Branding are marketing strategies that makes your business stand out from other competitors. It helps customers remember your brand clearly and associate it with things you want people to know you for, such as high-quality products and services, great customer service, and more. Branding, essentially, is building an image for yourself and using it to widen your reach.
There are a couple of types of branding strategies including sonic branding, but below are five of the most popular! As a Los Angeles SEO company, we highly recommend going through this list to find the most suitable one for your business.
1. Personal Branding
Personal branding refers to promoting a person’s character and personality. The person themselves become a brand, rather than the business they work for. This, in turn, helps customers associate that person with a brand they endorse, and the brand then becomes successful because of it. This strategy is often used by celebrities, politicians, athletes, and other notable figures to establish a certain image to the public.
A famous example of this would be Gordon Ramsay. While he’s a well-respected chef who’s held sixteen Michelin stars in his entire career, most people know him as the hot-headed, expletive-filled TV star of Masterchef and Hell’s Kitchen. Many people line up for his restaurants even without knowing much about them just because he owns the place.
2. Product Branding
Product branding is making a single product very distinct and recognizable from its competitors. It involves everything from the logo to the design to the packaging to the name and more. With a good product branding strategy, customers can easily recognize products as a particular company’s and associate it aspects of said company.
A famous example of this would be Apple. Almost everybody can recognize an Apple product by simply looking at that iconic logo. You would probably also think that the person owning it must be rich, as Apple products are widely-known to be expensive, or that they probably invested good money on the Apple product because they’re known to be high-quality.
3. Corporate Branding
Corporate branding is sort of like personal branding but on larger scales and more complex strategies. Rather than sticking to just promoting products and services, it promotes the name of the brand itself. Customers would think of the brand and assume their products and services are the best out there, even without doing research. They would also associate the brand with their vision-mission and philosophies.
A famous example of this is Nike. They market themselves not only as a brand for athletes and sports enthusiasts but also for those wanting to be more active. As they have once famously said, “If you have a body, you are an athlete.”
They’re the brand of choice for major sporting events and tournaments. When people think of Nike, they’re challenged to “just do it.”
4. Service Branding
Customer service is an extremely important part of a buyer’s decision. You could have the best products and services in the world but still lose to a brand with less popularity simply because they’ve got better customer service. This is why some brands promote their customer service qualities more than their actual products or services.
You see this often in the airline industry. United Airlines is the third-largest airline in the world but is notorious for its poor customer service. To date, they’ve had over 32000 complaints from irate customers and employees.
Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines is a low-cost, budget-friendly airline that may not compete well with United Airlines in terms of fanciness, but trumps them with their customer service. Many customers would sacrifice a better flying experience just to have great customer service with Southwest.
5. Co-Branding
Co-branding is joining forces with another company. This branding strategy is beneficial for several reasons: one, it lets you promote your products to the other company’s target audience; two, you get to create products that are out of your comfort zone; three, you reduce individual costs and risks; four, you build credibility and customer loyalty. The end goal of co-branding is a product that combines both companies’ resources and brand identities.
A successful example of this is the Doritos Loco Taco, a classic Taco Bell concoction paired with a Doritos taco shell. The launch of this new product came at a great time for Taco Bell, as the company was nearing 50 years in service with nothing iconic to show for it. Within 70 days of its release in 2012, the Doritos Loco Taco achieved a whopping 100 million in sales and has since generated over $1 billion for both companies. It has remained an iconic staple in Taco Bell’s menu since.