“Branding is endowing products and services with the power of a brand.” (Kotler & Keller, 2015)
Do you want to sell a product or service? Do you want to promote your business? Are you looking into ways to increase your customer base or your target audience?
If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, then this article is for you.
Can we ask you another question?
Do you have a sound brand strategy? If your answer is no, then this article is definitely for you.
Branding and Brand strategy
The current market is a highly competitive place. Old established companies are jostling with new start-ups to promote their products, services or business. Their target audience is well-informed, and not easily influenced by gimmicks. In such a competitive zone, you need to build a rapport with your target audience to stand out in the crowd. You need to build up a level of trust among the consumers.
And this can be done through branding.
Branding is a process through which you package your business, service, or product with the right perception, image and identity to increase the trust among consumers. All business relationships are highly influenced by the trust factor. And this trust is rooted in the brand image.
Branding is not marketing. To understand the difference, read our article about their difference.
In simple words, branding is the strategy to create a perceived image of the product you are offering.
Brand Strategy – Brand strategy is the long-term plan of developing a brand to achieve specific pre-conceived goals successfully. When you have a brand strategy, you have a foundation over which you create subsequent building blocks to show what your brand represents.
Why is brand strategy important?
Can you run a business without a proper brand strategy?
No! A proper brand strategy will help to create a perception in the consumers’ minds regarding your brand. An engaging brand strategy will go a long way in making your business flourish.
Well-established brands know this. Global brands have utilized brand strategy and best brand ideas effectively to establish themselves in today’s fiercely competitive market.
Also, your brand strategy will help to create an impression on your target audience. In the long run, it will win their trust and loyalty.
Why do you need unique brand ideas?
To stand out in the competition!
Help rebrand yourself!
To keep up with the constantly evolving business models!
We all understand how competitive today’s market is. With so many competitors in your market niche, it becomes hard to stand out just based on your product, service, or business. Along with the issue of competitors, there is also the issue of evolving business models.
This has prompted many established brands to remodel themselves and their brand strategies. The best example of this is the rebranding of the Facebook Company as Meta.
This shows that you need to know how to promote your brand name while constantly updating your branding strategy based on the latest branding trends.
- To attract your target audience, you need unique brand ideas.
- Sell the right perception, you need unique brand ideas.
- Stand out in the market, you need unique brand ideas.
Unique Brand Ideas
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1. Delineate your archetype
World-leading brands like Apple, Google, etc. have adopted the concept of Archetype Branding with successful results. The concept of archetype was developed by Carl Jung, a renowned psychologist. Jung described 12 primary archetypes. Each archetype has a powerful identity. The advertising and marketing industry utilized this to create the concept of brand archetype.
For example, Coca-Cola is the perfect example of the innocent archetype with brand messages like “It’s a real thing” and “open happiness”.
One of the best brand ideas is to create your brand archetype. A unique archetype will allow you to create a compelling story centered on your brand identity. It helps you to remain consistent and also guides your marketing and advertising campaigns.
2. Honest analysis of brand performance
When you are trying to build trust with your target audience, the first step is, to be honest with yourself. You should have a defined brand value that encompasses authenticity, credibility, and transparency.
It is also essential to analyze your performance regularly. This will help you to catch the weak spots in your brand strategy. Once you evaluate the weaknesses in your brand, you can consistently work to improve them. This along with a transparent open brand/customer relationship will increase your brand value.
While analyzing your performance, also include an analysis of your graphic design concepts used in your brochure design, business card and other marketing materials. Keep updating them or redesigning them whenever you add new products or services to your business profile.
3. Create a unique brand identity
Once you have defined your brand archetype and value you need a proper business logo to promote your brand. Your logo is your face and just like your face, it should have a unique identity. Branding efforts have often been derailed by bad logo design. An unprofessional logo design will create the perception that your brand is unprofessional.
Take for instance the Cadbury logo.
The brand is synonymous with chocolate – when you go to a shop, you ask for Cadbury or Dairy Milk instead of chocolate. Their logo evolved with time but managed to remain consistent and professional by highlighting the main features.
So, you should try to make your logo professional, unique and memorable. And, tweak it as per the message you want to deliver to your audience. But that tweaking should be done while keeping your basic elements consistent.
To avoid copying logos. When you copy, you fail to promote trust, which was your aim in the first place. The famous Beats logo is inspired (or copied) from Anton Stankowski’s 1971 Stadt Bruhl logo. It did not stop Beats from becoming famous, but you may not be so lucky.
This does not mean that you need completely new elements. Brands such as Vodafone, Target, Pinterest all use the colour red in a circular shape. But their individual identity is not lost in the crowd.
4. Do evaluate your social media strategy
The scale of your business does not come into consideration when it comes to social media. You may be running a small business from the corner of your living room, but if you want to successfully learn to utilize social media platforms to their fullest potential. Remember Apple started from a garage.
When you fully utilize social media platforms for your brand, you create connections with a vast stream of potential customers. You build a strong following for your products and services. And all this happens for a small budget.
So, a proper social media strategy lets you raise brand awareness and gain media mileage at a low cost.
Read up about how Dollar Shave Club used social media to Sales Success here.
5. Create compelling brand related visual content
The holy grail of modern online marketing is video content that “goes viral,” meaning that it captures an enormous number of views and leads audiences to share, comment, or click that they “like” a video.
Your advertising and marketing campaigns will include video content, illustrations and graphics. These are an extended image of your business. Subsequently, these help buyers to recognize your brand, educate them about your services and products and influences them to buy from you.
You need to start investing in content that is brand-based, definitive and compelling.
6. Packaging matters
To a certain extent product packaging design is responsible for buying decisions. One sure-shot way of losing customers’ attention is drab boring packaging or a mismatch in the packaging concept and the type of products you are selling.
So, make your packaging design attractive and eye-catching. Keep it interesting by switching it and offering better packaging.
7. Be unique
It goes without saying that if you are providing something copied, you may have a market, but it will stop you from becoming successful. You may be selling coffee, but your brand ideology should not be a copy of Starbucks.
Capitalize on your brand ideology and provide customers with singular and unique products or services. Pay attention to the quality of your products.
8. Blog about your business
Maintaining a blog or an official brand website is considered one of the best branding ideas. Blogs and websites accommodate a good mix of text and visuals. This helps readers to connect with you. Also, SEO allows you to harness the potential of organic traffic. The positive aspects of doing so are many –
- It allows you to connect with your potential customers
- Blogs provide you with a platform to notify consumers about your services and products and any updates that you make.
- It increases your accountability and credibility.
Keep your blog or webpage refreshing, entertaining, engaging, with an interactive style of communication.
Learn how to start a blog here.
9. Advertisements
Advertisements create better exposure for brands. This, in turn, influences and engages consumers leading to higher sales.
All your advertisements should be in coherence with your brand ideals.
10. Utilise email marketing to promote your brand
Include email marketing in your branding strategy. Use text and images in your email message to build up an image for your brand.
Learn more about email marketing here.
11. Customer care service is important
Consistent customer care service can go a long way in creating more credibility for your brand. Also, if your customer care service is not at par with your brand perception you will lose customers.
Conclusion
If you want a successful business, you need to create and implement a proper brand strategy. So, a proper brand strategy with modern and time-proven ideas mentioned in this article will strengthen your brand potential.
One thing this article proves beyond doubt is that branding and marketing has moved beyond flyers and video adverts. We as a leading branding and marketing agency understand that your brand can be promoted on a variety of platforms such as social media, emails, websites, etc. We can creatively and thoughtfully promote your brand by understanding the mindset of your regular audience.
At Sunnyday, we can help you turn your idea into a rock solid plan thereby transforming your business and taking your company branding to a whole new level!
Connect with us on support@sunnydayconsulting.com today!
Conclusion Option 2:
If you want to give your business a chance to survive in this modern digitized world, you need to start building and implementing your very own brand strategy. And, with this article you can now pick and choose those branding ideas that suit your niche.
But, one thing this article proves beyond a doubt – branding and marketing has moved beyond flyers and video adverts. Social media posts, blogs, and bit-sized content has also become a part and parcel of the branding and marketing genre.
We at Sunnyday Consulting, can creatively and thoughtfully promote your brand by understanding the mindset of your regular audience. We can help you turn your idea into a rock solid plan thereby transforming your business and taking your company branding to a whole new level!
For more details or a Free Brand assessment, connect with us on support@sunnydayconsulting.com today!
