Branding a product is a lot different from branding a service. Product Branding is an extremely important
business strategy, one that allows consumers to identify as well as differentiate one product from another.
When you plan to brand a product, you have to think about giving the product a personality of its own through a logo, colours, content and even packaging. There is much more to branding than the name, and getting it right makes all the difference between success and failure.
Things To Keep In Mind While Branding A Product:
There are a number of things you must keep in mind when it comes to building a brand.
Target Audience:
Firstly, you need to figure out who your target audience is and how your products can benefit your industry audience. Remember the key to successful branding, from launching a product to its success on social media platforms, is knowing your target audience.
Every basic advertising online through Facebook ads and google ads requires thorough data to figure out your ideal target audience. Take the help of market research firms, industry data or even other analytical tools to figure out who your audience is and where they are located.
Know Your Competition:
A thorough analysis of the data collected will help you know your competition. Try to understand how your competing brands have positioned the product in the market and focus on the mistakes made by them.
It is important that you pay attention to the unique benefits of the products offered by each competing brand in the market. While doing this, try to identify the gaps in the market – these market gaps might be beneficial for your brand.
Analysed Decision-making:
After the surveys, you will be left with a lot of data. Use this data to plan a positioning strategy for the product in the market targeting your ideal consumers.
For instance, if your product is a luxury bag, your target audience will be women who can afford them for their everyday, casual use. Positioning the bag as a luxury product is the most important part of the strategy.
The Right Name:
While naming your brand, think about names that best portray your vision to the world. For instance, a name like ‘Luxe’ conveys luxury – your brand name is clearly portraying your brand as a luxury brand.
Remember, keeping the name short and memorable must be your goal so that consumers can retain the name for a long time. Also, make sure the brand name chosen by you is not copyrighted or trademarked, or even sound similar to other brands in the same industry.
The Right Slogan:
The right slogan can do wonders for your brand. Work towards creating a slogan that is short, simple and preferably not longer than five words. The slogan for a brand should definitely portray what the brand is all about.
For instance, Nike’s ‘Just do it’ or Apple’s ‘Think different’ or L’oreal ‘Because you’re worth it’ are examples of creative copywriting resulting in slogans that made their mark.
Miscellaneous:
Once you have a name and a slogan for your brand, it’s time for you to pick your color palette, fonts and packaging. You have to make sure all of these elements are in line with the message you want to communicate to your audience. Furthermore, you may include social media marketing, email marketing, etc in your marketing communication plan.
Your digital marketing strategy for instance will require your logo for communicating your product details to your target audience. In case you are a small business with low investment plans then it is best to look online for free themes and platforms for designing promotional campaigns.
A website and consistent SEO optimized blogging are also important steps to consider while creating a marketing strategy for your product. Blogs answering customer queries and solving problems are always a hit with an audience of any kind.
Corporate Branding Versus Project Branding:
Corporate branding usually involves a company’s value capturing their entire scope and ethics. Product branding however, is much more specific than that – it differentiates between two or more competing products as well as similar products from the same company.
For instance, let’s check out Lay’s chips as a product. Who makes these chips? PepsiCo. Who would have associated Lays with PepsiCo? PepsiCo is already associated as a product-oriented brand and can naturally be not used for Lays.
At the same time, naming a chap’s brand by PepsiCo something generic would also be risky for the brand.
The solution? Product Branding!
PepsiCo makes a lot of things like breakfast cereals, hummus, chips and granola bars but creates individual product branding identities, and that is exactly how you successfully brand different products in the same company.
Is Product Branding Worth An Investment?
Simply put, branding a product is important because every product owner wants to sell more products. The purpose behind it all lies in the distinction between your products and your competition in the industry.
If you do not invest behind product branding, your sales will show you how badly you need it. The question was never whether you need to invest on branding your product. The question should be how much should you invest.
This actually depends on the size of your company and the capabilities of your brand. For instance, start-ups always invest lesser than multinationals.
Conclusion:
Creating a brand name for your product is not quite as difficult as it seems. However, creating a memorable name for your product? That is a completely different story. For instance, there is no particular reason behind the success of Amazon or Google.
At the best, you can say that there are plenty of intangibles at work when it comes to the success of Amazon or Google. However, it can be concluded that a strong branding strategy for your product will always be unique, with niche targeting for improved results.
Author bio:
John MacLeod is a passionate blogger. He loves to share his thoughts, ideas and experiences with the world through blogging. John MacLeod is associated with, TheParentsmagazine, ThePetsMagazine, TheSportsMag.
