strong brand is instantly recognizable to your potential customers and accurately communicates what your company does.

Quality Branding Can Increase the Profitability of Your Manufacturing Company

Yes, you read that right. A strong brand can instantly increase the profitability of your company, just like a bad brand can hurt the profitability and value of your company. The reason it increases the value is because people will be willing to pay more for a product or service simply because of the name. A perfect example of this is that specific coffee company that everyone seems to be wildly obsessed with. We don’t even have to name the company because we’d be willing to bet you know exactly who we are talking about—which only proves how strong the aforementioned company’s brand is. While engaging a manufacturing brand is quite different than going to a specific coffee shop to buy your ~Venti Vanilla Iced Coffee~ so you can post it on your Instagram story to fit in with the rest of the millennials, there are some basic similarities. If you have a good reputation and portray your company as an elite option in the industry through your branding, you will be able to increase prices for your services. Just remember that there is much more that goes into branding than just a pretty logo and a few aesthetically pleasing photographs. Using a manufacturer branding agency like weCreate to make a full brand guideline package can be vital to the long term impact of your brand.  The Association of National Advertisers provided a case study of how important branding was for a company like Caterpillar, see the video here.

A Great Brand Improves Your Employees Pride & Job Satisfaction

A great brand promotes higher satisfaction within the company. Think about it—who doesn’t want to be able to brag about the company they work for? If your manufacturing company has a strong brand, you could start to give off the impression that you are an exceptional business worth talking about. We’ve seen small companies with no more than 15 employees portray themselves in a light that makes it seem like they have 100+. If one of your employees brags to their acquaintances about where they work, it’s not only a good reputation to have, but it will help you retain employees for the long haul.

Exceptional Branding Promotes & Reinforces Successful Advertising & Marketing

What’s the key to a successful brand awareness campaign? Being memorable. You want your brand to be burned into your target audiences’ mind. You want to be the first company your target customer thinks of when they think of that specific service you just so happen to offer. A great advertising campaign is supported by a solid brand. If all of your marketing collateral looks different and has zero consistency, it’s going to hurt brand recognition. Entering the realm of marketing and advertising may be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be done in-house. weCreate is a manufacturing branding agency that works with manufacturing companies every day to build their brands, and utilize the internet to help them acquire new leads and business.  In addition to manufacturer branding services, weCreate provides advanced marketing services including full service SEO and pay-per-click management, SEO Consulting for companies with existing marketing teams, and a variety of other ways to help you generate new business. Need more reasons? Check out this great article about manufacturing brands.  We are experts in gaining a working knowledge of your company and the value you bring to the table in order to convey that through your brand and your content.