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Corporate branding focuses on improving business visibility and recognition through active promotional campaigns. Having said so, corporate branding can only be effective with proper corporate branding strategy creation, which we will uncover in this blog.
How to Develop a Corporate Brand Strategy In 6 Steps
Creating a corporate branding design strategy is a comprehensive process. Ensuring an effective branding strategy is crucial. And this is only possible if all the vital operations are to be ticked in the checklist of creating a brand strategy. So, let’s start with creating a corporate brand strategy.
Setting Branding Objectives
The initial step to creating a corporate brand strategy is setting objectives a business wants to achieve. For instance, a newly founded firm would aim to build brand awareness, an already established organization would aim to enhance customer retention, and a business that has become a has-been would plan to rebrand itself. These objectives also include attracting a talent pool to join an organization. An organization must ensure its branding objectives align with its mission, vision, and values.
Once the branding objectives have been set, a business should create KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). The KPIs depend on business objectives set out by a business organization. Moreover, KPIs help analyze how the branding objectives are met. Analyzing and gaining insights from the KPIs will be an ongoing process after that.
Developing a USP
A unique selling point or proposition is when a business tries to create polarity from its competitors. Most businesses do so to avoid homogeneity by becoming an outlier in the traditional marketplace.
Developing a USP helps a business in corporate Branding. If a business decides to promote itself, it should have a message that makes it unique. Whether it be services, products, or customer support once the USP is created, it helps get word of mouth through.
Also, most of the consumers, in an industry, can quickly be bored with the mainstream, overly-replicated, and traditional products and services; a USP helps offer something different to the customers, resulting in customer attraction.
Target Audience Research
The target audience comprises people interested in the product or services provided in the specified industry and, hence, are potential prospects for any business that operates in that industry. Irrespective of corporate Branding or product/service advertisement, the target audience should be kept in mind.
Knowing the target audience is essential for a business, adoption of various methods of research to determine its target audience is necessary. First and foremost, target audiences can be determined by analyzing the customer base;
- Who are the people that mostly buy from your business?
- Where do you get most of your revenue from?
Industrial research can also be effective, such as what segment mostly buys from your industry. Research activities such as polls, surveys and interviews can effectively determine the target audience.
Once the research on the target audience is done, a business should divide its target audience into different segments. Segments could be based on age, sex, and location. Market segmentation helps a business to decide the tone it should adopt in Corporate Branding.
SWOT Analysis
A swot analysis helps a business know what aspects of it make it stand out from its competitors, what its weaknesses are, those strategic branding services facets on which it needs to work, what opportunities it can use for its lucrative gains, and lastly, those threats that can damage the business, operations, and its survival in the market.
If a business has strengths that make it better than its competitors, then it should be used as it’s USP. Working on weaknesses and enhancing these facets helps a business to rebrand itself. Looking for new opportunities helps a business target undiscovered segments that can be turned into potential prospects. Analyzing threats, on the other hand, helps a business to prepare against any of the disruption that can damage a business, like loss of customers, new entrants, or increase in marketing expenditure by the competitors.
Competitor Analysis
For every business, it is essential to analyze the industry in which it operates in, mainly having an eye on the operational activities of its competitors. A business that keenly does so gains several insights. These insights include new technologies being adopted by the competitors. What types of products its rival brands are developing and selling. Moreover, this helps the business to know how they could differ from their competitors’ service and product.
Visual Identity & Promotions
In the last phase, a business has to create its visual identification. Visual identity includes logos and trademarks. While creating a visual identity, a company should know the message it wants to convey to its audience.
Various colors send different messages, most fast-food chains have yellow and red logos that trigger hunger, and tech giants like Dell and HP have their logos-colored blue to convey a message of trust and dependability. At the same time, businesses like Microsoft, eBay, Google, and NBC have several colors in their logo to highlight inclusivity.
Channeling the promotions for corporate Branding is also a decision that should be taken considering several facets. For example, where businesses have most of the target audience, it should use that medium for its corporate Branding; if most of the target audience watches television, then TV channels should be used for promotion, or if most of the target audience uses platforms like social media or search engines then digital marketing is the best option.
Conclusion
We have shared with you all the steps and measures to be taken while creating the corporate brand strategy. However, for most newly developed businesses with budget restrictions, allocating resources like money and time to designing the corporate brand strategy can be challenging. However for small and medium-sized businesses seeking services such as corporate brand design and research at affordable charges along with premium services ensured can place their bet on SMB Services.
SMB Services is your one stop solution for A-Z corporate branding communication services. Avail the services such as branding strategy creation, branding video production, and logo designing from SMB Services.