Why Audio & Video is Critical to Your Brand

What is your brand?
In business, a brand is the identity that your business develops with the public, or its general consumer population, through marketing, promotion, and long-term dedication to high quality service and/or products. A brand is what people generally think of when they are introduced to a logo or a business name.
One of the most famous brands in business is Nike. Their 'swoosh' design has become synonymous with athletics and athletic shoes. Nike spent millions of dollars and decades developing and honing their brand through print, radio, and television marketing, as well as sponsoring professional athletes, the most famous being Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.
Branding the iron
When you take your business to the public, you want to develop a brand. Of course, your goals may include one day becoming as big and popular as Nike, but you have to think smaller, and more realistic, unless, of course, you have tens of millions of dollars stashed away that you're willing to spend on advertising and marketing. Most of us, however, have very limited resources for creating and developing our business's brand.
Which means that we will have to use any and all available tools at our disposal. The Internet has become a more level playing field and while the massive businesses continue to reign supreme, the rest of us can compete with just about anyone out there if we use our imaginations, have the dedication, and are resourceful.
There are many ways to develop our brand along the Internet. The first is branding with audio. The second is branding with video.
Branding with audio
The Internet is still dominated by text. Better than 90% of all content found on the Internet today is generated through words. This is due, in large part, to the way that search engines rank websites based on particular keywords. But the tide is changing and branding with audio is becoming a popular tool for many young businesses and entrepreneurs.
Through social media sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, we can build networks of friends and followers who are interested in what we have to offer. Creating a logo identity will be important to establishing an instantaneous recognition with the products or services that you offer, but reaching out by branding with audio can help drive home the business's identity.
More and more people are turning to sound bites for their source of information. The time it takes to read an article about a topic or product, an audio recording can deliver the same message, with some entertainment value, two or three times over.
Branding with video
The same can be said for branding with video, though the options with video are much more significant than with audio. Consumers are entertained and fascinated by products and businesses that strike a chord within them through audio and video presentations. Think of some of the most successful marketing campaigns today.
From Geico to Verizon to Nike, their video branding campaigns have been far more successful than any print advertising they publish. Why? The number of senses being inspired.
Did you hear/see/feel that?
When branding with audio, you are targeting the sense of hearing. By branding with video, you are targeting both sight and sound. The mind responds and reacts to increased stimuli and while certain people will click to read an article about a topic, they are more likely to sample a brief audio or video file covering the same information (the idea is that it is less burdensome to listen or view a presentation than to read about it).
Branding with audio or branding with video is critical to your business because using either one of these forms helps your customers connect with your business on a more personal level. Think about it this way: if you presented a one-page informative brochure about your business (your brand) to half of your customers, and a video presentation with the same information to the other half, who do think will connect to your brand more readily?
The ones that could hear your voice and see your image will because they will feel more connected to you or your brand on a personal level. People want to feel connected with the businesses they frequent.
The language barrier
Another advantage to branding with audio or video is that the Internet is a global environment. Not everyone will understand how to read the text or interpret content about your brand the right way. Yet, many of these same people will be able to gather a good sense of what your brand is all about through video and even audio.
By branding with video, you open your potential customer base even wider to include those individuals to whom English is a second language. Branding with video or with audio in this competitive marketplace is absolutely essential to your brand because of its ability to connect with potential consumers on a visceral level. When you accomplish that, your brand identity will be etched in their mind and it will be your business they think of first when they need what you offer.