Taking the time to develop a winning brand strategy is a crucial objective to help improve your organization.
In this post, I’ve collected the essential steps you need to take to upgrade your brand strategy, as well as concrete tips you can utilize right away.
Let’s get started!
What is a Brand Strategy?
A brand strategy is an actionable plan that explains how a company will build rapport with customers, differentiate itself from competitors and create a strong brand identity.
It’s a strategic plan for setting clear directions and achieving long-term goals as your organization evolves.
Branding is a way to bring your organization’s intangible aspects, like its authenticity, personality, reputation and unique selling proposition, into one neat concept.
You can understand strategy by comparing and contrasting it with a related concept, tactics.
Many people conflate tactics and strategies with each other. This conflation leads to confusing branding strategies with branding tactics.
4 Types of Branding Strategies
Now that we have explored an overview of brand strategy, we will move to the four most important types of branding strategies you need to know.
Here’s an infographic to summarize the four branding strategies. Keep scrolling to read about each brand strategy in more detail.
Type #1: Brand Extension
The first type of brand strategy we will explore is a brand extension. When you use the brand extension strategy, you are expanding your existing brand into new product categories.
The strategy’s essence is to expand your reach by moving into new markets on your existing brand’s strength.
When you extend into new categories, they can be related and unrelated to your current category.
Nike is an excellent example of a company that expands its reach through brand extension. They have grown from shoes into products as diverse as sunglasses and golf balls.
Type #2: Line Extension
The second type of brand strategy we will explore is line extension.
In the brand extension strategy, you expand your brand’s presence in a new product category. The line extension strategy does something similar by increasing your reach inside your existing product category.
A great example of this takes place in the creation of new cell phone products. When a company like Apple creates a phone with a larger screen to appeal to a larger segment of customers, they use the line extension strategy.
Type #3: Derived Branding
The third brand strategy we will explore is the derived branding strategy.
While the first two strategies have covered how to expand your brand as a strategy of improvement, this strategy is about breaking things down.
Your product or service will likely include some key components that come together to deliver value for your customers. The derived branding strategy is when you isolate a particular feature and give it a separate branded identity.
An example of this is the consumer electronic company Intel. Their chips are in many PC products. Instead of branding Intel computers as a standalone entity, Dell chooses to give a component of the PC its own brand identity.
Type #4: Individual Branding
The fourth type of brand strategy we will explore is individual branding.
This strategy involves emphasizing personal characteristics, values and accomplishments that executives or team members have that highlight your brand’s mission.
It’s beneficial for executives and leadership to use their platforms to amplify brand values. Plus, it’s easier for people to connect with people.
Essentials for a Winning Brand Strategy
Now that we have reviewed the four types of brand strategy you can use, we will discuss some essentials for creating a winning brand strategy.
Essential #1: Employee Buy-In
The first essential that is crucial for you to dial in with your branding strategy is employee buy-in. Having an authentic approach to branding is the most sustainable way to create an effective employee buy-in strategy.
One way to create more authenticity in your branding is to link your forward facing company culture with your outward facing brand voice.
The most critical step in reinforcing this link is clearly articulating the promises you make to customers and your company’s underlying values.
This clarity is a great way to make sure your employees feel aligned with your brand. If they resonate with your company’s values and mission statement, and you articulate the branding strategy’s importance, you are sure to be on the same page.
Whether you are already clear on your company values or need to do some work articulating them for your branding strategy, you can ask the following questions.
- Who is your ideal customer?
- How do you create value for them?
- What is your vision?
- What are your values?
- What does your company hope to be in the world?
Essential #2: Consistency
The second essential for winning brand strategy is brand consistency. Brand consistency is the regular delivery of content that aligns with your values and brand strategy over time.
This consistency means that your audience can expect exposure to your key messages and core offerings regularly. Brand consistency means you always deliver core messages with consistent visual branding and other regular brand elements.
Easy ways to achieve brand consistency include creating a brand style guide and ensuring you deliver messages in a similar tone across time. Another way to craft consistent branded content is to use custom dynamic fields that cover branded messages that you can use across different Visme projects.
Essential #3: Lean into Emotional Benefits
Emotional branding is the process of creating a relationship between an audience and a brand by provoking their emotions. We can achieve this by creating a brand that appeals to your ideal customer’s emotional state and aspirations.
The work of Marc Gobé is a good reference point for emotional branding.
He created the emotional branding concept and detailed it in his book The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People.
The philosophy is based on the observation that connections occur on an emotional level in relationships between brands and people.
Emotional branding is powerful. It focuses on the audience and gives them the chance to control what type of content or product they get. They’re in charge. Wondering how to implement this in your brand?
You can see a great example from this company that offers simple meal planning. It allows the customer to customize a meal plan to their taste. They can include/exclude ingredients and choose a portion size that will suit the family, creating a deeper connection with their customer.
Essential #4: Take a Flexible Long-Term Approach
Getting the most out of your branding strategy means taking a long-term approach.
Do not be afraid of making efforts now that may take a while to materialize. Branding is a long-term investment that will pay dividends if you continue to improve.
There is an important balance to strike between long-term planning and short-term flexibility. It’s crucial to leave space in your branding strategy to adjust to real world feedback as it arrives.