Corporate Branding: A guide

Do you want your business to have a stellar brand image? Why not put in your best efforts and make your brand strong and memorable?

Numerous successful businesses have dedicated huge teams that work on their corporate branding with the aim to promote. These companies are outstandingly remarkable at defining their products. Brands like Apple, Samsung, Audi understand that a clear and comprehensive identity is crucial to develop a brilliant competitive strategy.

Let us discuss in details the intricacies of corporate branding.

What is Corporate Branding?

Corporate branding is a significant aspect of the overall marketing strategy of a company.

To put it simply, corporate branding is at work when a corporate company works to promote its brand image rather than the services or products that they might sell. Corporate branding is a form of corporate marketing.

Corporate branding is the intangible spirit and attitude behind a company that provides a distinctive identity in the minds of the consumers. As compared to promoting products and services of the company, it is a much broader concept.

It affects numerous stakeholders like employees or investors. It also impacts several aspects of companies and has a significant effect on the evaluation of their products and services, corporate identity and culture, sponsorship, employment applications, and brand extensions. It can lead to a significant increase in the scope of the economy. 

Features of Corporate Branding

The success or failure of a company is not only a result of the quality of their products but also depends upon their marketing strategies. It acts as a crucial element in achieving the recognition of a product. It also helps to establish a long-term reputation and recognition in the market place. 

Let’s have a look at the key features of corporate branding:

• Corporate branding includes autonomous brands with a shade or source brand architecture. 

• It defines the organization behind a product or service. 

• Corporate branding is related to mature brands. It is characterized through rich heritage and valuable roots, its assets and capabilities. It is distinguished through employees as brand ambassadors, its values, discipline, a dedicated global orientation, and a visible citizenship practice. 

• Brand transparency encapsulates the brand vision, brand values, brand positioning, and brand image. This is a significant feature of corporate branding. 

• Corporate branding includes brand consistency across the organization. 

• It facilitates new product launch. It is widely accepted in the market due to the strong corporate legacy created with the past line of products offered by the company. 

• Corporate branding makes marketing and promotional efforts easier. 

• It provides a competitive advantage to the company. 

• Corporate branding also enables a company to enter new markets and locations on the domestic and international level. 

Now that you know about the essential features of corporate branding, let us learn how branding incorporate consumer touchpoint.

How Branding Incorporate Consumer Touchpoint

A brand touchpoint is any interaction or communication between a brand and its customers. A brand usually constructs and draft touchpoints to engage their customers. They aim to provide them with the best brand experience they could have.

Brand touchpoints provide an opportunity for a brand to communicate with their customers on a day-to-day basis. Customers are drawn closer to the brand and continue to use the services.

Let’s see how branding incorporates consumer touchpoints: 

• Advertising: Brand touchpoints lend exposure to all forms of advertising. It includes TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, online, outdoor advertising and much more. 

• Other forms of promotion: It also involves other forms of promotion like point-of-sale material in retailers, direct marketing (which includes mail, email, and mobile text messages), exposure to a brand from sponsorships and events, etc. 

• Firm sales and service staff: Few brands are service-based. They sell and distribute their products or services through their staff. They have their outlets, sales force or a call centre. 

• Services outlets: Another example of a brand touchpoint are companies with their retail or service outlets where customers visit. They provide facilities of the store, outlet or a brand. These facilities may offer numerous brand touch points like exterior signage, internal facilities, general atmosphere, communication with staff, and many more. 

• Non-brand communications: These are the brand points generated by bloggers, media, retailers, and individual consumers. 

• Retail presence: Some brands are highly prominent in the store with significant store placements and supportive point-of-sale material. 

• Word of mouth (personal): Consumers discuss specific product categories and particular brands particularly for highly involved product purchases. These are all brand touch points. Consumers are exposed to the brand in a way. 

• Word of mouth (online): Online word-of-mouth occurs primarily through social networking sites. It generates a significant number of brand touchpoints for major brands. Besides many people talking about the brand, significant brands also construct their social media sites on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. 

• Product placement: Some brands are quite popular and prominent. They appear in TV shows, movies and even in music videos. These are included in brand touchpoints as they expose the consumer to a brand. 

These were some significant ways by which branding incorporates consumer touchpoint. 

What are the values for a Corporate Brand? 

A brand speaks a lot more than the products or services sold by a company. The logo, products, website, and even digital marketing campaigns of a company may change over time, but one thing remains constant, i.e. the brand values.

For most business companies, brand values are the key element behind the market success. It can be a challenging experience for a company to comprehend the definition of brand value.

Core brand values along with finely tuned brand communication strategy help to shape the culture and the community of the brand. It ensures that a company connects with the customers meaningfully.

The typical types of core brand values are:

• Product Leadership: The team of a company should be dedicated completely to quality testing and innovation. They should be continuously working on innovations and improvements to a product. If the brand value of a company is focused on products and services, then it is essential to think more than just the price. It is essential to decide how to provide the highest quality among everyone else in the market at the cheapest rates. 

• Operational excellence: Companies that focus more on operational excellence in their brand value proposition to provide the best overall experience at low prices. It is not necessary to come up with a better and newer product. Instead, provide customers with a consistent and reliable experience at a price they can afford. 

• Customer relationships: Brands that idealise customer relationships not just rely on their product or price to influence their consumers. By learning more about the personality of the buyers, these companies ensure to deliver the right products, solutions at the right time. 

These are some of the essential values that should form the core principles of a corporate brand. 

Solutions for Corporate Branding

Even the most popular brand across the world can be ruined deliberately or by accident. Below are some common mistakes that may kill a brand. Let’s have a look at the points:                                                                                                                       

• Inconsistent corporate identity: A company should use the same name, logo, and tag line inside and outside the company. Proper branding won’t be achieved if a company chooses to use just one or two marketing avenues to spread the word. The customers should consistently look at the company’s name, tag line, and logo over and over again before it gets imprinted on their minds. 

• Untrained employees: Untrained and inexperienced employees can affect the branding of a company. Use employees as potential walking and talking billboards. Train them to be community ambassadors in the company’s marketing campaign. 

• Not using existing customers for branding: It is the best marketing tool is the word of mouth advertising. Ask customers or clients if they will join in spreading the word. Ask them about the company’s greatest strength and take their permission to quote them in a brochure or ad. 

These are some of the problems encountered by a corporate branding company. Implement the solutions to promote the service/product offered by your company. 

Best Examples of Corporate Branding

Let’s look at some significant examples of corporate branding: 

• Apple: Apple is a technology giant that is popular for offering various gadgets like mobile phones, tablets, laptops, and computer systems. The brand logo is quite creative and catchy. The design is minimalistic with a solid colour tone and a classy finish. Even their print, digital, and television advertisements follow the same design with the logo being clearly visible. The products of the company can be recognised even from far due to the strong measures incorporated by the company to build corporate branding. 

• Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola is one of the most loved and profitable brands across the world for more than a decade. Its slogan “Taste the Feeling” is widely known due to its popularity. It keeps on hiring renowned celebrities as its brand ambassadors from different walks of life. This helps them to achieve an emotional connection with the target audience under the age bracket of 13-35 years. 

Corporate branding is much more than a catchy logo and aesthetic design templates. Understand the definition, comprehend the features, and implement the principles to create a mark in the field of corporate marketing. 

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