How to Create a Successful Branding Strategy for your Business?
Table of Content
What is Branding?
What is a Branding Strategy?
6 Essential Aspects to Consider When Creating a Brand Identity
1. What is Branding?
Branding is the process of creating and shaping a brand in the minds of consumers to give meaning to a specific organization, company, products, or services.
Branding is a fundamental part of modern businesses and it is much more than just choosing the logo and fonts for your company.
2. What is a Branding Strategy?
A branding strategy actually involves the process of giving meaning to your business.
This relates to the image of your business, products or services by developing a brand that sticks in the minds of the customers.
In order to develop a branding strategy for your business, consumers need to identify and establish an experience or sense of feel with your brand.
This is the essential difference between your branding strategy's success and the competition's. Your company's branding plan must have a branding purpose in order to be applied properly.
These should be made clear to attract and retain loyal customers as well as stakeholders by delivering what your brand promises.
It is important to know the difference between a good brand and a great brand. Only the later one manages to stand out, cross cultural boundaries with their products and find international success.
This highlights the growing significance of customers and brand loyalty in developing a successful branding strategy for your company.
Customer involvement with some brands is required less because of the specific products they offer and more because of your company's ability to build a compelling brand identity and brand character that draws people in.
In summary, your brand is the total perception of your company that consumers hold.
This notion encompasses how people perceive you, the emotions they experience when hearing your name, and the language they use when discussing you with peers.
3. Why do you need a solid Branding Strategy?
Having an effective branding strategy in place gives you the power to put a distinguishable image of your company in people’s minds.
It allows you to establish your business as a unique contender in your market space.
It not only helps to give consumers a clear picture about your business but it also unifies your employees under a set of values and beliefs that they are passionate about.
Brand loyalty is integral in order for your customers to keep purchasing your brand and continue using it.
Without a branding strategy, it will be difficult to make your customers loyal to your brand, retain them and benefit from repeat purchases.
These include aspects such as brand color, brand logo, brand design and brand shape into consideration when creating a unique brand identity for the branding strategy of your business.
It is a crucial tool to evoke distinct feelings inside your customers when they think about you. This makes it a powerful instrument to form deeper connections with your target audience and helps create brand loyalty. In return, this creates a successful branding strategy which consumers tend to adopt from
the image of your company. The brand perception of the branding strategy of your business.
Branding companies create their branding strategy by taking aspects of brand perception into consideration.
Brand perception includes the beliefs from a consumer which your product or service provides.
It is mainly originated from the following following factors:
Customer Usage
Customer experience / customer satisfaction
Product / brand reputation
Word-Of-Mouth-Marketing
Functionality
In general, a successful branding strategy should help people form a positive image about your firm, and to develop trust between themselves and your business.
This can also be used to further understand consumer purchasing behavior of your target audience.
You can either entrust this important task to a branding business and hire a branding agency, which not only brings in an outside perspective to it but they have the required expertise and knowledge to accomplish your demands of branding strategy.
Rebranding
Rebranding occurs when there is change in the corporate image of your business. It is commonly known as a marketing strategy that will trigger new elements such as a new brand name, brand symbol, and brand design.
The idea is simply to create a unique brand identity through rebranding and stand out as a brand from competition and the rest of the market.
Alternatively, this can also be done through the marketing team of your company or hire a branding business that can help you with it.
This article will provide you with reasons why to obtain and guarantee a solid branding strategy for your business.
Therefore 6 key aspects need to be taken into consideration when creating an all-round branding strategy to attract brand personality that will make your audience choose you over the competition and generate brand loyalty.
Contact Toucan Insights now and book your FREE consultation meeting with our branding specialists.
4. 6 Essential Aspects to Consider When Creating a Brand Identity
a. Define your Brand Purpose
Making it clear to consumers why your brand exists and why it is doing what it does, truly differentiates your company from others.
It is obvious that every business tries to make money, however that doesn’t convince anyone to buy from you.
Therefore, you have to create a convincing brand mission as well as a vision for the future for the brand objective it strives to accomplish.
Branding businesses include a brand mission in the branding strategy of your business which should place the customer in the center of every decision your brand is making in order to gain their customer trust and brand loyalty.
By answering the following questions about your brand, your customers will obtain a clear picture in their mind of what your company is about and why it exists:
What do you excel at?
What is it that you are most enthusiastic about?
What change can you possibly make?
Many branding businesses summarize their brand purpose in one key statement in order to make it universally understandable for what they stand and strive for.
For example, did you know what Apple’s brand statement is?
-> To empower creative exploration and self-expression.
The following includes a list of other companies with strong brand statements:
ASOS - To become the world’s number-one destination for fashion-loving 20-somethings.
Coca Cola - To refresh the world. Make a difference.
Dove - To redefine beauty standards and help everyone experience beauty and body image positively.
Tesla - To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
As it becomes clear from these companies, a brand statement must be a reflection of the most important values of the target audience of your business to truly connect with them.
Additionally, it should reveal their belief in striving towards making a positive social impact to captivate your customers.
This is exactly what the theory of the Golden Circle by Simon Sinek predicts. This model is made out of 3 layers and it explains brand differentiation in terms of differentiating your brand from competitors.
One of the biggest mistakes that new companies or business startups do when developing their branding strategy is to only mention “what” the product is (e.g. new x generation laptop) and “how” their features can help the consumer (e.g. this new generation laptop has a 20% faster processor and better A.I. so you can multitask better).
However, this approach only includes the first layer of the Golden Circle (“What”) and the second layer (“How”); it leaves out the innermost layer (“Why”).
One of the biggest reasons why so many brands fail is because branding businesses couldn’t convince consumers about why their product or the company itself exists.
The innermost layer of the Golden Circle explains that people are drawn to the beliefs and values that products and brands themselves radiate out.
More specifically, the “why” behind your products and the why behind your brand’s existence should be clear to every consumer in the first place.
If your target audience can identify themselves with your company’s core identity and with the reason why you create your products, then it is much easier for them to gain brand loyalty from your business.
People want to reflect themselves with things that match their personality.
As highly social animals, humans need the acceptance of society with regard to their consumer purchasing behavior.
This is the reason why most brands portray their image in a way that they support strong cultural values as an extension of their branding.
After you have captivated people’s hearts, you can continue to show them the facts and figures to rationalize their decision.
Some people think that if you start talking about the details and advantages of your brand product, you may convince your target audience of the superiority and unique value proposition of your offering.
However customers, with regards to their consumer purchasing behavior, don’t care much about how fast this phone is over others or how much more durable this new backpack is.
People want to be part of something bigger than themselves and buying your products should help them to perceive this idea.