Whether you're launching a new product line or sprucing up your existing one, product branding plays an essential role in the success of your business. But with so many options and elements to consider when it comes to branding, where do you even begin?
Fortunately, we've got you covered!
In this blog post, we'll explore everything that goes into successful product branding—from creating compelling visuals to choosing key messaging points—so that you can ensure your company's products stand out and drive ROI. Read on to learn how strategic product branding can help take your business to the next level!
What is Product Branding?
Have you ever seen a logo or packaging design you instantly recognized? That's the power of product branding in action! Product branding is about creating a unique and unified identity for your products to make them more recognizable, memorable, and desirable.
You can build trust and loyalty with your customers by using strategic visuals, colors, messaging points, and other tactics to promote your brand through targeted marketing campaigns and marketing materials. A well-crafted product branding strategy allows you to differentiate yourself from the competition while staying true to your core values and mission.
The process of product branding requires extensive research into the target audience, competitors, market trends, and company values. An effective product branding strategy accurately reflects the company's vision and objectives while also resonating with the target market.
The Difference between Corporate Branding VS. Product Branding
Although the corporate brand and product brand requires different strategies, they are both integral parts of any successful business. The corporate brand focuses on creating a unified company identity that extends across all products and services offered by the company. It encompasses the core values, mission, name, logo design, taglines, and other elements that create a first impression on customers.
On the other hand, product branding focuses on creating an individual identity for your products and services. Product branding requires researching customer needs and preferences to create a unique visual look and feels that resonates with customers. Product branding also involves designing packaging, messaging points, marketing materials, and other elements specific to each product or service to drive consumer attention.
The Advantages You Get from Product Branding
If you own a business, knowing the benefits of product branding and how your products can stand out from the competition is important. Now let's discuss why product branding should be at the top of your list when competing against other businesses in your market.
Distinct Product Identity
Imagine a crowded marketplace filled with similar products. With effective product branding efforts, you can create an identity for your product to stand out. This helps customers quickly identify and differentiate your product from all the others on the market.
Plus, with modern technology allowing you to customize almost any product brand with context-aware logos or taglines, creating branded items has never been easier!
Focused Target Audience
Product branding allows you to get specific with your audience and tailor messages to appeal to them. By crafting visuals, messaging points, and other elements that cater to the particular preferences of your target market, an effective branding strategy can build a strong connection between your product and its intended customers.
Better Chances of Product Loyalty
Once customers recognize and trust your product, they are more likely to become loyal customers. Product branding allows you to create an emotional connection with customers so that they view your product as part of their lifestyle or identity. This helps foster loyalty and long-term relationships with customers.
Easier to have a Brand Advocacy
Customers who are passionate about your product tend to spread the word to their friends and family. This helps increase brand awareness and drive more sales for your business. Allowing customers to share their positive experiences with your product or service will help build strong brand advocacy for your business.
Famous Examples of Good Product Branding
Product branding plays a crucial role in attracting the right buyers and generating a loyal customer base. Here are some successful product branding examples that you can learn from.
Apple
Apple is known for its unique and sleek designs, innovative and highly advanced tech features, and high-quality products. Its logo, product packaging, and advertising campaigns are immediately recognizable, making it a top-of-mind brand for many consumers.
Starbucks
Starbucks has built a successful product branding strategy through its high-quality coffee, cozy atmosphere, and exceptional customer service. Focusing on sustainability and community, the company has created a loyal following of coffee lovers.
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola has been around for over a century and has a timeless brand identity that resonates with people worldwide. Its iconic logo and advertising campaigns are conveyed consistently, which is why the passage of time allows its brand to stick with the mind of consumers worldwide, making the successful brand a beverage recognizable at the first glance.
Nike
Nike's brand strategy is built around motivation, inspiration, and excellence. Its "Just Do It" slogan encapsulates the spirit of the brand, and its culture of innovation has helped it remain ahead of its competitors.
Levi
Levi's is an iconic brand that has been around since the mid-1800s. Its denim products are known for their durability, comfort, and style, and the product branding has continued to evolve over the years to stay relevant.
Uber
Uber has revolutionized the transportation industry by providing a convenient, affordable, and efficient ride-hailing service. Its product branding focuses on simplicity, accessibility, and reliability, making it a popular choice for many consumers.
How to Design an Effective Product Branding?
When designing a strong product branding, it is essential to follow certain guidelines to ensure that your product stands out in the market, appeals to your audience, and remains consistent across all channels.
Identify your Target Audience
Understandably, companies would think to cast a wide net and appeal to as many people as possible in building product brands. However, doing so incur larger cost in marketing campaigns and your messaging tends to be vague and typical, which decreases the chance of product loyalty. This is particularly crucial for startup product brands - there must be a particular focus on the audience.
There is a wide range of people who buy Apple, but the product branding and positioning make it clear that their audience's consumer preference is tech-savvy users who prefer a premium experience in their products and services. This ensures that whenever they launch a product, this group of people will most likely be going to purchase them.
Identifying your audience requires gathering data on demographics, psychographics, and the needs and preferences of your potential customers. Moreover, consider in your brand strategy the other customer demographics like age, gender, location, interest, etc.
You can also narrow down your focus further by having a customer persona - a set of profiles that is most likely to go to purchase your product. They can be named, their age and gender and address identified, and they have a set of pain points that only your product can solve.
Setting up your customer persona further helps you to tailor your brand messaging and positioning accordingly.
Check for Market Trends
Another key part of researching product brands is checking the competition. Getting insights and information from the market allows you to achieve factors in building your product branding strategy like:
- Knowing the effective ways for brand positioning and marketing strategy.
- To know which particular group of customers has an unfulfilled need you can provide.
- The motivations for your customer’s decision to buy alternative products.
- The current trends in the industry.
Being enlightened about critical data like the preferred target audience and market trends allows you to create a unique selling proposition, which not only gives you a position where you have less competition but also guarantees customers who will be loyal to your product brand as you provide a particular solution to their particular needs.
Define your Product Brand Personality
Effective brand strategy solid understanding of your audience and market trends should give you an idea of how to design the product personality. One way to start is to think of the product as a person: How do they speak to people? What are the things they believe? How do they treat other people? However, it doesn’t have to result in an animated persona, but the following signifiers can at least give an understanding of what is the product personality:
- Colors - while it doesn’t have to be set in stone, color has been theorized to elicit human emotions, and being guided by color theory gives you a good starting point in choosing the appropriate colors that represent your brand image.
- Voice - this applies to the content and the messaging of your product branding. As was mentioned, see your product's identity as a person and think about how they sound. Having an appropriate tone, typography and brand voice gives a positive impression to a group of people. For example, Nike’s slogan ‘Just Do It’ emphasizes the assertive call to be active, which reflects on the shoes they sell and the type of lifestyle they promote. Wendy’s recent Twitter engagement is also a branding strategy that they promote to reengage with their customers and a great way for it is through humor and sarcasm - the internet’s unofficial lingua franca.
- Visuals - Choosing the proper visual elements for the brand assets should be reflected in the desired aesthetics in brand logos, website landing pages, or any channels that need first impressions to attract customers. How you approach your personality depends on how you present your visual identity for your product branding: Cascade the landing page with brand logos. The product image with an immaculate white background? Product placed on a log or dirt? Product branding experts take note of the trends in effective marketing campaigns which key visuals should be present and the techniques needed to do it.
Share your Product Identity through Multiple Channels
To increase brand awareness and to present to people that your brand is willing to engage with your target closely, being present in multiple channels is important.
Rule of 7, the proverb that the brand must be seen or heard at least seven times to be recognizable, still works, and it is much easier to do it now as social media is one of the key channels in marketing campaigns in modern brand building.
Leverage every aspect of brand communications like emails, content creation, packaging, websites, billboards, etc. to maximize your presence in the market.
Be Consistent
It must be stated again and again that the backbone of building brands, even corporate branding as a whole is to present them consistently.
One of the brand’s key purposes is to build customer loyalty and if your messaging across multiple channels is delivered inconsistently, it would cause alienation and confusion to the value proposition of your product brand.
Moreover, having a singular identifier allows people to remember your product, and ultimately prospects your brand in customers’ purchasing decisions.
Final Thoughts
Product branding is an incredibly important part of any business, big or small. It can be difficult to get it right, especially if you don't have the resources to invest in branding experts.
As a business owner, you must identify your values, the core of your brand, and the purpose it stands for—all of which will help set you apart from other companies. Crafting a strong brand image gives target customers something to relate to and remember about your company.
At Evolv, we understand how vital product branding is for businesses of all sizes, and we are here to help guide you every step of the way as you create a unique and compelling brand identity.
Our team of experienced specialists will guide you in finding a clear path forward in building a product brand, business brand, or even an employer brand. Learn more from our resources today to start creating an effective brand with Evolv today!
