How to Select the Best Branding Strategies For Your Business

If you’re looking to create a brand that is recognized and trusted, it’s important to choose the right branding strategies. But with so many different types of branding out there, how can you know which ones are best for your business?

Before you even think about what strategies will work best for your brand, take some time to clearly define who you are as a business. What does your organization stand for? What do you offer that is unique? What does your company mean to consumers? Take on these questions first, and then start thinking about ways to reach customers and establish credibility through branding.

Once you learn how to position yourself as a brand and you take advantage of brand strategies, you will be on your way to earning brand loyalty, recognition, equity, and awareness.

9 Types of Branding Strategies

Branding is all about building a strong, recognizable image for your business. There are several types of branding that may add value to your company depending on your target audience, industry, budget, and marketing campaigns. Here are seven types of branding strategies that have the potential to build brand equity for your business.

1. Personal Branding

Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. While previous self-help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal-branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging. Personal branding is essentially the ongoing process of establishing a prescribed image or impression in the mind of others about an individual, group, or organization.

A personal brand is what sets you apart from your competition. It’s what makes you who you are and how you are perceived by others. Your personal brand is what distinguishes you from everyone else. In short, your personal brand defines you.

Personal branding has become more important in some fields than in others. For example, in entertainment, modeling, acting and other industries where people sell their looks or public persona, personal branding is very important because there are many people competing for similar roles or positions. In business, where it’s not always obvious who does what and why one person may have an edge on another, personal branding can help to level the playing field.

2. Product Branding

This is one of the most popular branding types. Product branding focuses on making a single product distinct and recognizable. Symbols or designs are an essential part of product branding to help your customers identify your product easily.

For example, Monster Energy drinks have distinct packaging and logos that make it easily distinguishable from Red Bull energy drinks.

3. Corporate Branding

Corporate branding revolves around building a brand for your company as a whole. This type of branding typically aims to put your company in a more positive light by highlighting its strengths.

A prime example of corporate branding is Charmin, which portrays itself as a family-friendly brand rather than just another toilet paper company. That’s why they feature animals in their ads instead of showing someone sitting on the toilet.

4. Service Branding

Service branding leverages the needs of the customer. Companies that use service branding seek to provide their customers with world-class service. They aim to use excellent customer service as a way to provide value to their customers.

For example, Chick-fil-A is known for its excellent customer service – making it now synonymous with its brand.

5. Co-Branding

Co-branding is a form of branding that connects companies together. Essentially, co-branding is a marketing partnership between two or more businesses. This helps brands impact each other positively, and it may result in one growing its business, spreading brand awareness, and breaking into new markets.

For example, Frito Lay and Taco Bell came together and made the Doritos Locos Taco that appealed to both audiences.

6. Lifestyle branding

Lifestyle branding is about more than just selling products; it’s about selling lifestyles and values. This type of branding strategy is not just for large corporations (though they won’t have any problems implementing it).

The focus of lifestyle branding is how your brand can improve the lives of your audience. It takes a lot of effort to establish a lifestyle brand, but it can be done if you’re consistent with your message and long-term goals. As you read this article, take note of the many popular brands that implement lifestyle branding in their marketing strategies.

7. Online Branding

Online branding, also known as internet branding, helps businesses to position themselves as a part of the online marketplace. This type of branding includes a company’s website, social media platforms, blogs, and other online content.

Most companies use some aspect of online or internet branding in today’s marketplace.

8. No-Brand Branding

This type of branding is also known as minimalist branding. These brands are often generic brands that seek to let their products speak for themselves without all the extras many others provide their consumers with.

Some of the most noteworthy no-branding branding examples include Brandless and m/f people. As you can see on Brandless‘ website, their packaging, colors, and overall aesthetic is very simple. This aligns with their mission of providing fairly priced food to people without a typical brand.

9. Emotional Branding

The name pretty much says it all — emotional branding involves marketing your product in a way that targets the emotions of your consumers. This is done by telling a story, creating an emotional connection between you and your customers, or simply using images and words that will illicit an emotional response from your audience.

An example of this type of branding strategy would be Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign or Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign. These campaigns aim to inspire and connect with consumers on an emotional level rather than just sell a product or service.

How to Select the Best Branding Strategies For Your Business

When starting a new business, you will have to decide on the image you want to project. That image is your brand. You will use your brand to appeal to your target audience and gain their trust. Your branding strategy should be a reflection of how you want to be perceived by your customers.

Many businesses use several brand strategies to reach their goals. Selecting the right strategies is important for your success. Follow these steps to find the best approach that fits your business.

1. Define your Brand Identity

Before you select the proper brand strategies for your business, you should define your brand identity. This involves asking yourself and others involved in the marketing and sales process a series of questions, such as:

• What is our business mission?
• Who are we?
• What is our product or service offering?
• How are we different from the competition?
• Who are our customers?
• What do our customers value about us?

You can answer these questions yourself and have others on your team respond to them. The answers to these questions will help you define your brand identity, which will then influence your overall marketing and branding strategy moving forward.

2. Know Your Audience

After you’ve taken the time to define your brand identity, you should know who you want to market to. By knowing your audience, you’ll be better able to determine the best branding strategies that will attract their attention and reach them with consistency.

You should develop a customer profile including demographic information that includes gender, age and income level. For example, if your target audience is males between the ages of 25-35 who make over $50K per year, it’s unlikely that they’ll be interested in a print ad in a magazine aimed at women aged 50-65 who have an average income less than $30K per year.

3. Identify Your Competition

Once you know who your target audience is and have developed your brand identity, it’s time to identify your competition. You should assess what other businesses are out there targeting the same demographic as you to determine how well they’re doing and what their marketing strategies are. With this information, you’ll be better able to determine how you can differentiate yourself from the competition.

When selecting branding strategies, do some research on your competitors. For example, if they have robust social media efforts but don’t have a strong website presence, you know that you can use that to your advantage by having a strong web presence in addition to an engaging social media presence

4. Analyze Your Branding Options

Once you’ve completed the previous step, the next thing you should do is analyze the various branding options available to your company. Consider factors like cost, return on investment and ease of use when deciding which strategies will work best for your particular business model.

For example, if most of your target audience consists of people who are under 30 years old and active on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, it’s probably a good idea to invest in social media marketing campaigns that target these platforms. However, if you’re a local business, you might want to focus more on local SEO techniques instead of paying for advertising on social media sites.

Final Thought

If you want to create a strong brand, you will need to make sure your company’s brand strategy aligns with your business model. This is just one of the many things that goes into building a company. Creating marketing materials that reflect well on your brand should be part of your vision, goals, and values.

Get in contact with Neu Entity as Your Branding Agency, we will help you with brand strategy that suitable for your business.