Building a strong brand is essential for any business to thrive. Well-defined brand strategies not only help your firm differentiate itself from its competitors but also create a lasting impression in the minds of consumers. In this article, we will explore all aspects of branding strategies that will enable you to establish a powerful and memorable brand identity. These aspects include:
- The importance of branding strategies in marketing
- 5 elements of a brand strategy
- 5 different types of branding and examples
What is a Branding Strategy?
To start, let’s address the most common misunderstanding about brands. Your brand is not limited to just your product, logo, website, or name. It encompasses all of those elements and beyond – it encompasses the intangible aspects. Your brand is that elusive sensation that distinguishes successful brands from forgettable ones.
A branding strategy is a comprehensive and enduring plan aimed at achieving specific objectives that ultimately lead to the recognition and favoritism of your brand by customers. It encompasses all facets of your business, including:
- Brand identity
- Messaging
- Customer experience
- Employee involvement
The Importance of Branding Strategies in Marketing
A clearly defined and effectively implemented brand strategies impacts every aspect of a business and is closely linked to consumer needs, emotions, and the competitive landscape. Here are some specific benefits of brand strategies:
- Differentiation: A robust brand has the ability to distinguish a company from its rivals. In a saturated market, it may be challenging for customers to make choices among various products and services. However, a powerful brand enables consumers to swiftly and effortlessly recognize the specific products and services that pique their interest.
- Trust and loyalty: A well-established brand can help to build trust and loyalty with customers. Once users believe a brand, they are more likely to buy from that brand again and again. They are also more likely to recommend the brand to friends and family.
- Brand awareness and recognition: A powerful brand can help to increase brand awareness and recognition. Clearly, consumers are more likely to be aware of the brand and to recognize its products and services. This can result in growth of sales and profits.
- Perceived value: A prominent brand can help to increase the perceived value of a company’s products and services. In other words, consumers are willing to pay more for the products and services of a company with a strong brand.
5 Elements of A Brand Strategy
There are five key elements of brand strategies that will enable businesses to establish a powerful and memorable brand identity, which is:
- Brand purpose
- Brand values
- Brand voice
- Brand design
- Brand story
Let’s discover each of these elements in detail!
Brand purpose
Brand purpose is the reason why a company exists. It is a company’s “why”—its reason for being and what it stands for. It goes beyond making money and selling products or services. It’s about making a positive impact on the world and connecting with customers on a deeper level.
A clear brand purpose is essential because it helps:
- Differentiate a brand
- Connect with consumers
- Set your business apart from its competitors
Significantly, conscious consumers are increasingly considering brand purpose as an essential factor when making purchasing decisions. Brands with a vital purpose that commits to addressing social inequities are more likely to attract loyal customers
A brand purpose should:
- Be authentic, aspirational, and relevant to the company’s target audience.
- Be clear, concise, and easy to understand.
Here are some examples of solid brand purposes:
- Amazon, the best-selling platform: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company”.
- Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
Brand values
Another factor that constitutes brand strategies is brand values. Brand values mention the core principles that guide a company’s behavior and decision-making. They are the things that the company stands for and believes in. Brand values are critical because they help to:
- Create a strong and consistent brand identity
- Generate a positive customer experience and build customer loyalty
Some examples of common brand values include:
- Authenticity
- Customer focus
- Innovation
- Integrity
- Quality
- Respect
- Responsibility
- Sustainability
- Teamwork
- Transparency
- Trust
Companies should carefully consider their brand values when deciding everything from their products and services to their marketing and advertising campaigns. Furthermore, brand values should also be reflected in your business’s culture and how it treats its employees.
Brand voice
Brand voice is the personality that a brand takes on in its communications. It is the way that a brand speaks to its customers, and it should be consistent across all channels, including marketing materials, social media, and customer service.
A strong brand voice is essential because it can help a brand to:
- Connect with its target audience on a deeper level: When customers feel like they know and understand a brand, they are more likely to trust and support it.
- Differentiate itself from competitors: In a competitive marketplace, a strong brand voice can help a brand stand out from the crowd.
- Create a more memorable brand experience: Customers are more likely to remember brands that have a unique and engaging voice.
There are many factors that contribute to a brand’s voice, including its tone, style, and messaging. Moreover, a brand’s voice should:
- Be authentic and reflect its core values.
- Be appropriate for its target audience.
Brand design
Brand design refers the journey of creating a visual identity for a brand. This includes developing a logo, color scheme, typography, and other design elements that make a brand unique and recognizable. This is also a very important factor in building complete brand strategies because:
- It helps customers identify and remember a brand
- It can create a positive emotional connection between a brand and its customers.
A good brand design should be:
- Unique: The design should be distinctive and memorable, and it should help the brand to stand out from its competitors.
- Relevant: The design should be appropriate for the brand’s target audience and industry.
- Consistent: The design should be used consistently across all of the brand’s marketing materials, website, and social media.
- Scalable: The design should be able to adapt to different media and applications.
Brand story
A brand story is a narrative that explains a brand’s identity, values, and mission. It is the story of the brand’s existence and what it stands for. A strong brand story can help a company to connect with its customers on a deeper level and build a more loyal customer base.
A brand story should be:
- Authentic: The story should be genuine and reflect the brand’s true values and mission.
- Compelling: The story should be engaging and interesting to the brand’s target audience.
- Consistent: The story should be consistent with the brand’s overall messaging and marketing materials.
Additionally, we note that a brand story can be told in various ways, including through marketing materials, social media, customer service, and even the products or services themselves.
5 Different Types of Branding and Examples
In fact, there are quite a few types of branding strategies. However, in this article, we will only mention the most common types of branding strategy, which are:
- Personal branding
- Product branding
- Corporate branding
- Co-branding
- Brand extension
Along with a detailed analysis of these branding strategies in marketing, we will provide brand strategy examples to help you understand better:
Personal branding
Personal branding is creating a unique identity and reputation for yourself as a professional. It is about developing your own brand voice, sharing your expertise, and building relationships with potential clients and collaborators.
Personal branding is critical for anyone who wish to be successful in their career. Not only that, personal branding can be used to sell products since:
- It can help you connect with customers, become more visible in your industry, shape your reputation, and leave a lasting impression during online and in-person networking.
- You can set yourself as an expert in your field and get the trust and loyalty of your audience. This can make it easier to sell products or services as people tend to buy from someone they know and trust.
For example, if you have built a solid personal brand, you can extend it into physical goods by selling merchandise through an online store. This is truly one of the eCommerce strategies best practices.
Product branding
Product branding is perhaps the most popular type of branding strategy. Product branding is building a brand for a standalone product, giving it its own identity. It involves developing a distinctive brand for a specific item or product, to reach the brand’s target consumers.
Product branding is crucial as it can help businesses to:
- Increase brand awareness and recognition
- Differentiate their products from competitors
- Build customer loyalty
- Charge premium prices
- Extend their brands into new product categories
A prime illustration is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola maintains a strict adherence to uniformity in its product branding. All aspects of the brand’s output consistently convey a unified message and atmosphere, ranging from its website to its social media platforms to its physical stores, where employees sport the recognizable red uniform
Likewise, Apple’s product is commonly associated with words like “secure,” “expensive,” and “technologically advanced.” This product strategy has helped Apple become the world’s most valuable brand. Their product marketing revolves around being technologically advanced, user-friendly, and secure.
Corporate branding
Some brands often employ corporate branding strategies to make their names memorable, even if consumers are not familiar with all the products and services they offer. This branding strategy marketing is called corporate branding.
Google serves as a relatable example, with tangible products like Pixel smartphones and Nest smart devices, along with services like Gmail and Google Maps. This strategy is particularly beneficial for businesses with a diverse range of offerings, as it directs attention towards the brand name and identity, sometimes overshadowing the actual products or services.
Co-branding
Co-branding is one of the best branding strategies where two or more companies collaborate to develop and market a product or service that carries both of their brand identities. It combines the market strength, brand awareness, positive associations, and cachet of multiple brands to create a unique offering. Each brand in the partnership contributes its own identity to create a melded brand, including:
- Logos
- Brand identifiers
- Color schemes
Co-branding can take various forms, such as:
- Joint marketing campaigns
- Shared products
- Collaborative experiences
This type of branding strategy can be beneficial for both parties involved, as it:
- Allow them to reach a new audience
- Leverage each other’s brand equity
- Share the costs of marketing and promotion
Co-branding is often used in many industries. For example, Visa and Amazon teamed up to create a new co-branded credit card that offers Amazon Prime members exclusive benefits. This co-branding initiative has been successful in attracting new customers to both Visa and Amazon. It can be said that this is the marketing growth strategy best practices of both giants.
Brand extension
We see that brand extension is one of the most exciting strategies for branding. This refers to how a business uses its established brand name to launch a new product or service in a different category. This can be a risky strategy, as it can dilute the brand image or confuse consumers. However, it can also be a very successful strategy as:
- Reduced marketing costs: When a company extends its brand, it can leverage its existing brand equity to reduce the cost of marketing the new product. This results from consumers being familiar with the brand and positively associated with it.
- Increased sales: Brand extension can also help to increase sales of both the new product and the company’s existing products. This is because consumers are more likely to try a new product from a brand that they already know and trust.
Apple is the best example of using the brand extension to propel growth. With its popular iPhone, Apple has leveraged its brand to sell products in new categories, such as the iPod, the iPad, and the iWatch,…
How to Build Great Branding Strategies?
After knowing Different types of branding and a lot of branding strategies in marketing, we will explore seven key steps to build great branding strategies that resonate with the target audience and leave a lasting impression.
Identify your target audience and customer persona
The first step in building great branding strategies is to identify your target audience. You need to know:
- Who are you trying to reach with your brand?
- What are their needs and wants?
Once you know your target audience, it would be better to draw your customer persona. A customer persona is a distilled version of your target customer that includes details such as:
- Name
- Age
- Job
- Income
- Location
- Interest
- Hobbies
- Lifestyle
- Buying behavior
We note that creating multiple personas can help you appeal to different types of customers.
With target audience and customer persona, you can tailor your branding strategies accordingly. For example, if you’re a new clothing company targeting young adults, your strategies for branding might focus on being trendy and affordable. If you’re a law firm targeting businesses, your branding strategies might focus on being trustworthy and experienced.
Define your brand story
As mentioned above, your brand story is what makes you unique. It’s the story of your company’s origins, mission, and values.
To define your brand story, ask yourself the following questions:
- Why did I start my company?
- What problem am I solving for my customers?
- What makes my company unique?
- What are my company’s values?
When you have a comprehensive understanding of your brand story, you can start to develop messaging and visuals that communicate it to your target audience for your brand strategies.
Find your brand heart
Your brand heart refers the emotional core of your brand. It’s what makes your brand special and why people connect with it. To find your brand heart for your brand strategies, it is essential to answer the following questions:
- What emotions do I want my brand to evoke?
- What values do I want my brand to represent?
- What kind of relationship do I want to have with my customers?
Moreover, your brand heart should align with the values and aspirations of your target audience, creating a sense of authenticity and trust.
Articulate your messaging
Your brand messaging mentions the way you communicate your brand story and brand heart to your target audience.
To articulate your brand messaging of strategies for branding, you need to:
- Start by developing a brand positioning statement. This is a short statement that summarizes what your brand is all about and why it matters.
- Develop key messages that support your brand positioning statement. These messages should be changed to your target audience and highlight the advantages of your brand.
- Develop a brand voice that is consistent with your brand story and brand heart. It is important to note that your brand voice should be reflected in your communications, from your website to your social media posts.
Design your visual identity
Visual identity plays a considerable role in brand recognition and recall. Therefore, you need to develop a visual identity that reflects your brand’s personality and values. This includes:
- Designing a memorable logo
- Selecting a color palette
- Choosing typography
- Creating visual elements that convey your brand’s identity.
We note that consistency in design across all brand touchpoints will help build brand recognition and establish a strong visual presence.
Create brand guidelines
Brand guidelines are a set of rules and guidelines that help ensure consistency in your branding. Creating brand guidelines is important for your branding strategies due two reasons:
- It helps you maintain a consistent brand identity across all of your marketing materials.
- It helps your employees understand how to represent your brand in a consistent way.
Brand guidelines should include rules for logo usage, color specifications, typography guidelines, tone of voice, and overall brand standards. These guidelines ensure that your branding efforts remain consistent across all channels and mediums.
Bring your brand strategy to life
Once you have defined your branding strategies, it’s time to bring it to life. You need to implement your strategy across all touchpoints, including:
- Marketing campaigns
- Website design
- Social media presence
- Content creation
- Customer service
- Employee training
You can refer to our Multiple selling guidelineto implement you branding strategies to real life more effectively.
Branding Strategies: FAQs
- What are the four 4 types of branding strategies?
The four types of branding strategies are:
- Product branding: This strategy focuses on establishing a strong brand identity for a specific product or range of products.
- Corporate branding: This approach involves creating a brand image for the entire company rather than individual products
- Service branding: Service-based businesses use this strategy to differentiate and promote their services.
- Personal branding: Individuals use personal branding to establish their own identity and reputation in their chosen field or industry.
- What are the 4Cs of branding?
The 4Cs of branding are a modern twist on the traditional 4Ps of marketing. They stand for:
- Consumer wants and needs: Instead of focusing solely on the product, companies should identify and address the requirements and desires of their target consumers.
- Cost to satisfy: This refers to the value proposition and pricing strategy that meets the consumer’s expectations and provides them with a satisfactory cost-benefit ratio.
- Convenience to buy: Companies should make it easy and convenient for consumers to purchase their products or services. This includes factors such as distribution channels, accessibility, and user-friendly purchasing processes.
- Communication: Effective communication is crucial for building brand awareness, establishing trust, and conveying the value of the product or service to the target audience. It involves clear messaging, consistent branding, and engaging with consumers through various channels.
These 4Cs emphasize a customer-centric approach to marketing and branding, focusing on delivering value and meeting the needs of the target audience.
- What is a branding strategy example?
The choice of branding strategy often differs based on the industry, target audience, and business objectives. Nonetheless, one highly widespread and successful approach is product branding. This tactic centers around developing a powerful brand identity for a particular product or line of products. Through the establishment of a unique and easily identifiable brand image, companies can set themselves apart in the market, cultivate customer loyalty, and stimulate sales.
Get Succeed with the Righ Branding Strategy Marketing
Overall, building great branding strategies takes time and effort, but it’s worth it. A strong brand can support you reach new customers, build loyalty with existing ones, and differentiate yourself from the competition. If you follow the seven steps outlined in this guide, you’ll be well on your way to developing a great branding strategy for your business.
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