The Basics of Branding to Get Ahead

The truth is this: branding has existed almost since the beginning of time, but brands benefited greatly once technology started evolving. These days, branding has an updated definition and new practices that can help a business become a legitimate brand, yet we all must start somewhere, and what better way than to discuss the basics of branding?  

Thus, in this article, we will discuss the concept of branding, what it does and does not include, how it works, and what it means precisely. So, stick with us and find practical tips on making your business gain instant recognition among your consumers.  

What is Branding?

At its core, branding is a group of practices that shape users’ perceptions of a company. Usually, branding involves building a well-defined strategy to help potential customers easily recall a specific business over competitors.      

Branding goes beyond visuals and communication, gathering several company characteristics and guiding them toward one common goal or idea. According to Wally Olins, a British branding consultant, a brand is built based on 4 vectors: 

• Behavior;
• Products;
• Communication;
• Brand environment.  

How Do You Define a Brand?

A brand is a concept built through a close relationship between tangible elements such as name, logo, general communication, and, most importantly, consumer perception. Therefore, a brand consists of various marketing concepts that, when put together, can help consumers easily recall a specific company and distinguish it from others that sell similar products.      

If done properly, a business brand can generate significantly more revenue and help a particular business maintain, if not increase, its popularity in the industry. Thus, it is frequently protected in legal matters, ensuring the business that nobody can use its products or name without permission.

But let’s get more into details!

How Branding Works?  

Branding is usually built based on a well-developed strategy. And the main reason is that creating a strong brand has to follow multiple goals.    

Just like when someone is trying to build a business, marketers should ask themselves a series of questions to know where to start with their branding strategy. Here are some of the most important things you should think of:    

• What does your business offer?    
• Who are your potential customers?    
• What needs are you fulfilling?    
• What differentiates you from other similar businesses?    
• Why should consumers believe in you and your products or services?    

While you may have asked yourself these questions when building your company, they are also essential to include in your branding strategy.     

Branding aims to bring a high level of authenticity to a business, a significant increase in customer numbers, and many more long-term benefits. As we mentioned before, branding is a group of practices that, when combined, form a company’s identity.     

You can think of branding as a puzzle where the pieces are still white. A customizable puzzle, let’s say. 

First, you should decide what to paint on your puzzle. Then, you must paint one piece at a time while ensuring the pattern and color palette match the previous pieces. Afterward, all you have to do is build the puzzle.     

But what should you draw on each piece of the puzzle?  

Types of Branding  

There are various types of branding that marketers can choose from. Depending on what they want to create a brand for, they can choose the best option for them. 

Personal Branding   

Personal branding suits freelancers, VIPs, and individuals who want to be known to a certain audience. One advantage of personal branding is that people can leverage their popularity to increase revenue.     

Perhaps one of the most illustrative personal branding examples is Elon Musk. Through his extravagance and initiative, he has built up a worldwide following and promoted Tesla and his other initiatives more effectively than any marketing strategy could have.

Before him, Steve Jobs became known as a “reality distortion field” thanks to his charisma and emotional intelligence that helped him sell new consumer technology concepts.

Product Branding   

Product branding may be one of the most popular types of branding. It implies branding a specific product to shape how consumers see it. The main purpose of product branding is to acquire suitable customers for that specific product.     

Perhaps the most well-known case of product branding comes from Apple. Yes, we’re talking about the iPhone. Even when the first iPhone was launched, it was not to be confused with an iPod, just like you wouldn’t confuse it with an iPad, although the names are different. 

Now, the iPhone is the most popular luxury smartphone. It maintains its brand positioning not only through advanced software and hardware but also through price. Thanks to that, the iPhone generates around half of Apple’s revenue.

Service Branding   

Service branding’s main purpose is to generate trust among potential customers. It is a more complex process than product branding and focuses on delivering a positive experience to those using a specific service.

If we’ve mentioned iPhones, we must also mention the iCloud services.

One of the most praised and well-known Apple services is iCloud. The cloud service effectively creates a digital environment, allowing users to connect Apple devices to view, modify, and edit the same content and information without trouble.

Corporate Branding   

Corporate branding focuses on the success and popularity of an entire company. It involves many marketing tools, such as the company’s products, employees, name, and other things related to the company.     

Corporate branding primarily focuses on maintaining a good reputation for the entire company. To do that, people must ensure that everything added to their brand, be it a new product, campaign, or employee, does not change or affect consumers’ perception of the company.     

For example, Apple has consolidated its luxury tech products brand. They have worked hard and innovated their tech products to offer their target audience an ecosystem that cannot be replaced. The company innovated so much that it pushed the technology paradigm toward user-friendly design, portability, and speed. 

Where Can You Deliver a Branding Strategy?  

Online Branding  

Online branding refers to how a company or an individual communicates and establishes its brand online. It includes building a website, establishing a social media presence, and constantly delivering new and relevant content. It is one of the most essential and highly used branding types. 

Offline Branding  

Offline branding differs slightly from online branding, but they follow the same goals to some extent.   

From shop signs to roll-ups and interior design, offline branding includes elements such as in-person meetings or the company’s prints.    

For instance, food companies need to choose their packaging wisely. Packaging is part of a customer’s experience and significantly contributes to how they perceive the brand.     

The Basics of Branding  

However, besides the visuals, in defining your brand’s identity, you should also consider the tone you will use when communicating with potential customers or even the customer service experience you will provide for consumers. All these factors are essential for customers to recall your brand easily.    

Furthermore, while starting your branding journey, you may want to consider the 3 Cs of branding: clarity, consistency, and constancy.  

Clarity  

A trusted brand always focuses on conveying its offerings to its target audience. It’s essential to ensure that your clients understand the product or service and what to expect from your brand.  

Let’s take Volvo, for example. The Volvo Group is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of trucks, buses, construction equipment, and marine and industrial engines. But to the general consumer, Volvo is known for offering the safest cars. 

Consistency  

Besides saying what you do, do what you say.  

When trying to build and increase the popularity of a brand, it is essential to be consistent.  

A product promoted for a certain quality that the target audience can easily confirm will usually increase brand awareness.     

Continuing with Volvo, the brand has always focused on the safety its cars provide. Regardless of Volvo’s new launches, the company still emphasizes safety in its advertising, and even today, the brand is recognized as an epitome of vehicle safety. 

Constancy  

To maintain a well-established brand, a company must deliver the same quality standard to each customer.  

For Volvo to become the epitome of vehicle safety, it wouldn’t have been enough to have produced the safest cars once. This is the one brand principle Volvo has stayed with for decades, advancing its safety features as technology evolved. 

If you didn’t know, Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin developed the modern three-point seat belt used in every vehicle. Since then, Volvo Cars has also developed the Side Impact Protection System (SIPS). 

The Strategic Triangle   

Besides clarity, consistency, and constancy, there are some other Cs you may want to consider when building a brand. Kenichi Ohmae, a Japanese consultant, defined a business model called “The Strategic Triangle” or “The 3 Cs of Brand Development.” This concept focuses on the company, the customer, and the competition.    

Ohmae’s Strategic Triangle emphasizes what we have already mentioned: 

• Focusing on your customers;  
• Promoting your company wisely and consistently; 
• Differentiating yourself from competitors.  

However, according to Kenichi Ohmae, the 3 Cs should be constantly balanced, which will benefit a brand the most.    

So, a company should not only focus on overtaking its competitors, increasing the number of customers, or maintaining its popularity. Nonetheless, it should find the best way to achieve these 3 goals simultaneously and moderately while ensuring it does not damage those around it, be they employees, customers, or competitors.     

The Basic Branding Strategy  

Branding strategies should always be adapted to a company’s needs. Every business is different, and while some may need a complex and extensive branding strategy, others can succeed with just minor changes.    

However, according to Wally Olins, regardless of the company you must include in a branding process, your strategy should follow at most seven steps. In one of his books, “The Brand Handbook,” Wally Olins discusses four main steps every company should consider when building a basic branding strategy. 

1. Research, Analysis, and Strategic Recommendations  

The first step everyone should complete is to discuss the branding program with the whole team involved and plan everything in detail. Afterward, a company should conduct multiple interviews that can be centered on the following topics:   

• The size of the industry the company activates in, how it progresses over time, and how it affects other fields;   
• Basic characteristics of the company, such as size, market share, profitability, competitiveness, or the quality of the products;   
• The brands, activities, and divisions of the company;   
• How others see the company.   

To give some answers to the questions above, the team can conduct internal and external interviews, as well as workshops. Furthermore, branding consultants can conduct several types of audits so that they can get a better understanding of how the company is considered on the market. Usually, 5 types of audits would help a branding team, and they focus on communication, behavior, visual identity, brand architecture, and competitors.    

After completing multiple interviews, workshops, and audits, the branding team can discuss their results. Based on their results, they can start developing the branding process.    

2. Development   

The second step of a basic branding strategy focuses on 3 main topics:    

• Whether the company should experience a behavioral change and how it should do so, if needed;   
• How the brand architecture should change;   
• How the name or visuals should change.   

The branding team can decide what changes should be made to conduct an efficient branding process based on the company’s goal, current state, and research results.    

Thus, while some companies must change their behavior to communicate better inside the organization or with other partners, shareholders, or customers, others should change their visual identity. The results gathered during interviews, workshops, and audits will be critical here.    

3. Launch  

Launching the branding program is an excellent way of showing everyone how the new brand will look and act on the market. To do that, the branding team can focus on four launches:

• Internal (for employees);
• Company partners;
• Dealers;
• External.   

Each launch should focus on telling the story of the new brand. It should also include each part at a time so that everyone feels included in the branding process regardless of their role in or for the company.  

4. Implementation  

The last step of the branding process involves implementing the plan that was developed before. To do that, the branding team can work on various parts:   

• Brand specifications – they can include the logo, colors used in the visuals, tone of voice, basic presentation principles, how the teams should communicate inside the company, and many more;   
• The center of the brand – consisting of a web page available for every user, it can help to create a community around the brand and offer valuable information about it;    
• The brand book – this branding tool has to tell a story about the brand so that everyone who reads it can understand the core principles of the company;  

Final Thoughts  

Branding helps shape users’ perceptions of a company. While logos, slogans, taglines, or products are often associated with a brand, they do not build it. Instead, they are a part of the brand identity. However, brands help shape customers’ perceptions of a particular business.     

Branding implies building a complex strategy and improving it constantly. While working with the basics of branding, marketers can focus on some concepts, such as the 3 Cs of Branding (Clarity, Consistency, and Constancy) or The Strategic Triangle (Customer, Company, and Competition).     

A basic branding strategy can be divided into 4 steps: research, development, launch, and implementation.