Business Branding Strategies and Tips

Employing proper business branding strategies could spell the success for your business. Although it might be an intangible aspect of your business, it is basically what convinces people to buy or avail of your products or services. And when you garner enough sales, then only then can your business thrive.

What is a Branding Strategy?

A brand is not just a logo or a name, it represents your business identity. Therefore, it is a crucial part of the startup process for any business. Branding strategies are employed to provide the fundamental steps and recognize the valuable tools that will help create a strong business brand. In general terms, a strong brand is one that people recognize and believe to deliver good quality. Have you ever found yourself at the grocery choosing one product over the other because it is the more recognized or trusted brand?

It is therefore a branding strategy's objective to recognize what could turn your business into a trusted brand name. How can you make people trust your brand and its reputation? What should you do to communicate the objective and mission of your company? What is the message you are trying to send out to produce loyal customers? A sound business branding strategy will aim to find answers to these questions before you can establish a brand for your company that would excel in the market.

Create Name, Logo, or Website

Coming up with a name for your business goes hand in hand with creating a logo that will identify your company. When it comes to logos, always opt for something unique. Logos will be utilized in your advertising and marketing campaigns, so it must be well-recognized.

For beginners, think of a logo that will readily hint consumers about the nature of your business – such as whether you are in the food, automotive, or telecommunications business. Hence, choose images that are associated with the nature of your business and the products they will be used to represent.

Slogan or Tagline

Once you have the logo that you want, you can think of a slogan that will reinforce the message you are trying to communicate to the consumers. As long as you keep this part brief and straightforward, then this can be an effective branding tool for your business. This tagline will serve as an additional touch to the main message you are trying to give, thus giving you an edge over your competitors and highlighting the unique experience or service that consumers will be able to avail of.

One advantage that you can get with including a tagline is that it is not permanent, unlike the logo. Therefore, if your company wishes to employ a new marketing strategy, you can readily change your tagline to highlight this new marketing ploy. A tagline then opens up several opportunities to expand your marketing campaigns, as compared to the static nature of company logos because they are the ones more difficult to establish.

Colors and Images

As with logos, colors and images can be used to establish the identity of your business. Colors depict a corresponding set of emotions as well. Therefore, you need to carefully pick out exactly what type of color you are going to use in your logo in accordance with the image and personality of your business. Try to conduct a little bit of research about the different qualities of color types so you can determine exactly what best to use for your company.

Unique Services

When communicating your company brand into the market, highlight the services that only you can offer. If you can guarantee a service that none of your competition can, then you create an edge on your customers over the same businesses. Then, you can use that as a chief marketing strategy to draw more people into your business. An example of this would be a time guarantee on your delivery services, if you're in the food business.

Learning how to effectively employ these business branding strategies will help boost your company's campaign and be that much closer to your desired business success.

Basic Models Used For Branding Plan

Branding is a product of intense planning and conceptualization. To come up with innovative marketing ideas and an effective way to brand your products, you need to carefully laid out the steps you need to get there. Doing so will also enable you to take note of the vital aspects involved in the creation of a brand. Brand models have been formulated to create the framework needed to build an effective brand that will be able to withstand market trends and competition.

What is a Branding Model?

There are basic models utilized in the process of brand planning. Each of them will cover different scopes and aspects of the process to create a sound branding strategy. Aside from the ability to postulate methods for arriving at a specific brand idea, these models will also help businessmen understand the behavior of consumers in terms of their responses to a brand, which is helpful in adjusting old branding strategies or acquiring new ones.

All of these features are key in managing and reviewing brands, which are necessary steps that must be taken by any company in their branding efforts. These models are not directly linked but one does impact another.

Brand Positioning

This model involves your effort to create an image that will have its distinct position in the market. Firmly establishing your brand will help your target market to easily remember and and opt for your line of products. This is one aspect of your brand planning wherein you must focus on creating superior brands that will eliminate your competition. Here are steps you need to look into:

*This is the step wherein you begin to identify other brands you are competing against. Then, define the parameters of your own brand against your competition. This will enable you to focus your efforts.

*Next, your objective is to introduce attributes to your brand that will enable it to stand out from competition. You must also introduce elements into your brand that will produce in the mind of your consumers or target market the perceived quality of your brand.

*You must establish a slogan for your brand that will aim to reaffirm the position and values of your brand. It aims to articulate the message of the brand and what it promises to deliver to the consumers.

Brand Resonance

Once you're through the stage of creation and distinction placement in the market, your next step is to protect the loyalty of your consumers. To do that, you need to employ an efficient customer relation service and to provide a feedback system. This model follows from the initial steps laid out by the brand positioning methods. Now that have acquired target customers, your next aim is to strengthen the relationship between them and your brand. After all, majority of the business sales stem from repeat customers.

More than anything, this stage is where you must reinforce the messages initially conveyed by your brand. Hence, customers will remain satisfied with the level of performance and quality delivered by your brand. Are your methods consistent to the identity of the brand and its missions? Take into consideration the feedback of customers on your product and how you can build up on that relationship.

Brand Value Chain

This one is more focused on the financial impact of your branding efforts. The basic idea of this model is that the value of the brand consist in the customers, so that is where you should be focusing most of your branding strategies on.

Carefully combining these various models will provide a company a reliable perspective of the different areas involved in the marketing activity. Taking bringing all these branding steps into the formula will enable you to easily track progress or problem areas in the branding system.

The Difference Between Creative and Effective

Author: Dale Justice

Which is more valuable, a handful of gold, or a handful of salt? The gold sparkles with the promise of “the good life” and all it encompasses. The salt lies in your palm like so much dust. What’s the difference not readily seen?


Simply stated, the gold is very pretty, but you couldn’t survive without salt. Gold is very flashy and memorable, but devoid of life sustaining substance. So ask yourself, is your marketing communications memorably creative, or substantially effective? How can you tell the difference?

Not long ago, my spouse told me of a television commercial featuring several middle aged men obsessing over their hobby, restoring and racing Big Wheel tricycles. She found the spot very clever and funny. She admitted she had seen the spot a dozen or more times and never failed to be entertained. I asked who the advertiser was and what product they were promoting. She could not recall, even after a dozen or more exposures and a favorable impression of the material. Some days later I viewed the commercial and noted the product advertised was breakfast meats.


I do not understand the connection between sausage and adult males racing Big Wheel tricycles, nor was any connection attempted in the advertisement. Although the spot was certainly memorable for its creativity, the core objective of initiating change in the consumers buying behavior failed completely. Consumers were entertained, the marketer wins an award for creativity and perhaps goes on to direct music videos, and the advertiser receives no return for their marketing investment.


Effective marketing is both incredibly simple in concept yet complex in execution. Marketing is designed to initiate change in consumer behavior and disposition towards a product or service. This is accomplished by clearly communicating the benefits of the product with a precise call to action, and delivering the message to a qualified audience favorably disposed to purchase that exact product or service. The difficulty lies in differentiating your message from the estimated 3000 advertising messages each consumer is exposed to each day. It is this quest for memorability that mistakenly lures advertisers and professional marketers away from disciplined and effective communications, and into the entertainment business. And, its not just huge national advertisers succumbing to marketing messages obscured by disassociated plot lines and images. Local, home-grown companies are equally guilty.


I’ve observed dancing Santas to sell discount furniture and hillbillies tossing dynamite into lakes to catch fish used to sell furnaces. In each instance, the real message conveyed to consumers is one of desperation, “I’ll say or do anything to get your attention”. But is the goal of effective marketing communication to acquire the consumers’ attention to entertaining displays in print and broadcast, or to acquire their loyalty to a trusted brand that delivers value to their lives?


Communicating credibility creatively will not only achieve memorability, but will begin the branding process. One can be clever and even entertaining. But one should never lose sight of the core objective.

Article Source: /www.articlesbase.com/

About the Author:
Dale Justice is a Partner at Justice & Young, a Cincinnati public relations and marketing firm.

How Can Direct Mail be Used With Other Marketing Tools?

Author: Steven Sellwood

Direct mail is sent to businesses and consumers every day and is used by a very wide range of organisations and industries.


A mailing, often accompanied by a letter, in the post has become a proven and accepted way of targeting your audience, with consistent conversion rates of about 1-5%.


However many direct mail users don't realise just how much of a friend it can be to many other marketing methods and tools. And combining more than one marketing tool together in the same campaign can also reap bigger benefits and increased response rates.


The experts might call it ‘Integration' but to everyone else its just common sense - marketing activities work best when they are used to support and complement each other. Carried out in isolation, marketing activities just don't have the same impact or resonance with the target audience.


Here are just a few examples of how you could use direct mail alongside, before or after other marketing communication activities:


Before you exhibit at an event or exhibition, send out targeted invites to your stand to your own list of contacts, prospects and existing customer. Or rent and mail a mailing list of previous visitors from the event organisers to attract plenty of new business, especially if the mailing is combined with an offer or incentive.


After you return from exhibiting at an event or exhibition, use a direct mailshot to follow up on your new list of stand visitors, leads and prospects about a week or so later. Thank them for visiting your stand and ask if there's anything else you can help them with


Push new traffic to your website by mailing a list of prospects. One big advantage of this technique is that you can increase direct traffic to your site without having to worry about losing potential visitors to natural or paid search activity by your competitors. This strategy works equally well for gaining b2b leads online as it does for gaining b2c ecommerce sales.


Use direct mail to follow up on telephone or coupon enquiries you may have received as a result of above the line promotional activities such as press advertising, radio advertising, competitions or public relations. You may need to mail these lists several times over a period of time before getting a response.


When you are running a sales promotion or incentive campaign, perhaps in your own outlets or in retailers, make sure you also promote it with a mailing to potential or previous contacts and customers as well. This will help drive traffic to stores and ensure the success of your merchandising campaign.


Before you start a field sales or telemarketing campaign, do a mailing first to soften up your prospects and open doors. Depending on your market, you may also want to give recipients a chance to decline receiving a sales call in advance.


Likewise, after your telemarketing or direct selling campaign is over, follow up on your lukewarm prospects with another mailing - often it can take several contacts using different forms of media before a lead turns into a customer.

Article Source: www.articlesbase.com

About the Author:
Steve Sellwood is from selectabase.co.uk , leading UK suppliers of quality direct marketing lists for all uses, and for both business-to-business, and business-to-consumer campaigns. Selectabase also provide a range of affordable list cleaning services to keep your in house lists up to date and ready to use.