We’re bombarded with tens of thousands of messages everyday — and most of them are extensions of brand strategies.
Instagram influencers tell us how to book a free first-class flight, the city bus is wrapped with an Apple ad, your favorite TV show has been interrupted by commercials ever since the streaming service raised prices.
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Vying for a place among these thousands and thousands of messages is a daunting task, but spending some time on strategic branding will help set you apart from the competition and build customer loyalty.
In this article, you’ll learn all about the branding methods and essential elements of a branding strategy you need to grow a brand that’ll stand the test of time. And then one day your brand will be wrapped on a city bus.
Table of Contents
- What is Brand Strategy?
- Elements of a Brand Strategy
- Branding Methods
- The Importance of Strategic Branding
A well-defined and -executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a business and is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments.
First, let's clear up one of the biggest misconceptions about brand strategy: Your brand is not solely your product, your logo, your website, or your name.
Your brand is all that and more — it's the stuff that feels intangible, the hard-to-pin-down feelings that separate powerhouse brands from forgettable brands.
To understand a subjective matter that many marketers consider more art than science, we've broken down seven essential components of a comprehensive brand strategy that will help keep your company relevant for decades.
Elements of a brand strategy include:
- Purpose
- Consistency
- Emotion
- Flexibility
- Employee Involvement
- Loyalty
- Competitive Awareness
1. Purpose
Although your brand promise is necessary to your brand positioning, knowing why you wake up every day and go to work is also essential.
In other words, your purpose is more specific in that it serves as a differentiator between you and your competitors.
How can you define your business' purpose? According to Business Strategy Insider, purpose can be viewed in two ways:
- Functional: This concept focuses on the evaluations of success in terms of immediate and commercial reasons — i.e., the purpose of the business is to make money.
- Intentional: This concept focuses on success as it relates to the ability to make money and do good in the world.
While making money is part of almost every business, we admire brands that emphasize their willingness to achieve more than just profitability, like Patagonia:
Patagonia’s brand strategy isn’t just about profit, it’s about sustainability and responsibility.
This approach appeals to potential customers who share these values.
Key Takeaway
When defining your business' purpose, keep this example in mind. While making money is a priority, operating under that notion alone does little to set your brand apart from others in your industry.
Our advice? Dig a little deeper. If you need inspiration, check out the brands you admire, and see how they frame their mission and vision statements.
Pro Tips
In a 2022 interview with Cannabis Drinks Expo, marketer Rachel Boykins said that brands can “get a little too lofty” with respect to the roles they play in consumers’ lives. Boykins, who’s now the head of brand strategy at Pangea Money Transfer, got on Zoom with me to talk about this in more detail.
“When people look for examples of good branding,” she tells me, they often bring up big brands like Apple, Amazon, or Disney — “brands you can easily name off the top of your head because they’re so groundbreaking.”
Problem is, “there‘s really only one Apple. That’s not something that all brands should aspire or expect to be.”
Boykins’ advice: “Not every brand has to hit those heights to be successful. Work with your internal teams to really understand your business’ objectives. These are what your budgets and bonuses are made off of. And those are obtainable.”
2. Consistency
The key to consistency is to avoid talking about things that don’t relate to or enhance your brand.
For instance, if you add a photo to your business’ Facebook page, make sure it aligns with your message. If you’re just sharing the latest meme that made you laugh, you risk confusing or alienating your audience.
To give your brand a platform to stand on, you need to ensure your messaging is cohesive. Ultimately, consistency contributes to brand recognition, which fuels customer loyalty. (No pressure, right?)
To see a great example of consistency, let's look at Apple, the most recognizable brand in the world in 2024. As a result of its commitment to consistency, every element of the brand's marketing works harmoniously together.
Even though Apple’s Instagram account has nary a product photo in sight, the iPhone-shot photography tells the brand story.
Compare that to product photos of the Apple Watch and AirPods on its website, which both feature the same bold, mysterious, colorful photography.
Key Takeaway
To make sure potential customers don’t struggle to put the disconnected pieces of your business together, consider the benefits of creating an internal style guide.
A style guide can encompass everything from the tone of voice you‘ll use to the color scheme you’ll employ to the way you'll position certain products or services.
By taking the time to define and agree upon these considerations, your brand will benefit as a whole.
3. Emotion
Emotion is a powerful branding tool.
Brand consultant Cornelis Jacobs tells me, “A brand is really a person’s gut feeling about a product or service or organization. It’s really emotional — it’s what someone feels.”
Harley-Davidson, for example, uses emotional branding by creating a community around the H-D brand. It founded HOG — Harley Owners Group — to connect its customers with the brand and with each other.
By providing customers with an opportunity to feel like they‘re part of a larger group that’s more tight-knit than just a bunch of motorcycle riders, Harley-Davidson positions itself as an obvious choice for someone looking to purchase a bike.
If you buy a Harley, you’re also buying into a community.
Research from psychologists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary describes this need in their belongingness hypothesis, which states: “People have a basic psychological need to feel closely connected to others, and that caring, affectionate bonds from close relationships are a major part of human behavior.”
Not to mention that belongingness — the need for love, affection, and being part of groups — falls directly in the middle of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Key Takeaway
Find a way to connect with your customers on a deeper, more emotional level. Do you give them peace of mind? Make them feel like part of the family? Do you make life easier? Use emotional triggers like these to strengthen your relationship and foster loyalty.
4. Flexibility
In this fast-changing world, marketers must remain flexible to stay relevant. On the plus side, this frees you to be creative with your campaigns.
You may be thinking, “Wait a minute, how am I supposed to remain consistent while also being flexible?”
Good question. While consistency aims to set the standard for your brand, flexibility enables you to make adjustments that build interest and distinguish your approach from your competition.
A great example of this type of strategic balance comes from Old Spice. These days, Old Spice is one of the best examples of successful marketing across the board.
Up until recently, wearing Old Spice was pretty much an unspoken requirement for dads everywhere. Today, however, it's one of the most popular brands for men of all ages.
The secret? Flexibility.
Aware that it needed to do something to secure its place in the market, Old Spice teamed up with Wieden+Kennedy to position its brand for a new customer base.
Between new commercials, a new website, new packaging, and new product names, Old Spice attracted the attention of a younger generation by making strategic enhancements to its already strong brand.
Key Takeaway
If your old tactics aren’t working anymore, don’t be afraid to change. Just because it worked in the past doesn‘t mean it’s working now.
Take the opportunity to engage your followers in fresh, new ways. Are there some out-of-the-box partnerships your brand can make? Are there attributes about your product you never highlighted? Use those to connect with new customers and remind your old ones why they love you.
5. Employee Involvement
As we mentioned before, consistency is vital to brand recognition. And while a style guide can help you achieve a cohesive digital experience, it's equally essential for your employees to be well-versed in communicating with customers and representing the brand.
As Jacobs puts it, “Everyone should be a brand champion.”
If your brand is playful and bubbly on social media, you’ll send mixed messages if a customer calls in and is connected with a grumpy, monotone representative, right?
To avoid this type of mismatched experience, take note of Zappos' approach.
If you‘ve ever been on the line with a customer service representative from Zappos, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven't, check out this SlideShare, which details some of its most inspiring customer support stories.
Pro Tips
Boykins advocates for more diversity in corporate spaces. She tells me that she’s been in many meetings where she’s “the only Black person, and maybe only 10% of the time there’s another woman.”
“Consumers have high hopes and expectations” for diversity to be reflected in their favorite brands, she says. Every year, it seems that another brand releases a marketing campaign “and everybody is shocked about how culturally or racially insensitive it is. People are wondering how this is still happening.”
Tackling that requires more than superficial diversity — employees have to feel comfortable speaking up at every level of the company. Boykins is blunt about the stakes: “If brands are not concerned about diversity, they should be concerned about cancel culture. You don’t get a lot of chances.”
Key Takeaway
Your brand strategy should exemplify your core values, and potential employees should be able to easily discern whether their own values align. Every touch point with stakeholders should be consistent and cohesive.
6. Loyalty
If you already have customers who are deeply loyal to your brand, don’t sit back and take it for granted — reward them.
These customers have gone out of their way to write about you, tell their friends about you, and act as your brand ambassadors.
Cultivating loyalty from these people early on will yield more returning customers — and more profit for your business.
Sometimes, just a thank you is all that‘s needed. Other times, it’s better to go above and beyond. Write them a personalized letter. Send them some special swag. Ask them to write a review and feature them prominently on your website. (Or all of the above!)
When we reached 15,000 customers here at HubSpot, we wanted to say thank you in a big way while remaining true to our brand ... so we dropped 15,000 orange ping pong balls from our fourth-floor balcony and spelled out thank you in big metallic balloons.
And while it may have seemed a little out of the ordinary to some, the gesture made perfect sense for those who know our brand.
Key Takeaway
Loyalty is critical to your brand strategy, especially to support sales organizations.
Highlighting a positive relationship between you and your existing customers sets the tone for what potential customers can expect if they choose to do business with you.
7. Competitive Awareness
Take the competition as a challenge to improve your own strategy and create greater value in your overall brand. You are in the same business and going after the same customers, right? So watch what they do.
Do some of their tactics succeed? Do some fail? Tailor your brand positioning based on their experience to better your company.
Keeping tabs on your competitor's social mentions is easy with HubSpot’s social media management software. Check out this article to learn more about setting up custom social streams.
Key Takeaway
While staying in tune with your competitor‘s strategies is essential if you want to enhance your brand, don’t let them dictate every move you make.
Sure, you probably sell a similar product or service as many other companies, but you're in business because your brand is unique. By harping on every move your competitor makes, you lose that differentiation.
Let’s discuss each branding method.
1. Attitude Branding
This form of branding refers to a feeling or attitude that customers associate with your brand.
Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan promotes a lifestyle that customers can enjoy by wearing this brand of products.
With such a slogan, Nike promotes the idea that all customers are athletes when they're wearing Nike products.
2. Individual Branding
This type of branding is when a product or service gets a unique identity, perhaps in a different brand name to attract new customers in the market.
Unilever is an excellent example of a brand that uses individual branding. The company has three divisions, each creating some of the best-known brands in its niche.
3. Product Branding
Product branding is perhaps the most popular type of branding. Here, the brand associates a logo, name, color, and design with a product to create a unique identity for the product.
It’s one of the best branding methods because it gives life to products and increases uniqueness.
A great example is Apple’s MacBook offerings. “Air,” “Pro,” and “Mac” each convey a specific message that reinforces the quality of the product offering.
4. Co-Branding
In co-branding, also known as a brand partnership, different brands contribute their identity to create a fused brand.
The advantage of this method is that it combines market strength, customer bases, and perceived value.
One of the most popular co-branding examples is the Nike and Michael Jordan collaboration. This collaboration has made Air Jordans some of the most sought-after and most recognizable footwear around the globe.
This type of branding is usually used by brands that prefer to let products speak for themselves.
5. Minimalist Branding
Mastercard is an excellent example of a brand that uses minimalist branding.
Even without the word “Mastercard,” the overlapping red and yellow circles are instantly recognizable.
Pro tip: Need a logo your customers can recognize at a glance? Try our free logo creator and brand identity design tool.
6. Brand Extension
This unique branding method is when a company uses one of its popular or established brand names on a new product. The idea behind this method is to use the already existing brand equity to boost the latest product.
Companies that use it hope customers will be more receptive to the new offering because of the brand extension.
The Importance of Strategic Branding
Managing a brand is hard work, and it’s more challenging when you’re in an oversaturated market where every brand looks the same.
One of the crucial steps to growing in an oversaturated market is highlighting what makes your brand unique — which is what strategic branding is all about.
With strategic branding, you future-proof your brand and develop it in a way that differentiates you from others. By communicating uniqueness to customers, you strengthen your selling power, brand value, and customer loyalty.
