How to protect your brand and logo?

The business landscape has been evolving continuously with the introduction of new and innovative advancements. Over the last two decades, businesses have had to adapt and change the way they present their identity to customers. Let us assume that you have developed an online ecommerce store and an app with great merchandise and content. 

However, you found that some competitor has stolen your brand logo and has been receiving calls from investors who were supposed to line up before your shop. Doesn’t seem like the best way to start your business? At this point in time, you will realize the true value of protecting your brand and logo. How does trademark infringement affect your business? Let us learn more about the importance of protecting your brand and logo alongside the recommended best practices for trademark protection.

Importance of Branding 

Starting a new business could be a challenging task. From the beginning, you have to fulfill multiple tasks and make decisions that could be overwhelming. You should determine the type of business entity you want to create, prepare a business plan, name your business, create a logo, and identify the best ways to market your products and services. 

Negative impact of avoiding trademark protection may lead to financial losses. Branding is an important business strategy as well as a marketing concept that provides an accurate representation of your brand identity. The brand of your company helps your customers identify your products and services in the crowd. 

The brand of a company could have physical characteristics as well as emotional aspects that make the brand identity. For example, the brand name, logo, tagline, or color could serve as a unique representation of the company. Branding serves as a crucial aspect of establishing the credibility of a business in the industry. On top of it, customers are likely to become patrons of the brands they could trust. However, any type of copyright infringement, fraud, or brand abuse could affect the trust of customers in your brand. 

Why Should You Worry about Protecting Your Brand and Logo?

Almost anyone can start a business online with the right marketing strategy. On the other hand, there are many vultures waiting to swoop in on successful ideas and steal brilliant ideas. If you have an appealing brand identity, logo, color palette, or tagline, then you could expect some malicious agents to impersonate or steal your brand identity. 

The process of creating a logo for your brand may take some time. However, failure to protect your brand and logo could ultimately put your efforts to waste. Therefore, brand protection is essential for ensuring legal safeguards and exclusive rights for the security of your brand.The process of creating a logo for your brand may

The notable reasons for protecting your brand and logo include link manipulation, email spoofing, website spoofing, social media impersonation, and phishing. Malicious third parties could inflict severe damage on your brand identity with these techniques by stealing your logo or other elements of your brand identity. 

The impact of new technologies on marketing, growing every day. New technologies such as AI could help competitors replicate your brand identity with minimal effort and resources. The impact of brand identity theft or plagiarism could lead to the following outcomes,

• Reduction in sales.
• Decrease in customer reputation and trust.
• Brand dilution. 
• Negative impact on business partnerships.

How Can You Safeguard Your Brand and Logo?

The brand identity and logo of a business serve as their unique competitive advantage in their respective industries. Therefore, it is important to ensure that you follow important safeguards recommended by experts for protecting your brand identity. 

• Ensure that You Register the IPs

Intellectual Property, or IP, has become one of the most important terms in the world of business. The importance of a trademark search for your brand, cannot be disputed. However, you should register your trademark or IP after a comprehensive trademark search to identify any similar trademarks. 

Once you find trademark clearance, you can use a specific brand name, logo, or tagline for your business. You should register your trademark by applying to the relevant authorities in your country. You would have to pay the required fee alongside providing evidence for the use of your trademark.

• Customer Awareness

Customers are your best allies in the fight against brand identity theft. First of all, customers can help in spreading the word about your brand. On top of it, customers could be the first people who report any type of fraudulent activity related to your brand. Therefore, brands should invest efforts in clear and consistent communication with their customers about the brand identity, quality standards, and values. 

• Seek Legal Help 

Another proven best practice for improving your security against brand identity theft would point to legal assistance. Where would you need legal guidance? The ideal approach for protecting your brand and logo involves allocating a part of your budget for legal guidance. Legal experts could help you with the trademark clearance process and guide you through the process of developing strategies for proactively managing potential pitfalls. 

• Monitoring Your Brand 

Business owners could also utilize technology to their advantage for monitoring their brands. For example, you can set up Google alerts for your brand name alongside social listening tools for identifying the mentions of your brand name. As a result, you could keep an eye on your brand name and logo. 

In addition, the monitoring tools can also help you find out if anyone uses your brand name illegally. Therefore, you could take immediate action against the perpetrators and stop the infringement before it causes any damage to your brand’s reputation. 

Conclusion 

The outline of recommended measures for protecting your brand and logo can help you prepare a strategy to safeguard your brand identity. Malicious third parties or competitors are always waiting to plagiarize brilliant and successful branding ideas. Therefore, you should take the necessary precautions to avoid the negative consequences of brand identity theft. 

For example, a competitor with the same logo as your brand is likely to create confusion for the target audience. Apart from reducing the sales of a business, brand identity theft could also lead to the deterioration of business partnerships. Learn how to protect your brand identity and logo with the consultation of experts right now.