Arek Dvornechuck
Branding Expert
10 Different Types of Brand Strategies
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I specialize in the development of brands—from brand strategy & identity, to web design, motion and beyond.
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If you’re wondering about the types of brand strategies that most businesses and companies use to promote their products or services—you’re in the right place.
What are the different types of brand strategies?
Branding is more than just one action, such as designing a logo.
It's a network of interrelated behaviors aimed at building a solid reputation and brand identity.
It is important to understand the various kinds of branding approaches and how they affect your target audience.
Note that different types of strategies are effective for various types of businesses.
Defining your brand identity is the best place to start when determining the proper brand strategy.
Because a good brand strategy helps you create a strong brand, defines who you are as a business, and focuses on your long-term goals, understanding branding is essential.
However, with so many branding strategies to select from, it can be difficult to choose one that is a suitable fit for your brand.
If you’re interested in getting to know the different types of brand strategies, check out my list of 10 brand strategy types.
The first brand strategy type on my list is often used by famous and popular people in the industry, which is personal branding.
The art of promoting a brand using one’s popularity and reputation.
This type of branding is commonly associated with celebrities and public figures such as movie stars, social media influencers, and other well-known individuals.
They use their fame to introduce and market their brand to the wider population.
Because they already have a solid reputation and a strong social presence, they are using it to help their business become known as well.
Who could blame them? If I were famous, I would use my popularity to promote my brand as well.
Personal branding is one of the smartest strategies to develop a brand identity, and Elon Musk is the best example of this
Elon Musk is the CEO of Tesla and the founder of SpaceX, an American aerospace company.
He has millions of admirers all over the world who are eager to buy whatever product he promotes.
And, because he is a well-known and reputable individual, he leverages personal branding to raise $1 million dollars by selling branded Boring Company baseball caps.
It should be noted, however, that creating a personal brand does not require being exceedingly renowned and wealthy.
Even if you own a tiny firm or a start-up company, you can benefit from personal branding.
To be able to construct your own brand, you must first identify your specific purpose and then make a strategic plan for promoting yourself as an expert.
Consistency and persistence are all that is required, and everything will undoubtedly pay off, and your brand will begin to stand out from the crowd.
Another type of brand strategy on my list and probably one of the best-known is corporate branding.
The use of a company’s good reputation to build a strong brand identity.
Unlike personal branding, which uses an individual's popularity to market their brand, corporate branding, on the other hand, uses the company's popularity to build a brand.
This type of brand strategy influences what you can charge as a company as well as your target market.
To give you a detailed explanation of how corporate branding works, I will use the brands Levi's and H&M as a perfect example.
Have you ever wondered why those two brands have totally different pricing even though they’re selling the same product?
They both have products like clothes, footwears, and jeans, but you will notice that Levi’s is offering the products at a higher price than H&M.
The simple explanation for this is that Levi’s built their brand identity as one of the most popular manufacturers of luxurious products.
That is why, despite the fact that it is much more expensive than any other brand, people continue to buy it from them because of the reputation that they have already established.
However, H&M has more of a reputation for providing good clothing at an affordable price.
H&M on the other hand, targeted people who can’t afford on purchasing luxurious clothing but still want a good quality product.
The aspects of a corporate brand might differ based on the kind of firm you're seeking to develop.
This might entail developing a user persona or target audience to help them understand who they're trying to attract.
Once you've identified a target consumer, you can utilize branding tactics to create a voice and image that appeals to that individual.
Just like corporate branding, this third type of brand strategy is related to it since they both require the understanding of their customers for them to build a successful brand.
It influences consumers' perceptions of a company's products.
Product branding focuses on customers' pain points and needs, and aims to position their product as a solution to their customers' demand.
The process will start by knowing your customers and their needs, followed by creating a solid strategic plan to comply with those needs.
The perfect example that I can give you to further understand how product branding works is a particular product in the market, which is Oreo cookies.
It was originally started in US but its parent company, which is Kraft, decided to take advantage of the successful cookie market in China.
In 1996, Kraft took the Oreo to China, and using the same branding, images, and ingredients, the introduction of Oreo cookies to Chinese people was unsuccessful.
The company of Oreo therefore communicated with Chinese customers, and they discovered that these customers have a misconception that cookies are too sweet and expensive products.
By that way, the company clearly understands why the first launch of their cookies failed.
What Oreo did is that they relaunch their cookies in China, but this time, they reduced the sugar content and they made a smaller packet size, which makes them more affordable.
Fortunately, their relaunched was successful and because of that, the company learned from their experience.
To sum it all up, product branding is often based on a company's corporate brand and an organization's knowledge of its target audience.
The objective is to link the appropriate product to the right audience in order to increase sales.
Service branding is somehow similar to personal branding since it focuses on building the image of certain people and their skills as a strategy.
Characterized by the need to maintain a consistent level of service delivery.
However, rather than concentrating on a single person, you consider the service your entire team can provide to clients.
The experience you create with everything from your support strategy to your online experience is highlighted by service branding.
Because service branding focuses on what you do rather than how you seem, the opportunity here rests in what you can really provide your audience.
Because of the digital age's progress, consumer feedback and word of mouth have a significant influence on your business.
You must guarantee that you provide a consistent experience across all platforms so that your clients can back up your claims about what you can achieve.
Since there is a lot of competition among brands nowadays, you must excel in providing high-quality customer services as well as building a good relationship with your customers to gain their trust and loyalty.
The fifth brand strategy on my list is considered unique since it combines an experience, a product, and a corporate identity.
A brand strategy that translates to a retail enterprise.
Retail branding is a strategy that takes a brand concept and applies it to a retail organization.
The "products" of a retailer are his outlets, which can be sold similarly to a brand-named object.
A retail brand is then a collection of the retailer's shops that all have a distinct name, symbol, logo, or combination of these elements.
Retail branding can be challenging because each store may strive for a different outcome.
Apple is a well-known example of retail branding, and their stores frequently include extraordinary architectural works of art.
The aesthetic design of the store emphasizes the importance of good design in the company's products.
However, Amazon generally doesn’t have much of a “retail” branding presence because the majority of products are shipped around the world from warehouses.
Online branding, also known as internet branding, consists of creating a social media identity.
Refers to how you position yourself or your business on the internet.
It includes promoting your brand on social media platforms and absolutely everything that happens on the internet under your brand's name.
Websites, Google, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, and other online marketing channels are used to develop a person's or brand's online identity.
This approach helps the brand, products, or services reach more potential clients by increasing their online visibility.
Optimizing your online presence is critical if you own a business, e-commerce site, or brand.
By building a brand online, you’ll be able to improve brand recognition and repute.
Online branding is also a brand management method that leverages internet platforms to place a brand in the target market.
As the online platform evolves, internet marketing channels have become a way to expand one's online identity.
The internet may benefit every business area, regardless of its specialism, and that’s why most companies today choose to expand their brands online.
In contrast to the one listed above, offline branding is a type of brand strategy that doesn’t use the internet or social media influence to promote a brand.
A type of brand strategy that is done away from the internet.
It involves all marketing methods used before the internet, like handing out business cards and scheduling meetings with potential clients.
You can also employ offline branding through television and billboards to promote your brand.
Even though we are currently in the age of digital technology, some brands still use this type of brand strategy since it has been proven effective.
Furthermore, if you choose to use an offline brand strategy for your firm, there are some ideas for offline marketing campaigns.
First and foremost, you can do direct mailing in which you can target customers anywhere they are.
Another thing you can do for offline branding is to conduct seminars where you can demonstrate your industry experience.
You'll also get the opportunity to network and make personal connections.
And lastly, the most popular offline brand strategy is by using television commercials and advertisements.
This strategy still allows you to promote your business to a large audience, but it does so in a different way.
Another type of brand strategy on my list is co-branding, which is a branding collaboration involving at least two companies.
A marketing approach involving many brand identities on a product or service.
Brand strength, awareness, positive connotations, and cachet are combined to attract customers to pay a premium for co-branded goods.
Each brand in a strategic alliance contributes its own identity through logos, brand identifiers, and color schemes.
In addition to gaining new customers, co-branding helps businesses save money and improve their brand image.
Manufacturers of electronics and automobiles utilize co-branding to generate synergies based on the strengths of each brand.
In short, co-branding tries to improve market share, income, and customer awareness.
Companies must decide whether co-branding might benefit customers accustomed to a single name with a recognized product identity or if it will alienate them.
However, while collaborating with another brand can benefit a firm, there are also drawbacks, so companies should be careful in choosing their co-branding partners.
This type of brand strategy may be a little confusing for others, but it is actually existing today.
The expectation that your product alone will attract customers.
A number of companies have successfully pursued "no-brand" strategies by producing packaging that imitates generic-brand simplicity.
"No brand" branding can be regarded as a sort of branding because the absence of a brand name draws attention to the goods.
"Tapa Amarilla" or "Yellow Cap" in Venezuela during the 1980s is a perfect example of a no-brand strategy.
It was identified only by the color of this cleaning products company's cap.
No-brand branding is sometimes known as "minimalist branding," in which this strategy thinks that your product is sufficient to attract your customer's interest.
Additionally, this type of brand strategy highlights affordable, high quality goods and demonstrates that consumers do not have to pay any more than required for branded products.
As the last type of brand strategy on my list, I decided to include cultural branding as it's like geo-branding but without the boundaries.
Shows a lifestyle similar to the brand's target market.
Through cultural brand building, companies develop a positive common identity and reputation for people living in a cultural subgroup.
A place's location influences its people's culture, therefore, cultural and geographic branding go hand in hand.
Just like the no-branding strategy, it stresses economical, quality food and shows consumers that branded food isn't necessary.
For example, if you want to attract the attention of patriotic Americans, you may use flag colors on your package.
Cultural brand strategy is the link between creativity and strategy that can help companies, campaigns, and creative work become culturally famous.
These innovative implementations avoid traditional marketing value propositions and categorical benefits in favor of positioning brands.
It can sometimes be used to address and resolve unique cultural issues in a social environment while also benefiting from them.
To achieve their objectives, many businesses employ several types of brand strategies.
Finding strategies that fit your brand is critical for your company to achieve its objectives.
By learning more about your brand and the goals you want to achieve, you may choose the right brand strategy for any sort of business.
Different branding techniques work in different ways, but they all aim to deepen your relationship with your audience and increase the likelihood of loyalty.
Knowing which types of branding strategies to consider while developing your identity is essential for effective growth.
I hope this list that I created helps you to further understand how different branding works as well as give you an idea of which one will suit your brand.
Did I miss something?—Leave a comment below.
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I'm a branding expert and graphic designer based in NY. I specialize in the development of brands: brand strategy, identity & web design. Need help with your project?—Get in touch
