Think of brand building as a way to introduce your brand to your audience because no brand launches into the world as a known commodity. Largely, brand building strategy means meeting your intended audience where they are at scale through a series of various promotional channels. The importance of brand building is to let your audience know what your brand is, what it offers, and what it represents. Hence, effectively doing so means identifying the messaging that your brand wants to put out and positioning it in a way where finding your brand is a seamless experience for customers. Stick around as I take you through the brand building book and its partnership program.
Overview
Brand building is the process of marketing your brand whether to build brand awareness, promote products, or connect with your intended audience to establish a relationship with them in their day-to-day lives. In the same way, it increases customer satisfaction, loyalty, and brand recognition to establish a relationship with them in their day-to-day life. We have already defined brand building, let us understand the 7 types of brands.
#1. Offline Branding
Offline branding is the type of branding that’s done off the web. It often utilizes a combination of good design and an outgoing representative to represent your brand. A typical method in offline branding is distributing business cards and setting real-world appointments with clients or leads. You can also use various offline media channels (Like TV, print, billboards, etc.) to boost your marketing efforts and create brand awareness.
#2. Online Branding
Online branding, as the name implies, happens online. Unlike specific types of branding like personal or product branding, online branding is a broad category that refers to all types of branding that happen on the internet. It’s how an individual positions themselves on social media, it’s the kind of online ads a service provider runs, and the design choices that go into email newsletters, landing pages, responsive web design, and automatic message replies.
#3. Service Branding
Unlike products, which are easy to brand in visible and tangible ways, services are a little more challenging to brand but don’t mean brands can’t do it effectively instead they just have to be willing to think outside the box. Also, those companies provide and deliver intangible services such as hotel industries, airlines, accountancy firms, etc.
#4. Geographical Branding
Geographic branding is branding for cities, states, regions, and even countries. Think of “I Love New York” to represent New York City and the Eiffel Tower as a symbol of Paris. Geographical branding is a branding strategy that highlights a certain area where a product or service is exclusively available.
#5. Personal Branding
When we talk about personal branding, we’re not talking about creating a personality for yourself but building a public persona that accurately expresses your distinctive personality. Personal branding happens on social media and in face-to-face environments where others’ perceptions of you can have a massive impact on your professional and social reputation. A person like a politician, player, or celebrity is a good example.
#6. Corporate Branding
Corporate branding is how they express their personality. It includes how the company conducts itself socially and professionally, like partnering with specific charities or responding to current events. Corporate branding, just like other kinds of branding, is the series of design choices and actions that communicate key points about the brand, like its:
- Values
- Task
- Cost
- Exclusivity
- Ideal customer
When a company is engaged to promote its corporate brand name instead of its other products and services like IBM, IKEA, Coca-Cola, BMW, etc.
#7. Co-Branding
Co-branding is done when one product connects two or more brands. One good example of co-branding is Uber and Spotify’s partnership on the “Soundtrack for your Ride” campaign, providing customers of both brands with a better ride-sharing experience by allowing them to be the DJs for their trips.
Steps to Build a Successful Brand
Brand building can be broken down into seven key steps. Let’s review each in more detail to determine how to develop a successful brand.
#1. Define Your Target Audience and Analyze Competitors
Conducting a thorough analysis of ideal customers and competitors is a must for every successful brand. Therefore, direct your efforts to explore the market to be able to identify, and describe your ideal customer and define the level of competition. Most importantly, look through the social media accounts of companies that offer similar products and analyze their techniques to figure out the choices of your potential audience.
#2. Work on Your Brand Personality
One company can’t be a perfect choice for everybody that’s why it’s essential to create a brand that will be suitable for a specific audience feature. Hence, you need a clear brand personality to communicate your message, drive customers’ attention to your product, and identify qualities that suit your company.
#3. Decide on the Business Name
A brand is an expansive picture that covers many different things. The name of your future company influences your marketing strategies, logo, domain, and trademark registration therefore you need to choose a relevant, unique, short, and memorable name.
#4. Choose a Catchy Slogan
You can use a slogan on your social media networks, business cards, and website. It helps describe your product and deliver the necessary message to the audience. A catchy slogan can hook customers’ attention and keep a specific brand in mind.
#5. Think of Your Brand Design
Color scheme and font play an important role when you create a company. Using the same brand design across different marketing channels allows you to be more recognizable among customers. The design should visually represent your company because, with the help of a brand building book to choose the right colors, you can communicate the necessary message and feelings.
#6. Create a Unique Brand Logo
The logo also belongs to the most important elements of a brand. A unique and recognizable logo enables you to make a strong first impression, serve as a foundation for brand identity, grab attention, and increase customer loyalty. Once you develop a great logo, make sure to include it on your website, social media accounts, product, banners, all possible ads, etc.
Apply your branding across different marketing channels to educate people about your company’s values. You need to tell people a brand story with facts and feelings to stimulate emotions in customers and encourage interaction.
Brand Building Strategy
Just as an architect draws out a building plan before they start building, you must develop a brand strategy for your business. Brand building is the process of planning and managing that help businesses determine their core values like pricing, distribution, types of customer service, and what they want to achieve with the business.
For one brand building strategy to be successful, you need both a thorough understanding of why you choose certain types of brand strategies and a detailed outline of what your strategies will be. In addition, it’s important to understand that a brand strategy is not just about marketing and advertising but also about how one markets a product as well as communicating with customers. Below are the effective four pillars of brand building strategy that will help you boost your future brand.
#1. Product/Range Extension
This is when a brand introduces a new strategy similar to one it offers already while aiming at an existing market. The new product carries the established brand name and plays in the same broad category as its stablemates.
#2. Brand Extension
This is when a business seeks to enlarge its reach by launching products or services in a new market under an existing brand name. For instance, Disneyland is a highly successful extension of the Disney brand. This happens when the brand provides more than one product or service under the existing brand name. This strategy also leverages trust and brand equity built over time, enticing consumers to choose the brand in a new market in which it has no previous history or experience.
#3. Multi-Brand
A multi-brand strategy implies that a business is marketing several products from the same market as competitors. This is one way to make sure that the business has more than one brand competing in one category and is more dominant amongst larger organizations, As a result, it secures more shelf space and limits competitors from making an entry.
#4. New Brand
Our final pillar of brand building strategy is the launching of a completely new brand where everything is different and unique. New logo, identity, guidelines, product offering, and new positioning. Therefore, this strategy can be employed in case the power of the existing brand is declining and it would like to maintain its market share or in case the current brand name would not be appropriate for the new product category.
Additionally, whether you are creating a new brand from scratch or undertaking a product line extension, you first need to ensure that your brand building strategy responds to customer needs. Secondly, you need to ensure that your brand elements are ready to represent the new development in an organic way that will guarantee new market share and grow your customer base.
Brand Building Importance
Brand branding importance is more versatile than you might think. On the outside, your brand may seem like it consists only of features such as logos and colors but your brand is actually the entire identity of your business hence your brand gives you personality.
Brand building importance is essential to encourage business growth because of the various ways it influences the company. Below are different reasons why you should consider brand building as part of your company’s marketing practice.
#1. Attracts More Customers
Brand building importance is highly effective in helping a company generate new customers. It creates a strong impression of a company making prospective customers want to affiliate with them. This is because they see the business organization as dependable and reputable. Brand building importance is a surefire way to create word of mouth that aligns with the company’s interest
#2. Branding Helps Build Trust
Trust from your audience is one of the most important things you can have as a business, but this isn’t always easy to gain. A business that’s missing key elements of branding will have an even harder time getting people to trust them.
Branding helps you show potential customers that you’re an established, credible business. You can use this to tell people very early on what they can expect from your business and potential customers will recognize that you put in the work to create your brand.
#3. Brand Building Boosts Employee Morale and Job Satisfaction
If an employee works for a business with a highly-regarded reputation, and they feel strongly about the business’ mission and values, they will take pride in what they do and feel more satisfied with their job. They will also likely praise the company and the work they do for their family and friends.
#4. Easy identification with New Products
With a base of customers who recognize and trust your brand, you effectively have an entire band of beta testers at your fingertips, ready to try out new product launches. That means you can test certain products and services with your already existing customers.
#5. Stronger Financial Performance
For decades, mental psychologists have conducted studies that prove that the stronger your brand is, the more likely social brand awareness becomes. In other words, the more eyes on you, the more likely you’ll sell.
#6. Branding Makes Diversification Easy
When buyers know that they can rely on you to deliver, it’s not hard to make their purchase from you again. Brand building importance gives you credibility and an edge over your competition. So introducing a new product or branching out becomes less risky than when you first started.
Brand Building Partnership Program
A brand building partnership program is a strategic brand partnership where two or more companies work together to create value. In essence, for a true strategic brand building partnership program to work, think about products or services that complement your own and seek out businesses that offer similar items to customers. You’ll have an easier time forming successful partnerships if you start with an aligned target audience. Let’s take a look at a few steps to an effective brand building partnership program,
When you think about connecting with other brands, find companies that sell an actual product. The reality is social media influencers have proven time and time again to be highly effective business partners for brands across all industries.
Send them your latest product and ask them to write a review to make sure your desired influencer and collaborator has an audience that would show interest in your product or service. There are plenty of marketing options to choose from when establishing an influencer partnership like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are full of influential social figures who would likely enjoy promoting your business.
#2. Establish Expectations
The next tip we want to talk about is setting expectations. As a business owner, the biggest mistake you can make when you start a brand building partnership program is failing to set expectations for both parties.
This is a common trend among new entrepreneurs who just landed their first deal. The excitement of securing a partner can lead to both groups getting ahead of themselves and signing a contract without establishing ground rules.
#3. Keep Track of Your Progress
Finally, we recommend keeping an eye on the progress of your partnerships. If you both decided that the goal is 50 conversions per month, keep track of your weekly and monthly sales and signups to see if you’re meeting the quota.
Use unique links for each partnership so you can effectively measure results over an extended period. If you’re tracking the progress of your contracts, you can make informed decisions about extending agreements and the direction of future campaigns.
#4. Personalize Your Outreach
Whether you’re contacting an influencer or an established business, your outreach can make or break the deal. The main thing to remember here is a little personalization goes a long way.
Before you write your pitch:
• Research everything you can about the brand.
•Evaluate top-rated content and make sure their ideas and values align with your own.
• Master the name of the editor or representative.
Types Of Brand Building Partnership Program
Here are the most common types of Brand building partner program
- Agent/broker partnership
- Affiliate Partnership
- Referrals Partnership
- Distributor Partnership
- Wholesaler/Retailer Partnership
Brand Building Book
When building your brand, you need to be concerned about much more than the product or service you provide because your brand is a tool through which your customers evaluate your identity, image, core values, and other company characteristics before they make contact with your products and services.
A brand building book is key to understanding the company’s values as it describes how the company presents itself and interacts with its customers. It may include a description of your logo – its shape and color, but also the color scheme, iconography associated with the firm, or even the tone of voice the firm uses to address clients.
What Is Included in a Brand Building Book?
A brand building book is a document that’s used to describe the brand identity of your company. It is a comprehensive guide in which you describe the look of your brand’s identity, including your logo, colors, fonts, typefaces, images, sounds, smells, and materials.
Best Brand Building Book
This list includes brand building book you need to know to create strong brands, from strategy, through design to marketing and more.
- Name Is Awesome
- Building A StoryBrand
- Power BrandMy ing
- The Brand Gap
- Brand Thinking
- What Great Brands Do
- Designing Brand Identity
- Identity Designed
- Logo Design Love
What Is an Example of Brand Building?
A brand is something that can make a customer feel anything. I think the best brands are the ones that give people something they don’t know they need yet. People didn’t know they needed it until a coffee company like Starbucks made it.
What Are the Four Steps of Brand Building?
- Determine who your intended audience is.
- Position your goods and company.
- Define the demeanor of your organization.
- Select a logo and a tagline.
What Are the Pillars of Brand Building?
Brand pillars are the main ideas on which a company is built. Purpose, positioning, personality, perception, and promotion are the five brand pillars.
Wrapping up…
So there you have it! You now have a better idea of why brand building strategy is important for your business. It gives your customers something to truly connect with. It’s what keeps people coming back for more, sets you apart from the competition, and turns one-time clients into dedicated ones with the aid of a brand building book.
Related Articles
- AFFILIATE PARTNERSHIP: Definition, Examples, and Agreement Templates
- SOCIAL MEDIA BRANDING: Meaning, Examples, Strategy & Guidelines
- General Partnership Definition: Taxes, Liability & Agreement
- WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA BRANDING: Meaning, Importance, Strategies & Guidelines
- BUSSER: Duties, Skills, Resume & Difference
References
- .forbes.
- .shopify.
- medium.
- publuu.
