Choosing the Right Branding Approach for Your Business's Success

Your brand strategy is a crucial part of your business’s marketing efforts and overall success. 

A branding strategy is an actionable plan that outlines how you present your brand to customers. It includes information about how you communicate your unique value, mission, values, and vision to your audience. A branding strategy shapes customers’ perceptions of your brand and improves awareness and recognition.

A brand strategy differs from brand identity. Brand identity refers to the visual elements associated with your company. It includes tone, graphics, color palette, typography, and more. Meanwhile, branding strategy refers to how you use these elements to shape consumer perception.

9 Types of Branding Strategies to Build Your Company’s Reputation

Here are nine examples of branding strategy to help you identify the right option for your local business.

1. Corporate Branding

Corporate branding humanizes your brand in a way that your customers or your target market can relate to. A corporate branding strategy brings together several parts of your business—for example, it may combine aspects of your brand identity such as tone and voice, partnerships with other businesses, and even stances on public issues.  

Example: Apple

Apple’s corporate branding strategy highlights the company’s values of innovation, creativity, and imagination to create emotional connections with customers. 

2. Product Branding

Product branding focuses your efforts on creating a brand that anyone can recognize based on the product/service you sell. 

Example: Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has managed to make their infamous red cans known by people across the world. The red  has been at the center of their ads and commercials for years.

3. Service Branding

Service branding is similar to product branding, but it is for companies that offer services instead of products. With service branding, you want to highlight the benefits of your service for your consumers. Service branding is essential for consulting companies, law firms, airlines, insurance companies, banks, and any other business offering a service.

Example: Geico

Geico is one of the most prominent examples of branding for services. You think of Geico and immediately picture their gecko mascot and their brand promise that “15 minutes or less can save you 15% or more on car insurance.” The use of the gecko adds an element of humor and personality, helping the brand stand out.

4. Retail Branding

This type of branding is common among retailers. If you have a physical store, you will use music, displays, light fixtures, signage, and other physical elements to highlight your product and fit your brand image. Most retailers with physical locations also have digital locations. If that applies to you, make sure the brand imagery matches online and offline.

Example: Walmart

Walmart is a top example of retail branding, as all of its locations have consistent branding that you immediately associate with the chain. You will find the same branding on the company’s ecommerce site and in all of its online marketing campaigns.

5. Personal Branding

Personal branding is much more individual than the other types of branding strategies. It markets you as a person, highlighting your unique perspectives, talents, or capabilities. It is especially common among celebrities, influencers, politicians, and thought leaders.

Any professional, such as a doctor, lawyer, or even freelancer, will want to consider personal branding as well.

Example: Elon Musk

Elon Musk is a popular example of personal branding, as nearly everyone knows who he is and his ability to create brands. As soon as you think of Musk’s name, his Tesla brand likely comes to mind. He is also known for working incredibly long hours and being committed to his goals. Using Musk as an example of personal branding also shows how this brand building strategy can change over time as your goals and business change. After all, he has modified his personal branding to accommodate new ventures, such as buying Twitter.

For even more examples of personal branding, look at nearly any successful influencer. They all rely on personal branding to achieve success.

6. Geographical Branding

With geographical branding, you highlight a geographical area where your product or service is available. Importantly, it is exclusively available in this area. It is especially helpful for any local business. Geographical branding is also popular for hotels, tourist attractions, and even cities or countries.

Example: McDonalds

You can even see examples of this brand strategy from international companies that take a slightly different approach in various markets. McDonald’s is an excellent example of this, as its campaigns in each region or country vary based on food preferences and culture. You will find a very different marketing strategy, and even products, for McDonald’s stores in the United States and McDonald’s stores in Japan or other countries.

While geographical branding includes an element of culture, you can take it a step further with cultural branding. This strategy aims for an emotional connection. It is especially common among tourism companies and business-to-business companies.

7. Co-Branding

Co-branding occurs when several brands work together to offer a product or service. The co-branding identity is sometimes a completely new brand identity. Other times, it will be a combination of the brand identities of the two (or more) brands involved.

Example: Uber and Spotify

Most co-branding aims to improve brand awareness by reaching new target groups. As with any other partnership, it lets each brand involved reach the audience of the other brands.

For example, consider 2015’s “A soundtrack for your ride,” which saw Uber and Spotify working together. This co-branding effort let Uber customers play their Spotify playlists while in the car. The strategy was successful, with vast media attention and dramatically increasing Spotify’s monthly active user base.

8. Online Branding

You may also hear online branding called internet branding. This is a type of branding that combines various online content to show your company’s personality and offerings. The goal is to improve your company’s digital positioning. It can include channels such as social media, blogs, and websites.

Example: Starbucks

Starbucks is one of many examples of strong online branding. The company has a strong digital presence on all of the major social media platforms as well as a user-friendly website. You will also notice that Starbucks uses user-generated content, a very popular and effective online branding strategy, as it helps connect with consumers and build a sense of community.

9. Offline Branding

As the name implies, offline branding occurs in the real world, so to speak. It includes physical interactions, such as billboards, print ads, trade shows, and business lunches. Modern companies can’t use offline branding in isolation as so much of your audience is online. That being said, many industries will still benefit from some aspects of offline branding.

How to choose a brand strategy?

Now that you know what is branding strategy, how do you choose which one is right for your business? Remember that what is right for one company won’t necessarily be right for another. It depends on your location, business size, business type, and other factors. Any successful brand will evaluate a few key factors to come up with its unique brand strategy.

To decide which brand strategy makes the most sense for your brand, consider the following:

Business Goals

Start by considering your brand’s goals. Do you want to let consumers know about your values and social responsibility? Do you want to use shared cultural values to connect with consumers? Do you want consumers to associate your brand with a specific product or exceptional customer service?

Each of these will require a slightly different approach. In those situations, you would want to consider corporate branding, geographical branding, and product or service branding, respectively.

Target Audience

As with any other aspect of marketing and advertising, your target market or audience is a significant influence on the type of branding you should focus on. The best way to understand your target audience is to create user personas. Remember to include demographics, interests, likes, dislikes, pain points or challenges, goals, and more. You can even use the personas you already have for other aspects of marketing.

Once you have your personas, figure out which type of branding would be the most effective way to reach and engage each one. Pay particular attention to the preferences of your persona when selecting your strategy.

Industry and Competitors

Don’t be afraid to conduct competitor analysis. Determine what strategies your competitors use and evaluate how effective they are. Learn from your competitors’ mistakes instead of repeating them.

You also want to look at your competitors with an eye for what sets you apart from them. Then, figure out what branding strategy best highlights that difference, whether it is your corporate values, your products, your cultural connections, or something else.

Brand Identity

As you plan your brand strategy, keep your overall brand identity in mind. Think about key parts of your brand identity and which strategy would best present that to consumers. Think back to Chick-fil-A as an example of service branding. The company’s customer service is a crucial part of its brand identity and service branding effectively highlights this.

Choose Your Brand Strategy

The right brand strategy for your local business depends on your product line, buyer’s journey, target audience, and more.

No matter the branding strategy you choose, you will want to take advantage of tools to help you take your business to the next level. Podium lets you connect with your customers via the Inbox feature that puts all of your messages in one place, Webchat, and text messaging. Combine these with other tools from Podium to grow your business and put your brand strategy to good use.