After reading this article, you will learn and understand the types of branding strategy and how to effectively apply them to your own brand to drive more customers and increase sales.
Before we get into the types of brand strategies to help increase revenue, let’s take a quick overview of what branding is and what it isn’t. This will help give us a foundational knowledge of what branding is.
Branding is simply the gut feeling of what a customer feels about your product or service. It is the strategic process of creating and managing a distinct and recognizable identity for a product, service, company, or individual, which encompasses the values, personality, and perception associated with it in the minds of its target audience.
It isn’t just about the logo or product you are selling that makes your customers feel that way towards your brand, it is the promises, vision, value, and mission of what your business or company is about and finally using those to solve the customer’s problem.
types of branding strategy
Personal Branding
Personal Branding is the type of branding strategy that an individual does to himself to create influence in the society or general public. It is mostly practiced by celebrities, public speakers, politicians, or any famous person who represents something of importance.
This type of branding strategy is employed with the aim of cultivating a favorable public image, consequently fostering personal renown and widespread popularity
With a good personal brand comes good endorsement opportunities, marketing authority, or good sponsors who are willing to invest millions in you to help them drive their business and increase sales and popularity in the market with your lead and fame.
A good example of this personal branding strategy is – Oprah Winfrey. She has her TV show known as “The Oprah Winfrey Show” which serves as an educational platform, featuring book clubs, interviews, self-improvement segments, and philanthropic forays into world events. she’s popularly known not only in the United States but also throughout the world.
Another individual is the popular celebrity, Kim Kardashian who has made a name for herself and is making millions through her TV shows, sponsorship, advertisement, merchandise sales, endorsement deals, and so on.
Product Branding
photo credit: Trade Korea
Product branding is one of the most popularly known types of branding strategy. It is the making of a product recognizable by using color, font, packaging style, etc.
A well-branded product isn’t only visually appealing but appears attractive as a result helps get more sales than a non-branded product or one that isn’t branded at all.
When research was carried out on the behavioral pattern of customers when buying branded and non-branded (generic products), It was figured out that the customers preferred buying products that were branded and which they were familiar with more than unbranded products.
When a product is well branded in terms of packaging, color, etc., it tends to be enthusing to the customer to purchase.
The visual elements used in branding such: as colors, shapes, texts, and images are all that make your brand and also make your product packaging unique and different from your competitors’.
When branding, take your time to apply a proper brand strategy for your brand before proceeding to hire a branding agency or a good brand strategy team that will help you execute your awesome idea.
Even though we have high graphic design demand at this point from every industry, we still can get our hands on good designers from various freelancing websites.
Service Branding
Service branding is one of the types of branding strategy that simply has to do with establishing a unique and memorable identity and perception of a service.
Service branding strategy is more of what you can help people do or the kind of assistance you can help customers out with. It could be the kind of customer service you get from MacDonald fast food restaurant employees or the kind of service you get from Fly Emirate’s air hostesses.
Service branding isn’t more of what you can see like that of product branding but rather it focuses more on the kind of assistance you help your customers with or the task you’re helping them to carry out. You must do them properly and apply those branding promises and objectives you promised.
The tone of voice you use when communicating with your customers, the delivery speed of your service,the manner at which you render your service, etc. All these are what make customers feel satisfied and would always want to choose you again anytime.
Online branding
Amongst the various types of branding strategy discussed, online branding is one of the common types of branding strategy that internet users come across daily. We get in contact with an online brand whenever we visit a website or blog.
Think about online branding strategy as the way you create awareness of your business, products, or services on the internet. This could be on social media platforms, blogs, or a website. The use of graphic design elements is crucial when going for online branding.
It is believed that customers are more likely to resonate with brands that make use of appealing visual content, these could either be high-quality images and videos or even brand signature sound.
The use of colors, images, fonts, etc. should all be coherent in all your online platforms.
Let’s take, for example, you have a blog where you sell organic products and your brand color is green which is a good color choice for your brand strategy, but on your Instagram page, you are using a mismatched color for that same brand. Doing so will cause a disconnect and will make the design inconsistent.
No-Brand Branding
Unlike other types of branding strategy, the no-brand branding type of branding doesn’t follow the usual processes that traditional branding follows. The No-Brand branding focuses more on a generic kind of product that simply serves its purpose to the consumer.
The product doesn’t need to be branded with all fancy text and colors. It just provides the consumer with the solution to why it was made. It’s a simple type of brand strategy that simply focuses on providing solutions to the client’s problem.
It could be an organic skincare product, it simply gives the customer the assurance and quality result needed by the client. These generic products don’t spend much on promotion or advertisement for their products, they allow their product to speak action instead.
An example of no-branding branding is Brandless. Brandless focuses on providing cheap and affordable products to customers. Their packaging is simple and memorable with its white packaging.
Co-branding
It is not common to come across this type of branding strategy that involves multiple brands partnering to create a product. Co-branding is simply when two companies go into a marketing partnership which enables them to create a product that has the idea of both companies in partnership in the product.
It could be the Mercedes-Benz and Tesla partnership, Coca-Cola having a partnership with Pepsi, Apple with MasterCard, Uber and Spotify, BMW and Louis Vuitton, etc.
This type of branding allows business organizations to stretch to other geo-regions to acquire new customers and gain more marketing ground.
Want to know more about branding? You can read how to brand effectively and gain more marketing sales with branding.
Types Of Branding Strategies: How to select the best branding strategy
Define Your Brand Identity
Just as we listed out the types of branding strategies you can choose to apply to your business. Making the right decision before taking off is crucial and that is why you need to ask yourself these questions:
- What are my company’s mission and core values?
- If I had to describe my company in three words, what would it be?
- What do I want people to know about me in the industry?
- How do I differentiate myself from others in the market?
- What do I want my brand to look like visually?
The answers you give to these questions are what will give you a clear vision and also put you on the right path to achieving your goal as a brand owner.
Define Brand Objective
After you have successfully answered the questions required to place you in the right direction. The next thing is to define the objective of your brand. every brand should have a clear objective of what it wants to achieve in its market or niche.
Let’s take, for example, you might want to achieve the objective of being the best go-to place for graphic design vector templates, or the go-to place for the best print-on-demand service online.
Define Your Brand Audience
With a good branding strategy comes a clearly defined target audience. Defining your brand audience is the strategic process of targeting the right individuals that your product or service is for. Knowing the right individuals who will patronize your products and services will help you to be more precise and save you a lot of time wastage when branding.
A brand’s target audience could be individuals that fall into a particular category which could be in terms of – age, occupation, residence, geo-region, etc.
Consider Your Industry
When going into a particular industry or niche, it is advised you run a feasibility check of the kind of strategy that will effectively work for you in that industry. Every type of branding strategy has what to offer and what not to offer respectively.
You may have to run a competitive analysis in your desired industry and look for possible blank spaces that need to be filled up, and unsolved problems that need answers, and then use them to your advantage.
One sure way of standing out from the crowd in your industry is to be different and unique, look for something that hasn’t yet been done and do it or something that is already existing, and try to make it better.
Last but not least, you can achieve a lot when you brand your organization or company is branded properly which is why you need to be careful and strategic when planning and selecting your brand strategy type.
It isn’t always easy when you are just a newbie in the branding journey but over the course of your branding journey, you will learn new things and gradually your brand will gain traction. And also, consistency and cohesiveness pay off in the branding process.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the 6 common types of branding strategy?
Personal branding
Product branding
Service branding
Online branding
No-brand branding
Co-branding
What are the six brand element strategies?
Brand voice.
Brand identity.
Brand promise.
Brand values.
Brand targeting.
Brand positioning
What are the 5 main brand personalities?
There exist five primary archetypal brand personalities characterized by shared traits, namely excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, competence, and sophistication. Consumer inclination towards a brand is often heightened when its personality aligns with their own.