Brand Strategy 101: 7 Essential Elements of a Corporate Branding Plan (2023)

Just like an architect draws a blueprint before starting construction, you need to develop a branding strategy for your business.

Strategic branding helps you stand out from your competition and build customer loyalty.

In this article, you'll learn all about branding methods and the essential elements of a branding strategy you need to build a brand that will stand the test of time.

(We'll get into that in a moment.)

A well-defined and executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a business and is directly linked to consumers' needs, emotions and competitive environments.

First, let's clear up the biggest misconception about branding strategy: Your brand isn't just your product, logo, website, or name.

Your brand is all that and more: it doesn't feel tangible. Your brand is that elusive emotion that separates strong brands from forgotten brands.

To objectively understand a subjective problem that many marketers consider more of an art than a science, we've broken down seven essential components of a comprehensive branding strategy that will help keep your business relevant for decades to come.

Elements of a brand strategy include:

1. Purpose

While it is necessary to understand what your company promises when defining your brand positioning, it is more important to know why you get up and go to work every day. In other words, your purpose is more specific in that it serves as a differentiator between you and your competitors.

How can you define the purpose of your company? AfterBusiness strategy expert, the purpose can be seen in two ways:

• Functional:This concept focuses on success ratings related to immediate and business reasons, i.e. the purpose of the company is to make money.
• Intention:This concept focuses on success in terms of being able to make money and do good in the world.

While making money is important to almost every business, we admire brands that emphasize their desire to achieve more than just profitability, like IKEA:

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IKEA's vision is not just to sell furniture, but "to create a better everyday life". This approach attracts potential customers and demonstrates your commitment to providing value beyond the point of sale.

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Consider this example as you define your company's purpose. While making money is a priority, acting on that concept alone does little to differentiate your brand from others in your industry.

Our advice? Dig a little deeper. If you need inspiration, look at the brands you admire and see how they express your mission and vision.

2. Consistency

The key to consistency is to avoid talking about things that don't relate to or enhance your brand.

Added a new photo to your business photo.Pages on Facebook? What does it mean for your company? Does it align with your message or was it just something funny that would frankly confuse your audience?

To give your brand a platform to stand on, you need to make sure your message is consistent. Ultimately, consistency contributes to brand awareness, which drives customer loyalty. (No pressure right?)

Let's look at a great example of consistencyCoca Cola. As a result of their commitment to consistency, all elements of the brand's marketing work in harmony. This has helped it become one of the largestwell-known brands in the world.

Even on the surface of your social media accounts, your brand consistency is very clear on things like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn:

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To avoid potential clients struggling to piece together the disparate pieces of your business, consider the benefits of creating a style guide. A style guide can cover everything from tone of voice to color scheme to positioning of specific products or services.

If you take the time to define and agree on these considerations, your brand as a whole will benefit.

3. Emotions

Customers are not always rational.

How else would you explain to the person that you paid thousands of dollars more for a Harley instead of buying another, cheaper, just as well made bike? There was an emotional voice somewhere, whispering, "Buy a Harley."

But why?

Harley Davidsonuses emotional branding by creating a community around your brand. StartedPIG—Harley Owners Group— to connect your customers to your brand (and each other).

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By allowing customers to feel part of a larger group that is more united than a motorcycle group, Harley Davidson is able to position itself as the obvious choice for someone looking to buy a motorcycle.

Because? Humans have an innate desire to build relationships. Research by psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary best describes this need in their "membership hypothesis, which states, "Humans have a basic psychological need to feel intimately connected to others, and the nurturing, nurturing bonds of close relationships are an important part of human behavior."

Not to mention that belonging, the need for love, affection, and belonging to a group, falls squarely in the middle of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which aims to categorize diverse human needs.

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The lesson to learn? Find a way to connect with your customers on a deeper, emotional level. do you give them rest To make them feel like part of the family? do you make your life easier Use emotional triggers like these to strengthen your relationship and build loyalty.

4. Flexibility

In this rapidly changing world, marketers need to stay flexible to stay relevant. On the plus side, this gives you the freedom to get creative with your campaigns.

You may be thinking, "Wait a minute, how am I supposed to be consistent and flexible at the same time?"

Good question. While consistency is meant to set the standard for your brand, flexibility allows you to make adjustments that spark interest and differentiate your approach from the competition.

A great example of this type of strategic balance comes fromAncient Spice. Today, Old Spice is one of the best examples of successful marketing across the board. However, until recently, using Old Spice was a fairly unspoken requirement for dads everywhere. Today it is one of the most popular brands for men of all ages.

The secret? Flexibility.

When he realized he had to do something to secure his place in the market,Old Spice entered into a partnership with Wieden+KennedyPosition your brand for a new customer base.

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Between new commercials, a new website, new packaging and new product names, Old Spice managed to capture the attention of a new younger generation by making strategic improvements to its already strong brand.

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When your old tactics aren't working anymore, don't be afraid to change. Just because it worked in the past doesn't mean it works now.

Take the opportunity to engage your followers in new and fresh ways. Are there some out-of-the-box partnerships your brand can make? Are there features of your product that you have never emphasized? Use them to connect with new customers and remind old customers why they love you.

5. Employee Participation

As we mentioned earlier, achieving a sense of consistency is important if you want to build brand awareness. And while a style guide can help you achieve a cohesive digital experience, it's equally important that your employees are comfortable communicating with customers and representing the brand.

When your brand is playful and bubbly through Twitter interactions, there's no point in a customer calling and connecting with a grumpy, monotonous rep, right?

To avoid these kinds of mismatched experiences, consider Zappos' approach.

If you've ever been online with a Zappos customer service representative, you know what I'm talking about. Unless,Check out this SlideShareDetails on some of their most inspirational customer service stories.

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With all Zappos employees adhering to their core values ​​and helping other companies implement the same approach, Zappos has built a solid reputation for strong, helpful and human customer service.

6. Loyalty

If you already have people who love you, your company, and your brand, don't sit around, reward them for that love.

These customers have gone out of their way to write about you, tell their friends about you, and act as ambassadors for your brand.

Fostering the loyalty of these people early on will result in more returning customers and more profit for your business.

Sometimes a thank you is enough. In other cases it is better to go further. Write them a personalized letter. Send them special loot. Ask them to write a review and feature it prominently on your site. (Or all of the above!)

when we arrived15,000 customers here at HubSpot, we wanted to say a big thank you while remaining true to our brand... so we dropped 15,000 orange ping pong balls from our fourth floor balcony and wrote Thank You on large foil balloons:

And while it seemed a bit unusual to some people, the gesture made a lot of sense to those who know our brand.

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Loyalty is a crucial part of any branding strategy, especially when supporting your sales organization. Highlighting a positive relationship between you and your existing customers sets the tone for what potential customers can expect when they decide to do business with you.

7. Competitive Awareness

Take the competition as a challenge to improve your own strategy and create more value for your brand overall. They're in the same store chasing the same customers, right? So look what they do.

Are some of your tactics successful? Do some fail? Adjust your brand positioning based on your experience to improve your business.

With it, you can easily control your competitors' social mentions for HubSpot customersSocial-Monitoring-App.look at this articleLearn more about setting up personalized social streams here.

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While it's important to keep up with your competitors' strategies if you want to improve your brand, don't let them dictate your every move.

Sure, you probably sell a similar product or service to many other companies, but you're in business because your brand is unique. By harping on your competitor's every move, you lose that differentiation.

Let's break down each branding method.

1. Sign of attitude

This form of branding refers to a feeling or attitude that customers associate with your brand.

Nike is a brand that has perfected this type of branding. With the slogan "Just Do It", Nike promotes a lifestyle that customers can enjoy with products from this brand. With such a slogan, Nike promotes the idea that all customers are athletes when wearing Nike products.

2. Individual brand

This type of branding gives a product or service a unique identity, possibly under a different brand, to attract new customers in the market.

Unileveris an excellent example of a brand using the individual brand. The company has three divisions, each creating some of the most recognizable brands in its niche.

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3. Brand of the product

The product brand is perhaps the most popular type of brand. Here the brand associates a logo, name, color and design with a product to create a unique identity for the product.

It is one of the best branding methods because it brings products to life and increases uniqueness.

A good example is Apple's MacBook offerings. The "Air", "Pro" and "Mac" brands convey unique messages and reinforce the quality of the product offering.

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4. Co-Branding

Co-branding, also known as brand association, is where different brands bring their identities to create a merged brand.

The advantage of this method is that it combines the strength of the market, increases the customer base and increases the perceived value.

One of the most popular co-branding examples is the collaboration between Nike and Michael Jordan. This collaboration has made Air Jordan one of the most desirable and well-known shoes in the world.

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This type of branding is often used by brands that prefer to let the products speak for themselves.

5. Minimalist brand

MasterCardis a prime example of a brand with minimalist branding. We may not know what the red and yellow circles mean, but you'll know it's owned by MasterCard.

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6. Brand Extension

This is a unique branding technique in which a company uses one of its popular or established brand names for a new product. The idea behind this method is to use the brand equity you already have to push the latest product. The companies using it hope that by expanding the brand, customers will become more receptive to the new offering.

The importance of strategic branding

Managing a brand is hard work, and it's more of a challenge when you're in an oversaturated market where all brands look the same.

One of the crucial steps to growing in a saturated market is to emphasize what makes your brand unique - that's what strategic branding is all about.

With strategic branding, you future-proof your brand and build it to stand out from the rest. By conveying uniqueness to your customers, you strengthen your sales power, your brand equity and your customer loyalty.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in November 2020 and has been updated for completeness.