A logo. A tagline. A package. An advert. All these are instruments of branding.
When it comes to the process, there are many aspects of branding that one must know. It is indeed so much more than a good video advertisement, and a nice mission statement.
Marketing and branding go hand in hand. Good branding is a marketing tactic that every company uses. So, if you want to be successful, you need to focus on building a brand. Whether you are an influencer or a bakery, a smart brand strategy will keep you ahead of the curve.
However, branding has many aspects. You need to balance all aspects like a pro juggler. Before you learn how to juggle it all, you must know the types of branding that exists, and how you can use them for your company.
In a previous post of ours, we have explained what branding is. But just to recap, branding is the process of building a brand. There is a linguistic difference between brand and branding.
Brand is a noun whereas Branding is a verb.
Brand means the instinctive feeling or the gut feeling, consumers experience when they hear about your company name or product. To be a bit educational, a brand is a bridge between your product and your customer. For example, Chanel is associate with luxury, and customers feel rich when they use the products of the company. That means Chanel has created a brand for itself.
But branding is an active process. It is the collection of methods and strategies you use to create a brand. It involves numerous processes. And we are going to check it all out. Let us dive into it.
A brand isn’t just created by an ambassador or a logo, it is so much more than that. In this post, we will learn about various types of branding and how it can help your business.
Jay Shetty, a motivational speaker
Personal branding is the type of branding that is suitable for – influencers, motivational speakers, athletes, fashion bloggers, models etc. If you are a one man team, then personal branding is the right type for you. Take Jay Shetty for example, he is a motivational speaker, and is immensely influential. When he started, he wasn’t well known. With proper personal branding and quality content, he quickly became an author and a popular motivational speaker. You can say he is the pioneer of modern motivators, he has successfully created a personal brand.
These are the steps that will get you started. Nowadays, most of the branding is done online. So, make sure you pay more attention to it. Your online persona will make or break your brand.
Among the different types of branding, product branding is the most basic one. If you have a product, then you need to make it stand out from the rest. That is what product branding does. It distinguishes your company’s product from others. How do you recognize a Lee Cooper shoe from a Nike? It is the logo, that distinguishes it. Product branding may sometimes coincide with corporate branding but we will look into later.
Do you know about the branding of HuffPost? A few years back Huffpost was Huffington Post, but after the exit of the CEO, the digital news site revamped itself. The logo changed into something modern and edgy, and many hailed it as a refreshing change. That’s how successful brands turn themselves around.
Product branding is all about sticking out like a sore thumb but in a good way.
Corporate branding is a blanket term you use for mostly every branding technique in the market. From packaging to taglines, corporate branding includes it all. It generally focuses on brand reputation, or it tries to boost the brand reputation.
Suppose you are in the hotel industry, and you provide sweet personalized cottage experience to people on the hills of Manali, then you need to brand your company in a way that makes you recognized. As we mentioned earlier, corporate branding is similar to product branding, but it is more extensive.
No matter in which industry you are, there will be competitors who offer the same products and services. But what makes you unique is one of a kind branding. Customers will choose you for your brand.
Co-branding is when two brands come together to create something unique and extend their reach. Two brands partner up with each other to grow the customer base and enhance brand awareness. Many small scale businesses do so, but the big names have also used this marketing strategy.
Back in 2016, Apple and Nike introduced the Apple Watch Nike+. Both brands came together to make the product of exclusive Nike Sport Bands with Apple Watch Series2. The product was a blessing for athletes and fitness enthusiasts. It featured GPS, a two-times-brighter display, water resistance, and a powerful dual-core processor. Apple aims to make smartwatches that can help fitness people track their health, and Nike has always focused its branding on fitness. So, the two big brands coming together was no surprise.
We have thrown both geographic and cultural branding together because it follows similar strategies. Geographic branding is when a business invests in a particular geographical region to enhance the sales, and culture is when a business focuses on making its products popular among a certain sect of people. Both go hand in hand because people’s geographic location and culture are related.
A few years back Oreo wasn’t so popular in India or China. When it was launched in China in 1996, the product failed to perform. So Kraft did some research and found that customers in China found that the flavor of Oreo was too strong, and the price was high. Kraft worked on these problems and created an altered Oreo for China. This Oreo had lower sugar and came in smaller packets. The product soon became a hit! Kraft used the same brand strategy in India, and its popularity increased too.
The truth is no product can be uniformly needed throughout the world. Developing countries need cheaper alternative products available in developed countries. So, if you want to expand your reach, then you need to evolve your branding strategies according to location and culture.
Online branding is how you create an online reputation. This tactic is mostly used by influencers. But seeing as it works magic, it is becoming popular with all types of business. The whole world is on the internet, everyone has got an online presence, so your brand could use one as well. The first step of online branding is creating a website for your business, then make social media accounts on various platforms.
When people hear about your business, they will search for it online. If you do not have an authentic online presence, you can’t be trusted. That’s why how brands are presented online is so crucial.
Even if online branding is becoming highly effective, the good old way of offline branding will never go out of fashion. Handing out a business card to a potential client, or hosting a launch event for a new product is all part of offline branding. You may be able to reach fewer target audience with this brand strategy, but the conversion rate, in this case, is higher. So, no matter how much you hype up your brand online, never forget the power of simple business cards.
Service branding focuses on customer service as a branding tool. It uses interaction with customers as a way to uplift the brand. Service brand works like magic in the hospitality industry or the B2B Business.
Let’s elaborate it. Sally is a great woman. She owns a cafe. She interacts with customers in a friendly way. They love her, and they love coming to the cafe. Her customer service makes People say “Hey lets go to Sally’s Cafe!”.
Like Sally uses great customer service for creating a brand, you can do so as well for your company.
TIPS: Offer customers something extra from time to time, to make them feel special.
Like customer service can help make or break a brand, a product itself can be sufficient to create a brand. No-brand branding is a post modern minimalist way of branding. In this case, you do not need to spend all your time and energy in making an attractive package or logo. Just focus on the quality of products.
Brandless company follows no-brand branding. It offers quality food that is affordable. The lack of brand is a way to show customers that, they don’t have to pay a penny more for “branded” food. Brandless believes that is customers are entitled to affordable and high quality food products.
You can use any of the above-mentioned brand strategies to build your company. But using it all in a cohesive manner will be more beneficial than just using one type of branding. If you want to market your brand extensively, then we have got the right tool for you.
OFFEO’s Videomaker can help you market your brand like a pro. All you have to do is choose a marketing video template from our collection of hundreds of templates. These templates have proven to engage the audience better.
Once you have chosen a template, you can start creating a marketing video that will wow the audience. OFFEO’s Videomakers a universal tool for small businesses, influencers, and even large companies. So go ahead and use Marketing Video Maker by OFFEO to boost your brand awareness for free!
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