Given the level of engagement in today’s fast-paced digital world, having a great product or service is no longer enough. If you want to do better, you must account for the power of building a meaningful relationship, a strong position, and an enduring reputation. This is where different forms of branding enter the picture.
However, successful branding requires steering clear of a cookie-cutter approach. Just as every business is unique, so are the branding strategies that will propel it to success.
Here, you get to connect the dots by exploring the top 7 types of branding that you may leverage to meet each of your specific objectives. Be it a new product initiative, an effort to create a strong corporate brand, or an attempt to hire the best available talent, understanding these techniques will help you base your decisions on facts and maximize your brand’s visibility.
Table Of Contents
Product Branding: Creating Iconic Products
How do you set apart your category-defining product when consumers are overwhelmed with similar products? Well, product branding is the answer. This type of branding requires creating a brand for a specific product and making it stand out from its competition.
Apple’s iPhone and Nike’s Air Jordan line of sneakers are great examples of iconic products. These products have moved beyond being just functional items, and their target audiences view them as cultural phenomena that have unique characteristics associated with them. That’s the magic of effective branding strategy implementation and successful product branding.
Here are the key elements of creating and implementing a successful product branding strategy.
- Identifying unique selling propositions. Determine what makes your product stand out against your competitors and identify the solution it offers that similar products do not. You must communicate the unique selling proposition (USP) and benefits of your product clearly to cut across the overpopulated market.
- Designing attention-grabbing fresh packaging. Packaging is the first tangible contact customers have with your product brand. It should be attractive, provide essential information, and be in line with the brand.
- Coming up with an effective product name. The right product name, coupled with a catchy hook, can change the game when it comes to attracting your target audience and building recall value.
- Telling a captivating story. You should outline the interaction you intend your customers to have with your product so they comprehend your message and develop feelings toward what you have to sell.
By strategically incorporating these elements, you benefit from a product brand that meets customer desires, advances patronage, and increases sales.
Types of Product Branding
The most common types of product branding include:
- Individual product branding (or product line branding)
- Ingredient branding
- Multi-product branding
- Brand extension
- Feature marketing
Corporate Branding: Building a Company’s Image
Organizational or corporate branding is not limited to particular products or services. It includes the overall impression of your business, forging a powerful and unified brand that defines your goals, beliefs, and company culture.
Take businesses like Google or Microsoft as examples. They have developed strong corporate brand experiences where emotions play a significant role. While Google stands for advanced technology and ease of use, Microsoft stands for dependability and efficiency.
Implementing successful corporate strategies involves:
- Determining your purpose and values. What is the purpose of your company? What values or aspects determine the activities and decisions of the business? It is crucial to provide a mission and a set of values to your corporate brand from the start.
- Building an encouraging work environment. Company employees must act as part of the brand. Create a pleasant, non-discriminatory workplace so that the employees will project the company’s values.
- Achieving unified visual perception. All aspects of your brand identity, including the logo, color, typeface, and images, need to complement one another to reinforce the corporate image.
- Consistency in the content and communication channels. Communication is essential in any brand’s advocacy, and using tools such as a website, branded content, and social media platforms consistently can help build a brand’s face and personality.
By focusing on these aspects, you can create a strong corporate brand that attracts customers, investors, and employees alike.
Types of Corporate Branding
The most common types of corporate branding include:
- Master brand (or branded house)
- Endorsed brand
- House of brands
- Sub-brand
- Geographical branding
- Cultural branding
- Retail branding
Employer Branding: Hiring and Retaining the Best Talent
Does employer branding matter? Well, it does. It requires branding your business in a way that helps attract top-class talent by showcasing your unique culture, values, and opportunities.
Google and Salesforce are leaders in terms of employer branding. They attract top talent by emphasizing employee well-being, career development, and a positive work environment.
Some of the elements related to employer branding include:
- Creating an employee value proposition. Why do employees want to work for your company? What benefits, activities, or opportunities do you provide to your workers? For you to be able to hire the best people, you must be ready and able to explain your employee value proposition (EVP).
- Communicating company culture and values. Highlight the favorable components of your company culture that will influence individuals to join. Share videos, photos, and written stories that showcase employee values.
- Creating growth opportunities. Offering training and mentor programs and other career advancement prospects is ideal if you’re looking for achiever employees.
- Positive candidate experience. Make sure every step a candidate goes through from the course of the application to the interview stage meets the tenets of the company surrounding the satisfaction of its employees.
One of the most effective strategies for boosting employee morale and performance within an organization is investing in branding as an employer. It also assists in attracting and retaining the best employees.
Personal Branding: Crafting a Brand for Yourself
The demand for personal branding has been rising, mainly because online and social media presence has taken root. Building a personal brand is necessary in different realms, and it does not just apply to business leaders, freelancers, or corporate managers. After all, it improves reputation, helps in networking, and leads to new avenues.
Imagine some like Gary Vaynerchuk or Oprah Winfrey. They have successfully managed to build powerful brands that go beyond their day jobs.
Here are some of the key features that this type of branding entails.
- Defining your niche and expertise. What excites you the most? What do you have that is special? It is important to come up with a well-articulated niche and specialization as it will help create a strong brand.
- Building a strong online presence. Develop a business website and social media accounts that go beyond your core services or skills and highlight your personality. Provide quality content that relates to your audience and positions them as influencers in the respective industry.
- Networking and engagement. Meet professional colleagues from your field, attend conferences, and use the internet to build a community.
If you pay attention to these factors, you can develop a great personal brand that will help establish your position as a thought leader, as well as if you’re looking for jobs and new endeavors.
Service Branding: Designing Experiences to Remember
For businesses that provide intangible services, service branding is necessary to gain a competitive edge and build customer loyalty. It is not just about what you provide, but the whole positive experience people will associate with the service.
Think of businesses like Airbnb or Uber. They have efficiently taken over your accommodation and transportation problems by focusing on customer experience, convenience, and reliability.
Some of the important features of service branding include:
- Delivering quality customer care. Customer engagement is essential to brand experience. Your employees have to be active, solve potential issues, and go out of their way to delight customers.
- Building trust and loyalty. If you exceed customer expectations and fulfill all your promises, your customers will trust you, which in turn will make them loyal to you.
- Using humor. When customer-brand interactions occur, adding humor or fun to service delivery enhances customer retention.
- Providing supplementary benefits. Providing additional service benefits also works rather well in attracting and retaining customers.
Focusing on these elements will help you create a service brand that captures attention and generates customer loyalty.
Non-Profit Branding: Attracting Funders and Volunteers
Branding presents unique challenges for non-profit organizations. These organizations have to earn the trust and goodwill of contributors and volunteers, and explain and demonstrate their roles and achievements.
Institutions like the Red Cross and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have successfully handled this challenge, establishing strong non-profit brands in the desired areas vital to their audience.
Key elements of non-profit branding include:
- Communicating your mission and values. Which specific social change do you seek to achieve and for which social demographic? What principles guide all your endeavors? It is essential to outline this not only for your audience but also for potential donors and volunteers.
- Using stories and data to share success. It is not enough to say the organization works; instead, you have to explain how it works through stories and data.
- Evoking feeling and affection. Pictures have the power to portray what words cannot. Therefore, using pictures to showcase a project’s impact will create the effect you want to achieve.
- Maintaining transparency and accountability. It is important to maintain transparency in how you utilize donors’ contributions and your overall operations.
It is critical to focus on these elements to develop a non-profit brand that will draw attention and support an organization’s objectives.
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Conclusion
Now that you’ve looked at different branding types, determine which one might work best for you. It does not matter if you want to introduce a new product, create a well-respected image of an organization, or even recruit the best employees; mastering the characteristics of the branding strategy you want to implement is crucial.
Know that choosing from the different kinds of branding based on your goals and market segment results in a strong brand identity that attracts customers and increases sales. However, building a strong brand requires a professional approach, which is why you should consider partnering with a branding agency. Then, you may expect your brand to shine in the online and offline worlds alike.
