What is branding?
As you know, the youth, even mature people, are also obsessed with the brands. Customers place more reliance on branded products rather than non-branded products.
Are you familiar with the concept of brand and branding are? No!
Are you interested to know the basics of brand and branding? Yes! Good… let’s start with the definition!
Brand definition!
The brand represents the results as the sum of all expressions by which some entity (organization, person, company, nation, etc.) intends to be recognized in the market. Brands can be identified by name, design, term, symbol, or any other feature that organizations use to differentiate their products or services from the competitors. A brand can be presented as a symbol – a logo, symbol, word, name, mark, and/or sentence. Sometimes, organizations use a combination of the two discussed before use to create a brand identity. When the brand gets legally protected, then it is termed as a “Trademark.”
Remember, good branding can enhance the organization’s value, provide the staff with direction and motivation, and easily acquire new customers. Thus brand is something that is beyond a simple, striking logo. The major objective of branding is knowing and unfailingly living from a factual identity, from a genuine story, so that decision-making leadership, marketing, sales, product, operations, support, and corporate culture all aligned and matured in a fascinating style that is important to anybody who encounters the pool of managers who make up a brand. A brand is the story of persons directed in a way, welcoming you to drive with them.
Branding definition
What are branding and examples?
Usually, brands are an identifiable logo or symbol to which customers can identify more quickly and easily. For instance, Apple computers use “Apple,” Nike use “swoosh,” and McDonald’s uses the golden arches. Branding represents marketing practice, a solid and useful technique, to create its desired image in the customers’ minds. This is also known as “positioning.” In simple words, this image of a product or a service in the users’ minds what the company paints is called product positioning.
The fooling examples can make you understand more clearly.
What does it mean to create a brand? Create a brand is a process of creating product positioning and entity expressions in the market with the final goal to make differentiation from the competition.
Symbols
Logo characteristically appears on the products in any form and plays a very critical role in promotional campaigns and adverts. The most unique and identifiable symbols or signs help customers identify a particular product or manufacturer, even when the name is not evident.
Slogans
If we talk about slogans, slogans also create a brand image like symbols. Slogans are quite often being used successfully by the various industries, for example, insurance companies, to get customers associated with them with confidence and trust, like “You’re in good hands with Allstate,” “Nationwide is on your side,” and “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.” Like the logos, various companies’ slogans are painted in the customer’s and consumers’ minds, and no doubt it may be intact till the company operates in the market.
Differentiation
To be different and remain different, organizations may use branding to distinguish themselves from other key players in the market. For illustration, a company may position itself as a pioneer, innovator, first mover, and leader. When consumers are more environmentally concerned, organizations capitalize on this notion that they are making and delivering clean and green products and how they are different from the competitors. Sometimes offering “low priced” products or more “durable” products can be used by the organizations to be different from other companies.
User Experience
The customers’ experience also reveals branding that organizations try to develop. McDonald’s uses to build an image of restaurants as a fun place for parents to take their children and quick meal options in its advertising campaigns.
Branding Types to Leverage for Growth
There are several diverse categories or forms of branding you must bear in mind while developing a brand strategy. The brand strategy works more effectively when it is created upon focusing on the audience, targeted for the particular product, the goals set, and the budget you have for the strategy. The success of any brand strategy depends on the various controllable and non-controllable variables. The more vigilant you are in dealing with such variables, the more successful you will be.
In the following material, you will find various common but essential categories of branding. You will also understand the inside principles of branding, so this article requires more of your attention from onward.
Effective Brand Strategy – The Principles
A brand is something beyond your business’s name, logo, or even its slogan, whereas a strategy related to branding includes describing the company’s goal, target customers, and value proposition. It takes resources and time to create a brand and brand equity (value proposition). The branding investment is worth it when it recalls and repeats the business by the customers. Different branding approaches are considered suitable by dissimilar organizations to create brand equity. You will have a closer look at the categories of branding to apprehend what these are and how they can be leveraged to help you achieve your business goals.
Branding Types:
Below are the various types of branding we will explore;
- Retail Branding
- Service Branding
- Product Branding
- Cultural Branding
- Personal Branding
- Corporate Branding
- Geographic Branding
- Retail Branding
We all are engaged with the retail stores by any means almost for our day to day requirements every day. Retailors offer and deliver several fast-moving consumer goods of several dissimilar manufactures. You might come across competing companies’ products on the shelves side by side. A few retail stores sell their own brands and sometimes the combination of both.
When retail stores exert hard to create their own products as a distinctive brand, it is called retail branding. You can consider “Apple Computers” as an example of a retail brand, which is a famed example of a promptly identifiable retail brand. Such stores are established as a state of the art design, reflecting the quality of the products. These retail stores play a vital role in making customers solid perception about a brand and are the touch-points for most customers.
- Service Branding
The major factor of the success will be to deliver the best services to your customers at all times whatsoever the business you are doing. The excellent services moderates the relationship between the customers or consumers and the company. What services means are? Actually, you deliver an experience to your customers when they interact with you through any touch-points. The touch-points maybe, either in-person or retail stores, or online.
You remember that, due to the emergence of the internet and increasing usage of online buying, services have become more complicated. Providing gradual and regular services always contributes significantly, to the company image and good repute.
- Product Branding
You might have noticed that wherever you go or enter, you find product branding. This is generally a widespread class of branding. Images, slogans, colors, and even words differentiate your products from the competitors in the industry. Remember, the pillar of a company’s success is proper and effective product branding, and product branding gets started through consumers’ understanding, needs, and wants, what problem they are facing currently. From the solutions, they are looking for.
- Cultural Branding
Have you ever heard before that “the city never sleeps,” yes, it’s about New York City, and people around the globe consider this city as commercial and financial capital? This city is also famous for its cultural centers, entertainment, fashion, influencing music, and art. Cultural branding pursues to create an encouraging common identity and repute for the individuals living in any specific area and background. Cultural branding is narrowly associated with geographical branding. The two categories of branding move side-by-side, for instance, geographical area affects the culture of its residents, and human-activities affect the place. You can hit into cultural branding to get your product’s sales increased.
- Personal Branding
Personal branding is largely linked with famous people of various fields, such as public figures like leaders, people from the film or showbiz industry, and politicians. The fame component always derives a success for several business persons. If you acquire a strong social profile, it will be easier to attract and get more customers and clients.
You can accomplish your business goals through personal branding. Still, first, you will be required to set a goal such as what you wish to be known for, then establish a concrete plan of actions to promote your business publicly to be an influencer in that niche you are in.
- Corporate Branding
There is no doubt; brand name plays a considerable role in the accomplishment of business goals. The reputation may get affected by several actions a company takes, such as the product they produce or sell, the group of customers they target, and what treatment they extend to their employees, suppliers, and services they provide. Corporate branding may have the potential to affect the pricing strategy. A decent example of corporate branding, the automobile industry is considered. The important part of corporate branding is that it is required to be refreshed periodically. There is a need to update images or visuals to make them appropriate according to the current trends and design. The brand value and positioning may be assessed through brand refreshers.
- Geographic Branding
This is another type of branding the Geographic branding is almost closed to cultural branding. This branding type focuses on attracting possible customers to visit or region because of a geographic attraction and association. Countries, cities, and regions exercise geographic branding by exploiting different things from other geographic locations, such as tourist or visitor attractions or natural attractiveness regions.
Businesses do practice geographic branding to paint themselves more striking to certain demographics. You can consider the Eiffel Tower as an example for geographical branding, a national icon of France, and instantly recognizable. Many businesses do use their image to show themselves as Parisian.
How can you build a successful brand?
It is believed that building or having a unique, which can differentiate itself from the other brands, is significant by most business organizations. What secrets you know about strong brands like Coke, Samsung or Apple hold? And how these can be capitalized as a source of inspiration. To find the answers to such questions, below are the steps to follow to create a successful brand.
- Strong Consistency
- Communicate your promise
- How do you wish to be perceived?
- Organize your business based on the promise made
This is how a business and a brand work, and not with a single percent of inattention your brand can afford. All you need is to have more consistency in your work. If you take the example of Apple, do you think it can really afford to develop a product less on merit” than the previous one? No! so in making a brand more prominent, it takes consistency and hard work.
Good Luck!
Do you have a suggestion for making a brand more stable? Kindly do share your valuable words with us.
