Your brand is a reflection of who you are as a company, and employing a sound branding strategy may help you expand beyond your core market. Branding your company online will help you connect with potential clients in the digital platforms where they spend their time.

Consumers will usually remember a well-thought-of brand. Thus, with a good branding strategy, they’ll remember you when they need your products or services, even if they aren’t ready to buy right now.

Depending on your target demographic, sector, budget, and marketing initiatives, there are numerous types of branding strategies that might offer value to your business. Here are some of the most effective ones:

Individual branding

Individual branding is a branding strategy in which a company’s products each have their own distinct brand name. The approach aids in the creation of a distinct image and identity and in establishing a distinct position for a brand in comparison to its competitors.

It allows businesses to place their items in the market more accurately, resulting in increased consumer interaction. The branding strategy also enables the company to continuously provide a diverse range of products and services by building on established individual brands.

Conversely, this branding strategy serves as a form of insurance for a certain company’s market reputation in the event of a product failure.

By using a separate branding for an individual product, the company can conduct business as usual without much fear of the potentially disastrous consequences of a failed product launch. In short, with this branding strategy, they can easily dismiss the failure as not being “them”.

Why and how a company may use this type of branding strategy is entirely up to what it seeks to achieve. Nonetheless, individual branding is a versatile approach that may make or break one’s branding strategy.

Attitude branding

Attitude branding entails promoting a wider sentiment linked with your company in the eyes of your clients. Through this branding strategy, your brand adds to the consumer’s feeling of identity and self-expression.

It bears stressing that this emotion needn’t always be connected to your products or services. In fact, it may be completely unimportant or irrelevant. It’s all about helping the customer feel like they have a better lifestyle or identity.

With this in mind, we must first understand what the consumer wants or needs to feel about themselves when purchasing from our firm as we strive to apply this branding strategy to our own products and services.

An excellent approach is by associating the product or service’s branding with the desired lifestyle. Make sure that when your show your brand pictures, logos, and other brand identifiers, they also convey a message that connects with the consumer on an emotional level.

Corporate branding

Corporate branding is a corporate value and philosophy that a company creates to market itself to the outside world and even to its potential employees.

In each point of interaction with prospective consumers, existing customers, and former customers, an effective corporate branding strategy frequently strives to exhibit the company’s mission, personality, and basic values.

Simply put, well-known businesses make use of the popularity of their own company names to boost brand awareness. Consumers then tend to identify logos, slogans, packaging, and colors as being associated with the company as a whole.

To begin a corporate branding strategy, you must first outline your goals as an institution. This would also allow you to determine your target audience and establish the qualities that you want your brand to represent in relation to the benefits it offers your intended consumers.

Service branding

The customer’s demands are leveraged through service branding. Companies that employ service branding aim to give world-class service to their clients. They want to add value to their consumers by providing exceptional customer service.

Companies that have actual products have a variety of options for “selling” the high quality of what they have to offer and establishing a reputation.

Services, on the other hand, are marketed through word of mouth. This comes from clients who have experienced the service firsthand. As such, word travels fast between networks, and the company ultimately gains a certain niche for its services.

On the off-side, this type of branding strategy sits in a very precarious position as even the shallowest remark from a group of unsatisfied consumers would tend to damage the reputation of the company.

The simple (but not necessarily easy) way of doing this is, of course, keeping your clients satisfied. Whether it’s through your primary services or some add-on amenities, having a happy consumer base is the best, if not the only means of ensuring a good service branding.

Needless to say, this also requires a lot of proactivity on the part of the business, as you would have to regularly check on your clients and respond to their feedback, regardless if these are positive or negative.

 

Co-branding

Co-branding is a type of branding that brings together businesses. Co-branding is a marketing collaboration between two or more companies. This allows businesses to have a beneficial influence on one another, which might lead to one strengthening its business, spreading brand awareness, and breaking into new markets.

This branding strategy combines the market power, brand recognition, positive connotations, and cachet of two or more brands in order to persuade customers to pay a higher price for them. It can also reduce the likelihood of a product being copied by competitors.

Choosing this strategy would require you to research and identify partners with whom your business shares similar values. It is not uncommon for different brands to engage in a compromise first, since this allows them to learn more about each other.

If you can tie up with an equally leading brand in your sector, then that’s even better news for you. Just be sure to have something to offer them in return so that they wouldn’t feel shortchanged. Remember: it’s all about the partnership adding value to the brand.

No-brand branding

This branding strategy also goes by the term “minimalist branding”. This is usually employed by generic brands who want to let their products speak for themselves without all the bells and whistles that many others give.

Generic brands are consumer product lines created to compete with well-known brands in a certain category. The notion is that they allow the business to save money on advertising expenditures by not employing an aggressive branding strategy while still providing high-quality items at a lower price.

Some companies also value the absence of flamboyant logos or icons in their branding. Rather than go with the status associated with logos, they mainly rely on their reputation for elegance and quality to reach out to and gain the loyalty of a certain niche.

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t invest in things that would make your business stand out, such as website themes or even employee uniforms (if you have a physical store).

At the end of the day, however, it’s about primarily drawing attention to your products and services. Everything else that would help a customer retain the “brand” comes second.

The bottomline

Each industry is likely to have its own set of goals and objectives in mind. Each brand strategy has something unique to offer your company. However, not every approach will be appropriate for your market.

You may consider doing a market study with your competitors to help you in selecting which branding strategy to pursue. Conducting such an analysis can also have the added bonus of assisting you in better appreciating the risks associated with your market.

If you’re not sure which branding strategy you should employ, feel free to message us at Igloo for a free consultation. With years of experience in digital marketing, we can help you come up with an effective branding strategy that is sure to complement your goals.