A product's quality alone cannot guarantee success. Quality is, of course, one of its most essential components, but product branding is what makes successful brands. It is what tells your potential customers to choose you over your competition. It is meant to help convince them that out of all the various brands available that offer the same product line, it is your brand that will satisfy their wants and needs.
Creating a product branding strategy can be daunting for small businesses, as it is more than just logos and fancy messaging; it is a continuous and consistent process, but don’t worry, here is a guide you can use to assert your own product brand identity.
Let’s get started!
Background: Product Branding Definition
Simply put, product branding is creating a unique identity for a single product. It is when one associates branding elements such as the product name, logo, and design. Using these elements correctly makes the product recognizable, setting it apart from others that are otherwise unnoticeable.
Much of product branding relies on a customer's emotional response. The "feel" of product brands is part of what drives buyers to make a purchase. To reach your target market, marketing teams must know how to establish and leverage emotional connections.
The Difference between Corporate Branding and Product Branding
Crafting a strong brand identity enables your brand to leave impactful, lasting impressions on your old and new customers. It is the way your brand presents itself to its potential customers as well as how it interacts with them within the spaces of the stores and the four corners of their screens.
Corporate branding includes the company values, visual identity, and tagline in their marketing strategy. Despite these, the products made by the company can have a separate identity through product branding. This helps distinguish the product from the other range of products that the company has to offer. In doing so, the corporate brand becomes secondary to the product brand. This can also be considered a kind of brand extension.
Corporate branding, then, is a type of branding for the business, while product branding is meant for products. Corporate branding remains the same throughout the company, but product branding can differ from one product category to another.
Why is Product Branding Important?
Product branding plays a crucial role in marketing campaigns as it distinguishes a product from its competitors in the market. An effective branding strategy creates a unique identity that helps in building customer recognition and loyalty.
A strong brand also communicates reliability, quality, and consistency, which helps in gaining consumer trust. It simplifies decision-making for customers who often feel overwhelmed with choices, leading them toward familiar and trusted products.
Branding enhances perceived value, allowing companies to command premium prices and achieve higher profit margins. For example, even if Samsung smartphones are priced higher than lesser-known brands with similar features, customers tend to choose them due to perceived reliability, customer support, and brand trust.
Ultimately, product branding influences purchasing decisions and shapes long-term relationships between consumers and brands, driving sustainable business growth and successful brand development.
Product Branding Strategies
Developing a successful product branding strategy involves a combination of the right elements and actions. While these strategies may have some intangible aspects, some well-defined and controllable principles can help strengthen your product brand. Here are some effective product branding strategies that you can focus on:
1. Create a Clear Value Proposition
For a strong brand building, a clear value proposition must convey the product's unique benefits and advantages to the intended audience. It must explain why the product is better or distinguishes itself from competitors by addressing specific needs or solving particular problems for consumers.
The first step to understanding your value proposition is to look into your experience and think of how exactly you can help a specific group of people with specific problems. To give one of many successful product branding examples, Framework laptops are determined to be the answer for laptop users' right to repair; common issues with using products like Apple are the tedious and often experienced repairs intentionally meant to drive their customers to buy new units instead.
Your value proposition could be a personal experience that you had, and when you tried to solve it, you realize that no one has products or solutions that solve it for you, and you decide to create it yourself for you and for the people that had the same pain points as well.
2. Build a Strong Emotional Connection
A product brand must build a stronger emotional connection with consumers to create a deeper and more meaningful relationship with the brand. Product brands can achieve this by aligning their brand messaging, imagery, and experiences with the target audience's emotions, values, and aspirations. One other practical way to do it is to align the brand values with specific social advocacy that people can connect to your product beyond just using it.
For example, if we go back to the Framework laptop brand, they also committed to much more sustainable operations and had already had intrinsically through their modular parts feature in which instead of replacing a whole unit, Framework faulty laptop parts like the CPU or keyboard can be replaced, reducing e-waste.
Having an operation that focuses on sustainability makes a product brand exist to be more than just something a customer to buy from but an identity to connect to.
3. Give a Better Customer Experience
It is crucial to improve the customer experience to ensure satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. You can achieve this by paying close attention to customer interaction and understanding your customer experiences throughout their journey, from initial discovery and purchase to ongoing use and support. This means engagement and support all throughout.
Once again, we have to go back to the Framework laptop examples, as not only do they have a marketplace for reusing modular parts, but they also have an active forum for queries and customer engagement, as well as open-source documentation to some parts to empower customers. Moreover, Framework laptops can also be shipped as parts so customers can assemble their units.
By focusing on every touchpoint and interaction throughout the customer journey as a brand strategy, from discovery and purchase to use and support, brands can create seamless, enjoyable, and memorable experiences that exceed expectations and differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
4. Create Captivating Brand Visuals
Creative brand visuals start and end with defining the brand's identity and values. The first thing to do is to develop a cohesive visual language that reflects the brand personality, aesthetics, and unique selling points based on its target audience.
Elements such as color palettes, typography, imagery, and design motifs resonate differently from different target audiences, and a mismatch may cause a negative brand perception. For example, for brands that evoke sophistication with affluent target audiences, typography tends to be simpler and minimalistic and uses regal colors like gold, black and white. Environmentally conscious brands use blue and green palettes and design motifs that are used traditionally by certain ethnic groups and often cater to an audience that belongs to said groups or adjacent ones.
Consistency is a must; ensure that the visual elements are consistently applied across all brand platforms to reinforce brand recognition, customer loyalty, and trust. Consider collaborating with creative professionals, designers, or agencies with expertise in visual branding to bring the brand image to life effectively.
How to give Personality to Standalone Products
Marketing a standalone product is a lot like marketing a new business. Since it is not part of the range of products your business already offers, it needs a new voice and a new personality of its own. These key points will help you create a strong personality for your new product.
Market Research
All marketing campaigns must begin with research. Obtaining information from your customers, like consumer preference, comes first. This will help you address the needs of your target market. After this, you can create a brand that resonates with them. Consider asking these questions:
- What is the purpose of the product?
- Who would use this type of product?
- Why would your target market choose your product over your competitor's product?
- What does this market segment value?
- How can I connect with my audience on a deeper level?
- How do people currently see my business?
- How do I want people to see my business?
Questions like these will help you put in the shoes of your target market and see things from their perspectives. The answers to these questions will help shape the kinds of messages you want to convey to your customers. Additionally, conducting customer satisfaction surveys can help you determine what they are looking for and see how you can address their needs better with a new product with a strong brand.
Competitor Research
Your competitors are also in the minds of customers. Like you, they are also fighting for visibility. Take note of these brands and ask your customers how they feel about them. Also, there may be factors that they consider that would make them switch to your product, so you need this information, too. Competitor research enables you to know which areas they fall short on. You can capitalize on these in your marketing communications, which will help brand your product's identity.
Differentiation
It is imperative to be able to differentiate your product from that of your competition. Take, for example, Coca-Cola products. Taking a look at any of their products instantly tells you that it's a Coca-Cola product. It doesn't matter what variant it is; whether it's the new Coca-Cola Starlight available for a limited time or that strange-looking Coca-Cola with Coffee in a can, you would know that it's a Coca-Cola. If you are creating a new cola product, then it's important to use elements that won't confuse your product for someone else's.
Also, being able to differentiate your product within a single brand is important as well. When you are creating several products within a type of product, you need to make the difference between one and the other apparent. The sports company Nike is a good example. Its line of socks is easily distinguishable, with names like Nike Everyday for everyday use, Nike Elite for basketball, and Nike Spark for running.
Reaching a Niche Market
Certain audiences are on the lookout for a type of product that fits their niche. Having a specific audience in mind helps you determine the voice and tone you would use to best appeal to them. The kind of branding you want limits itself to appeal to a specific demographic. You can use a certain language, events they are interested in, and other concepts unique to this submarket in your marketing communications to achieve the best results.
Creatively Illustrating the Product
Product branding gives your customers an idea of what to expect with one look at the packaging. The name, the logo, and any other images on the packaging have quite an important role, then. Take a look at Starbucks' packaged coffee. It has an instantly recognizable logo sets it apart from other packaged coffee. Also, the logo implies that customers will get the same quality coffee Starbucks offers in their physical shops.
Consistency is Key
Whatever approach you take to your marketing campaign, maintaining a consistent message is crucial to its success. A brand style guide does exactly this. Basically, it is an instructional manual on how your company should be represented. Details such as the color palette, placement, size, company values, imagery, and the brand's tone and voice are included in this guide. The style remains the same throughout your marketing communications: the website, the customer service you provide for the product, business cards, posters, and other printed materials, and where you display the product. Apple, for instance, is best known for its consistency.
Final Thoughts
Don't miss out on the benefits that product branding has to offer, especially if your company already has a well-built brand. A unique personality and identity in each product address the psychological aspect of marketing, enabling you to enhance consumer trust by leveraging emotional connections between them and your customers.
If you are struggling with your product branding or perhaps company branding, let us know! We, at Evolv, are here to help you achieve a unique product brand identity that will set a new standard in your industry. Additionally, you may want to check out our blog for the latest information and trends in branding and marketing. Our experts have vast experience in working with clients from various industries.
