What Types of Branding Are Best For Your Business?

By Sharon Lee 

A strong brand gives you an edge over your competitors. 

Branding is not only about getting your prospects to select you over your competition, it’s also about getting your prospects to see you as the best provider of a solution to their problem. 

A strong brand is invaluable when you battle for customers every day. It's important to spend time investing in researching, defining, and building your brand. After all, your brand is the source of a promise to your buyers.

Branding includes a name, logo, a strong theme that affects the website, ads, social media, signage, label, packaging, or the brand identity program of a seller and the services or products. 

The objectives that good branding will achieve include:

• Building your credibility.
• Emotionally connecting your target buyers with your product or service.
• Motivating your prospects to buy.
• Establishing user loyalty.

Your brand is the sum total of many aspects of your business.

Building Brand Equity

The effectiveness of branding doesn't just happen before the purchase, it's about the life of the brand and the long-term experience it provides to buyers.

• Did the product or service perform as expected?
• Was the quality as good as promised or better?
• How was the customer service experience?

You can go a long way to creating a loyal customer if you can get positive answers to these questions.

And it’s important to realize that good branding not only creates loyal customers, but also loyal employees. It helps employees understand the purpose of the organization or the business—a strong brand gives your team something to believe in, something to stand behind.

If you are effective in creating a good brand, it will live within the hearts and minds of your customers and employees.

Good Design is Good Business

To build a successful brand you must understand the needs and wants of your prospects and customers.

This can be achieved by integrating your brand strategy through your company at every point of public contact—think of branding as the expression of who you are as a company or organization and what you offer. 

Start by answering the following statements:

• What is my brand’s intention?
• Does my brand reflect the company's objective?
• How does my brand (look and feel and content) engage with my customers?
• Does my brand create a need that it needs to be shared by others?
• Does my brand bring likability to my customers?

Good design is an essential component of effective branding. Good design creates freshness, attraction, monetization and it compels action. Without good design your brand will lack cohesion, power and sustainability.

Your color palette, imagery/iconography, typography, brand consistency, brand tonality, messaging, are some of the key design considerations that span all buyer touchpoints.

Specific design considerations include:

Your brand is the sum total of your buyers’ experiences and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some that you cannot.

Types of Branding

When creating your brand it is important to think about what type of branding you plan on utilizing. Online branding and offline branding refer to different strategies and channels used to build and promote a brand's identity and reputation.

Let’s look at the differences between them so that you know how best to use each one effectively for your company.

1. Online branding

• Online branding refers to the activities and efforts carried out on the internet to establish and promote a brand's image.
• It involves creating and maintaining a strong online presence through various digital platforms such as websites, social media, online advertisements, email marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO).
• Online branding allows for direct interaction with the target audience through online platforms, enabling real-time engagement and feedback.
• It provides the opportunity to reach a wider audience globally and target specific demographics through targeted online advertising.
• Online branding focuses on building brand awareness, enhancing brand loyalty, and driving online sales and conversions.

2. Offline branding

• Offline branding refers to the traditional marketing activities conducted outside of the online space to establish and promote a brand's image.
• It includes offline advertising methods such as print ads, billboards, television and radio commercials, brochures, flyers, packaging, and direct mail campaigns.
• Offline branding often relies on physical presence and traditional marketing channels to reach and engage with the target audience.
• Offline branding strategies are typically location-specific and can be effective in reaching local communities.
• Offline branding aims to build brand recognition and credibility through traditional marketing channels and in-person experiences.

Online branding, in essence, focuses on leveraging digital platforms and strategies to build and promote a brand's identity, while offline branding relies on traditional marketing channels and physical presence to establish and promote a brand's image.

Both online and offline branding strategies can complement each other and contribute to a comprehensive brand-building approach. Most established companies thrive to maintain the two types in equilibrium because they understand the importance of reaching different target audiences.

Conclusion

A brand can be viewed as both strategic and tactical.

Your brand serves as a guide to understanding the purpose of business objectives—it enables you to align a marketing plan with those objectives and fulfill the overarching strategy.

Defining and developing a brand takes expertise, care, and effort…but it will provide abundant benefits when done correctly.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end.

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