Branding is about creating an emotional connection between your customer and your product, service, or organization. A good brand should be identifiable, memorable, and unique—it should speak to people in a way that resonates with them personally.
Branding is the perception or feeling a consumer experiences when they interact with your logo, imagery, or any combination of assets that are publicly distributed. Whether a company is in its infancy stage or operating as a mature organization, many different branding strategies can be used to help them identify their target audience so that they can effectively connect with them and make them aware of the products and services they have to offer. In this article, we cover everything there is to know about branding strategies and how they can be helpful to any entrepreneur.
What are Branding Strategies?
Branding strategies are specific methods that are used to differentiate your business from your competitors. They’re deployed with the intention of managing the image of your company and helping customers recognize you as a leader in an industry.
Branding is a strategy used in marketing to create a product or service that has a recognizable identity. It’s one of the most important components of marketing because it helps consumers identify the products or services they want, and it makes them more likely to purchase those products or services.
Let’s say you own a company that sells organic products. You might choose to focus on being environmentally friendly or socially responsible. Or you could choose to emphasize how easy it is for your customers to use your products and feel good about themselves while using them. Whichever strategy you choose would then act as a filter for every single thing your employees do. Your marketing materials, sales scripts, website copy, etc. will all have a specific purpose that reinforces your chosen brand strategy.
If you sell luxury items, on the other hand, perhaps the best way for you to stand out is by making sure that every customer feels like they are receiving high-quality service no matter what kind of item they buy from you. This could be done by selling each item at a premium price point so they perceive your products as having higher value compared with those sold by other companies in the same industry. The feeling of luxury could then be reciprocated across product packaging, imagery, and brand messaging.
All things considered, there are many different branding strategies that can be used by an entrepreneur to build a strong business.
The 7 Different Branding Strategies
In order to create a successful brand strategy for your business, you need to understand each of the following:
Brand Purpose
Your brand purpose is what you stand for. It’s the reason your business exists, and it should be something that is deeply meaningful to both you and your customers. Your brand purpose is something much bigger than just selling products or providing a service. It is the sole reason you exist. This can be communicated to your customers through the use of color, font, images, and other visual elements. It can also be accomplished through the use of words, such as a tagline or slogan. This could be something like “to make the world a better place,” or “to help people achieve their goals.” Your brand purpose is what drives your business. It’s what makes you special, and it’s what makes you different from your competitors.
Brand Vision
The vision of a brand should be clear and concise, so that your employees can thoroughly understand exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish. The vision should also be unique and memorable so that it stands out from other brands in the industry.
Your brand vision is the future state of how you want your company to be perceived by the world. It should be something that is aspirational, but also realistic and attainable. Your brand vision is where you want to go with your company in the long term. It’s a big-picture idea of where you’d like to see your business in 5 years, 10 years, or even 20 years down the road. Your vision might include things like: What kind of company do we want to be? (for example: innovative, customer-focused). What do our customers expect from us? (for example: quality products and service). What do we value most? (for example: quality materials and manufacturing process).
Brand Values
Authenticity, Innovation, Passion. Your brand’s values should reflect who you are as a company—what you stand for as an organization, why people should care about your products/services, and what makes them different from competitors’. These values should be reflected throughout all aspects of your business: from social media profiles to employee handbooks to product packaging labels and more! Your brand values are what define your company as a whole, and they are often tied to your core competencies and what makes you unique in the marketplace. Brand values are how you want people to perceive you as an organization or company. These are qualities like honesty or professionalism that will guide everything from customer service interactions to product design decisions. Brand Values are what drives everything else about your business. These values can be anything from “we believe in equality” to “we believe in customer service above all else.” They’re what makes up the core of everything you do as an organization—they’re at the heart of why you exist as a company.
Brand Positioning
When developing your brand positioning strategy, think about how you want people to perceive you when they interact with any aspect of your business—from customer service interactions over email messages through communication channels like live chats or telephone calls with sales representatives; even down to how they feel when they see advertisements with your logo. Having a clear understanding of where your brand stands relative to others in the marketplace is essential for effective marketing and messaging. Your positioning statement should help clarify how you stand out from the competition, while still remaining true to who you are as a business. Brand positioning describes where your business sits among other companies in its industry based on its value proposition (what it offers customers) and perceived value (how much customers think they will benefit from using it). This helps customers decide whether or not they want to purchase products or services from your company instead of one of its competitors—and if so, which ones they should choose over others based on their needs at that time.”
Brand Personality
Your brand personality should reflect who you are as an organization—who makes up your team. Your culture. How you interact with customers. And what you enjoy doing together. Brand personality is a reflection of a company’s values, which often expresses itself in the way that a brand speaks and interacts with its customers. A brand with a strong personality will have a unique tone, feel, and style that makes it stand out from its competitors. A brand’s personality is its character, how it presents itself to the world. It’s how your company feels to customers and potential customers, and it’s what gives them an idea of what they can expect from you. Your brand personality can be described in a few words. For example: “We’re quirky, but we’re also reliable” (BBQ Sauce) or “We’re fun, but we work hard” (Online Gaming Community). Brand personality can be determined by analyzing the feelings and attitudes customers associate with your company. Brand personality is the way a company’s brand makes people feel, and it can be defined by a combination of tone of voice, brand attributes and characteristics, and brand personality traits (like being playful or serious). This is accomplished by asking questions such as: How do people feel when they interact with our company? What kind of people do we want to attract? What kind of experiences do we want our customers to have?
Brand Voice
Brand voice is the way that a company communicates with its customers. It’s essentially how they talk to people when they’re not selling them anything—a sort of “voice” for how they express themselves on social media or in advertisements. Brand voice is often tied closely to brand personality, but it can also evolve separately from it over time as the company grows and changes. Brand voice is the personality and tone of your brand. It’s how you speak to your customers, what you say, and how you say it. The brand voice should be consistent across all of your marketing assets so that you can create a cohesive brand identity that communicates clearly to your audience. It is often expressed through the use of a slogan, but can also be expressed through the company’s logo, visual identity, and other elements.
Brand Tagline
A brand tagline is an important part of any successful branding strategy because it helps define what your business does in simple terms that everyone can understand quickly. A brand tagline is a short phrase that describes your brand in a way that’s memorable and compelling. The brand tagline is one of the most important parts of your brand voice because it sums up everything that makes your company unique and engaging. A great tagline should be short enough to fit on social media bios and long enough to capture the essence of what makes your company special. It should also be catchy so that people will want to remember it! The brand tagline is a memorable phrase that describes the brand’s unique selling proposition (USP). It helps to differentiate it from competitors, and can help customers to better understand why they should buy from your company instead of someone else.
4 Branding Strategy Examples
This brand does an excellent job of presenting themselves as the “Best-Selling Men’s Chains” that you don’t want to miss out on. From a never-ending supply of influencer partnerships to their over 20,000 5-star reviews, their branding strategy is consistent on every platform. Their products are made in Italy (which is commonly associated with high quality), and their packaging, imagery, and visuals are pristine. The Jaxxon brand is highly polished, and presents themselves in a way that gives potential customers a fear of missing out (FOMO). This is extremely powerful because it creates an audience that is extremely loyal, and that wants to associate themselves with the image that the Jaxxon brand portrays.
Omsom
With its co-founders at the forefront, Omsom has a loud brand personality and gives its customers full transparency of what goes on behind the scenes. They parallel their loud asian flavors with their website design, product imagery, product packaging, social media posts, and more. By communicating directly with their customers, Omsom effectively gains their trust which likely translates to a higher lifetime value (LTV).
How do you differentiate yourself as a water brand? By taking a completely unique approach to your branding strategy. Liquid Death does this by filtering all of their creative content and marketing through their scroll-stopping tagline “Murder your thirst.” Wherever it is that you come across this brand, you will experience a recurring, eerie theme around death. Not only is this great for bringing attention to the canned water brand in a heavily saturated market, but their product seals the deal with a smooth and refreshing taste.
Blueland
Their mission is simple, “make it easy to be eco with innovative products in reusable packaging that are convenient, effective and affordable.” Everything Blueland does centers around what we can do to shape a better tomorrow. Their products were created with the sole purpose of eliminating single-use plastics from entering our oceans and landfills. This is their brand purpose. This is what their customers want to get behind and support. By clearly defining this vision for the future, it allows customers to feel like they are working alongside the brand towards achieving something great.
Strategies for Naming Your Brand
Naming your brand is a crucial part of any company’s marketing strategy, and choosing the right name can make or break a brand. Brand naming strategy is a process of identifying the target market, their needs and wants, and how the product or service can solve those problems. This is done by understanding the customer and their needs. Brand naming strategies are used to create a name for your brand that will be memorable, unique, and appealing to customers. As part of developing the right strategy, you will need to consider who your target audience is and what kind of emotional connection they have with the brand name.
To help you decide on your brand name, here are a few tips:
- Ask yourself what you want your company to be known for. What are you most proud of? What do people say about you when they talk about your company? Is there anything that makes them say “wow”? Are there any specific qualities that come to mind when someone mentions your brand?
- Make sure the name is easy to spell and pronounce. It’s important for customers to be able to find your business online and remember how to spell it when they see it, hear about it, or think about it again later. They should also be able to pronounce it correctly when they’re talking about it with others.
- Don’t try too hard. You don’t necessarily need an exact word describing the products you sell like “Blinds.com”. You also don’t need a made-up word like “Instagram.” Even though these things might seem like the best option, there are plenty of successful brands with names that have a specific purpose or intention for their business.
Key Takeaways
A brand is an important part of any business. It’s what helps you stand out from the crowd and attracts customers who like what they see in your company. A good branding strategy will help you build an image that people recognize when they hear about your brand name or see it on a website, in advertising materials, or even just passing by somewhere in public.
The most common way brands differentiate themselves is to filter their brand strategies through their identity (what they stand for), their image (how they are perceived) and their reputation (how others view them). These three elements combine together to create what we call “brand equity” – basically how much value a particular company has.
Overall, we can see that brand strategy is important for several reasons. It’s one of the most important aspects of marketing and it helps you build a strong identity for your company or product. It also helps you target consumers more effectively and make sure that they’re getting the message that you want them to receive.
Branding strategy is a long-term process with many steps involved, but it’s well worth the effort if you want to set yourself apart from other companies in your industry and stand out from the crowd. It is not to be underestimated, and should be a part of every business plan.
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