10 Branding Strategies You Need to Apply to Your Company Today
The products you sell don’t define your company as a whole. Your brand as a whole is what sells your entire company to the world and is what you should be focusing on developing if you want to succeed and outdo your competitors!
If you look at successful brands right now, you understand the reach and influence on people. Something as simple as their color palette or a slogan their brand has can trigger feelings of excitement. All of this is what it means to be a brand!
To be known, to extend beyond their products, and to have an influence. If you want all that and more, here are the eight branding strategies you need to apply to your company today to dominate the market!
Branding & Its Importance
Before we step into the hows—we have to understand what a brand is and why it’s crucial!
A brand is what distinguishes you from all of the other businesses out there. It’s usually composed of a set of features such as a name, symbol, tagline, aesthetic, brand voice, and many more. The brand is the company’s soul and is usually associated with its reputation—may it be good or bad.
Branding is the method by which you develop and apply the distinct features required to make a brand. This is the first step to getting your customers to acknowledge your brand and relate it to the products or services you sell.
Branding is crucial because it gives you an identity that people can cling to. When you have a brand, you aren’t just a corporate enigma anymore. Your customers can relate and connect with you a lot more fluidly as well!
It also helps make marketing a breeze, makes you more memorable and distinguishes you from the competition!
Branding Strategies To Keep In Mind
Adapting To Your Target Audience
Every brand has a target audience. It’s your job as a brand to cater to your target audience and resonate with them. After all, building trust between you and your target audience is how you can ensure that you get recognition, revenue, and most importantly, awareness!
Before finalizing your ideas on how your brand should look and feel, make sure you understand who you want your audience to be. Find an ideal vision of what a customer should be and work around trying to satisfy that image.
Authenticity
Showing authenticity is the quickest way in which you can gain the trust of your consumers. Presenting your brand to your audience without any lies or filters make your brand seem genuine and less difficult to connect and sympathize with.
You can show your authenticity by sharing recipes of products such as food for the public to see. Depending on what industry your brand is in, the way you can show your authenticity can be different. However, there is always a way in which you can be fully transparent to your customers.
Kindness & Charity
Showing kindness and compassion, especially now during a pandemic, has become a well-received trend that everyone can get behind! This trend is probably going to be applied even after the pandemic eventually subsides.
Finding positive ways to connect with your audience and make an impact can be a great branding strategy that you can use to impact. Even something as simple as an infographic or an ad relating to helping people out can make a difference in getting your brand out there!
Using Social Media
Almost every brand has some sort of social media account or page that they regularly post content on. However, utilizing it strategically and to its utmost efficiency is an entirely different story!
Social media is a weapon that you can use to enhance your branding as a whole further. Evolving from a place where brands would post short promotional material and images to a platform endorsing the use of more lengthy content, make sure you don’t sleep on social media sites!
Utilizing Creative Art
It doesn’t matter whether you’re catering to a younger audience or not—using quirky and eye-catching imagery for your brand will boost your brand’s image. You can use any art style that you want for your illustrations, but it’s usually portrayed with a more hand-drawn style.
This can be a great way of portraying your brand’s creativity to the general public. Make your art as whimsical as you want, don’t be afraid to experiment with a little trial and error!
Make a Stand
There are loads of bad things happening around the world due to centuries of untreated prejudice and injustice. Taking false neutrality and not making a statement about certain stances for environmental, societal, or economic situations will put your brand in a bad light.
For younger consumers such as Millenials and Gen-Z, they expect brands to take a stand in something. However, make sure you aren’t doing it to gain brand awareness. Make sure you aren’t just playing along to get on your customer’s right side! Take a stance on important issues and stand with the right side along with your audience.
Give your Brand a Personality
When trying to find ways to strengthen your branding, go back to the roots and think about what you want your brand to be like in the first place. Instead of treating it as an image for a business, try thinking of it as if it was an actual person!
The purpose of branding in the first place is to connect with your audience. If that’s the case—giving personality to your brand is perfect for this! It humanizes your brand and your business and makes it more relatable to your customers.
Be Consistent
Inconsistency is the last thing you want when you’re branding. It not only confuses your customer—but it also heavily undermines your brand as a whole!
Ensure that your brand is consistent and has a set presence that makes it recognizable across any medium.
Now that you’re ready to give branding another shot—make sure to apply these strategies and watch your brand as it flourishes!