Brand Development Strategies And How They Are Used

Organizations turn their products into world-renowned brands when people can recognize them from a logo or a tagline. A brand is the way a company is perceived by its target audience. Since brand name is intangible, it cannot be measured in terms of magnitude. However, it can be measured in terms of how much impact it is able to create in the market. Brand development strategies consist of a purpose, a vision, a mission, values, and also strategic objectives.

Every aspect of an organization helps in building a brand. A brand personality is all about the individualistic traits of an organization. People become associated with a particular brand due to various reasons. These may include quality of service, price, and many other factors that make the brand more powerful. Brand architecture is formed by a multitude of things. These include symbols, colors, and visual language that defines a particular brand. The most significant feature of a brand is its logo and its tagline. There is a lot of work required to generate even a single headline for a brand. Therefore, brand development strategies take up a lot of time and resources of any company, and so as the brand grows it becomes very important that the company is managing digital assets used for the marketing of the brand properly.

Steps involved in defining brand development strategies

Some of the useful steps in creating a brand strategy include:

Understanding how you want to grow your business

Before companies can start building their brand, they need to identify how they will grow their business. This includes planning how they will expand in terms of a number of clients and amount of revenue. Whether it will be an organic growth or will it come from other acquisitions. If the vision is clear, a company will be able to develop its brand strategy in no time.

Identifying a target audience

For companies to develop effective brand development strategies, they need to narrow down their target audience. Brands can have a stronger appeal when they are targeted towards the right individuals. A printer manufacturer can create a strong impact on an audience that makes heavy use of paper. Therefore, to create a strong brand image, companies in this sector should create logos and taglines that can help it reach the target audience in the most effective manner.

Detailed research

A strong brand is based on a detailed research about different market segments, and consumer behavior. It helps you to understand your client’s perspective and their priorities. Doing thorough research about the target audiences allows companies to develop branding strategies that provide maximum return on investment.

Messaging strategy

Once a company has done its research, it can then start relaying its messages to potential clients including business partners, and employees. While the core positioning of the brand remains the same, each of the target audiences will be interested in a different type of message. Hence, while building brand development strategies, companies should communicate with partners as per their individual requirements.

Brand development strategies help companies to create a strong perception about a product or service in their client’s minds. These perceptions about a product or service then derive consumer behavior to purchase that branded product or service. Organizations may sometime shy away from brand development strategies since they require a great deal of investment in terms of time and money. However, a successfully run branding strategy can provide a high return on investment, and help businesses grow at quite a rapid pace.

Brand Ownership

To own a brand means to reflect its values in every part of the company. On paper, the brand belongs to the company owners or sole proprietors. However, it is the duty of every individual in a corporation to reflect the brand image in their work. A financial institution should provide the same level of service at the counter that it provides to any priority banking customer. These types of organizational values demonstrate that standards are maintained throughout the organization and that it is a reliable brand.

Different types of brand development strategies

A branded house strategy

In this type of branding strategy, the main brand overarches all the sub-brands of the company. The focus of a branded house strategy is to promote the umbrella brand under which there are smaller brand names. This strategy is usually cost-effective and easier to implement.

House of brand strategy

This brand strategy helps companies in marketing each of their products under a separate brand name. This is very useful to create constructive competition amongst different items of the same company. A great example of a house of brand strategy is Kool-Aid and Tang which belong to the same company but are marketed under different brand names.

This is one of those types of brand development strategies that allow companies to grow their businesses organically and use sales data from one product to implement better strategies in the other.

Umbrella Branding

In this type of brand management strategy, a corporation may have multiple brand families under one roof. A fast-moving consumer goods supplier may have a different brand family for detergents, and they may have another brand family for shampoos. In this scenario, the organization would brand their product families in such a way that each group under the umbrella can be identified by its own brand.

Branding by attitude

Using this brand management strategy, organizations emphasize the attitude that a particular product or service carries in its brand. Nike, for instance, is famous for its tagline as ‘just do it’, similarly, Starbucks uses the quote as ‘daily inspiration’ for its brand development strategies.

Private label branding

These types of brand development strategies are quite famous at large grocery stores or supermarkets. Shopping outlets like Safeway and Walmart have developed products of their own. For these large-scale supermarkets, it is not difficult to brand their own private labels and place them on the shelves. These private label products are sometimes able to compete with some of the best producers in the market.

Brand development strategies are a great way for organizations to create a strong and positive impression in the eyes of their customers. In order to make sure that they receive the maximum return on their investment, corporations and small businesses need to do thorough homework before defining their brand development strategies.