3 Branding Strategies That Will Add Value to Your Business (2024)

What do you understand by a ‘brand’? People often use it interchangeably with the company name. A ‘brand’ in real sense is a lot more than that.

A brand reflects what a company is all about and the kind of experience or products the consumer is going to buy.

For instance, Coca Cola uses the phrase ‘Have a co*ke and a smile’, so whenever you think of the soft drink brand you think about happiness.

Similarly, when you think about Nike, you think about power and heroism. Again when you think about iPhone, you think about an amazing digital experience.

Therefore you need to have a strong brand strategy that will help you create a strong brand identity.

Brand identity is the way a company represents itself to the customers; whereas brand strategy is the continuous effort for development of a successful brand that will help the company achieve specific goals.

Why Having a Strong Brand Identity is Important?

Strong brands are not built in one day. A lot of hard work and thoughtfulness is required to build a brand that customers would be willing to engage with. Creating a strong brand identity benefits your company in many ways:

• It increases the brand’s perceived equity. For example Coca Cola being a well-known brand, the company can sell its products at a higher price compared to other lesser-known soft drink brands. A strong brand translates to high-quality, so customers are willing to pay more.
• The greatest brands connect with their customers emotionally, therefore the customers are more likely to stay loyal. Nike, for example, uses emotional branding to build customer loyalty.
• Strong brands motivate employees. Loyal and productive employees are great assets for a company and they become enthusiastic brand advocates to spread the message around.

3 Branding Strategies to Add Value to Your Business

The brand strategy reinforces company’s position in the market. When executed successfully, it will help you create a successful brand that will help you achieve your business goals. Here are 3 branding strategies that will add value to your business:

1. Define a Brand Promise

Brand promise is a message that speaks to your targeted audience about what to expect by using your products/services.

However, according to Allen Adamson, the chairman of the North American region of brand consulting and design firm Landor Associates, defining a brand promise is not sufficient; defining the purpose is important as well. Defining the purpose differentiates you from your competition.

For instance, IKEA promises to offer its customers with best quality furniture at affordable prices. But what differentiates IKEA from other online furniture sellers is their purpose of helping their customers ‘create a better life everyday’.

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2. Brand Consistency

Creating a strong brand identity that keeps you at the forefront of your targeted audience is important but maintaining it is even more important. This means you must never engage in activities that might confuse your customers.

You need to make sure all your messages – whether it is an update on your Facebook Business Page, a photo posted to your Instagram account or a video on YouTube, are consistent with your brand identity.

Target, one of the largest retail stores has been a winner when it comes to brand consistency. It has had the same logo for over 50 years.

The brand consistency stretches across all the marketing platforms that focus on the Target shopping experience – “Expect more. Pay less.” the tagline that they currently use. A consistent color scheme and their continuous effort to promote the store as high-end discount store with better quality products and exceptional customer service have paid off.

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Another company that nailed the brand consistency notion is Coca Cola. Every element of the brand’s marketing work harmoniously together and this has helped them become one of the most recognizable brands in the world.

Whether it is about promoting the company on social media or through traditional advertising, the brand has maintained its consistency seamlessly.

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Branding’ adds a personality and attitude to the product/services and this is what people relate to. Make one mistake and all your efforts go down the drains. Hence make sure you maintain the tone of your voice, the color scheme, the logo and everything else that helps people identify your brand.

3. Emotional Attachment

Have you ever wondered why some ads sell more than the others? It is simply because they tap into the customer’s emotions. According to Unruly, the most-shared ads of 2015 relied heavily on emotional content.

Android’s ‘Friends Furever’ was the most-shared ad of 2015. The ad contains clips of cute animals that are sure to make people emotional. In fact the top three most shared ads all feature dogs as the central characters.

But you must be very careful when using animals to tap into people’s emotions since a small mistake can disrupt feelings severely.

In another instance, MetLife Hong Kong created an ad featuring a father-daughter relationship. The cute little girl describes the things she loves about her dad and how he makes her happy. The twist comes in when she also describes the way he lies to her, just to make her happy.

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Brands have tapped into a number of emotions such as happiness, sadness, fear, anger and others to build a brand identity. When done correctly you can benefit immensely by tapping into the audience’s emotions, but remember it is a tricky terrain. So you must be very careful.

Conclusion

Building a brand strategy isn’t easy, but if you can do it properly you will never have to look back. Sure there are others who may sell products or offer services similar to yours, but you can make yourself stand out by creating a strong brand.

What is your company doing to build a brand? Share with us.

Author Bio

Pratik Dholakiya is the founder of Growfusely, a content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO. He regularly speaks at various conferences about SEO, Content Marketing, and Entrepreneurship. Pratik has spoken at the 80th Annual Conference of the Florida Public Relations Association, Accounting and Finance Show, Singapore, NextBigWhat’s UnPluggd, IIT-Bombay, SMX Israel, SEMrush Meetup, MICA, IIT-Roorkee, and other major events. As a passionate SEO and content marketer, he shares his thoughts and knowledge in publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, The Next Web, YourStory, and Inc42, to name a few. He can be found at Twitter @DholakiyaPratik.

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1. 

   Praveen KumarOctober 15, 2020 at 1:37 pm

   Great blog! I totally agree with the emotional attachment. Most of the MNC have gained its customer with emotional attachment. Though the product/service is same, MNCs need to sell them for different people from different nationalities, culture and ethnicity. The major thing, they go for branding is localizing their ad approach so that the locals can easily connect. It is one of the best strategies ever!

2. 

   Staphany janMarch 19, 2019 at 12:35 pm

   Great tips for sharing 3 branding strategies to my business. I think that when it comes to a business, so a business should be very much conscious for branding for business which can make their business successful and can lead towards growth.

3. 

   AjayAugust 3, 2017 at 2:11 am

   Well said Michael, the explanations are simple and to the point, at my agency these are a few things I always tell my clients, you don’t just need a logo or identity but you have to really build a ‘brand’, it should create an impact, an emotional connection and all the activities should play around that core purpose.

   Thanks for this Mic!

   Cheers,
   Ajay