If you want to increase brand recognition, improve your market share, and gain your customer’s trust – then a corporate branding strategy is essential. Firmly establishing your brand identity will help you to attract new buyers, engage with your current customers, and firmly establish yourself in the marketplace.
All of this is essential if you want to improve your revenue, increase profits, and run a company with long-term sustainability.
Your corporate brand identity covers your business image, how you communicate with your customers, your marketing campaigns, and how you present your products in promotional materials and packaging. All of this needs to be perfectly tailored to your target audience with the aim of making sure they pick your company’s products over the competition.
In the article below, we will talk you through everything you need to know about corporate branding and how to make sure you get it right in 2023.
What is Corporate Branding?
Before we get started on how to develop a strong corporate brand, first we need to look at establishing a corporate branding definition.
Your corporate branding strategy guides the messaging, presentation, and positioning of your product or service. It cover’s every aspect of your corporate brand identity from logos and packaging to company messaging, taglines, and brand values.
Your corporate identity needs to reflect the personality, mentality and intended audience of your company. Successfully presenting your product or service to your potential customers should lead to an increase in brand awareness, improved company perception, and a rise in loyal customers. All of which will naturally lead to higher profits!
In order to maintain your brand and visual identity you need to make sure your image and messaging are consistent across all of your promotional and marketing efforts. A strong corporate brand will be recognizable and identifiable across all adverts, packaging, marketing materials, brand activation events, and social media.
Why is Corporate Branding So Important for Your Company?
If you want to attract your target audience, you need to give them a reason to choose you over the competition. Customers no longer want to buy from a bland corporation with a cold, generic, and purely profit-driven image.
You need to present your customers with a unique and attractive brand identity that showcases your business’s personality, and relatable human side. It is this brand image that should come to mind when your customers think about your business and products.
You need to make sure that your brand strategy is consistent and covers every aspect of your visual identity, corporate messaging, and brand voice. By creating a cohesive brand strategy, you will be able to make sure your target customers are getting the right message whenever they encounter your company – either on an in-store company stand, on social media posts, or at a marketing event.
Successful corporate branding will create a positive and memorable customer experience from start to finish and increase the chances of them becoming loyal customers of your products and services.
What Are The Benefits of Strong Corporate Branding?
You Will Attract New Customers with a Strong Corporate Identity
Taking control of your brand voice and image will give your customers a reason to notice and take an interest in your products. A bland and generic brand logo, lackluster social media marketing, and a weak corporate entity image will mean that your company fades into the background against marketing-savvy competitors.
Attractive visual elements, a strong brand logo, and clear messaging will allow your customers to quickly identify your brand and understand what you are offering them. A consistent style guide that informs your brand’s purpose, product packaging, and messaging will ensure you are providing customers with a consistent message tailored for them.
If your company presents a clear message to target customers about unique selling points, core values, and why your company is superior to other brands; this should result in improved awareness and revenue.
You Can Make Sure Your Product Branding Targets Your Potential Customers
Corporate branding companies will help you to effectively target your potential customers and make sure you are presenting the right image to your audience.
Every aspect of your product presentation needs to be appealing to your customers, from your digital marketing to product branding packaging. A professional style guide will help you to make the best decisions for your product brands with every decision aimed at presenting a consistent and attractive value proposition to your customers.
This will make sure you don’t make costly mistakes investing in advertising, visual identity strategies, and social media accounts that don’t attract the right demographic for your products.
Strong Brand Management Increases Customer Loyalty
Your customers want to be able to identify and relate to the brands they use. And a key part of this is making sure that company values align with their own.
If you can successfully present your brand values to new customers which match their own, you are increasing the chances that they will view your brand positively and become loyal customers.
Creating an identifiable brand logo and creating a story about what that logo represents is essential if you want customers to recognize your products and choose them over other options.
Good Corporate and Product Branding Will Increase Your Market Share
Increased brand awareness and loyalty will lead to increased company growth and market share. Your packaging and marketing campaigns will provide customers with reasons to choose your company over others and lead to an improved corporate reputation.
Once you have established a strong corporate brand identity – new product launches, marketing events, and moving into new areas will be easier. You will already have a clear image set in the mind of your potential customers.
Successful branding means that even if your customers haven’t yet had an experience with your product or service – they will be more likely to make a first-time purchase and pick your company over others.
Corporate Branding Helps to Build Your Company’s Future
Developing a strong corporate image will help you to build toward a sustainable future for your company. It will stand as a strong footing for you to expand your brand, introduce new products, increase your market share, and enter new areas across South Africa or overseas.
The aim of a targetted and well-researched corporate branding strategy is to give your customers every reason they need to purchase your products, pick your company, and remain loyal to you over the competition. All of which will lead to higher revenue to support business growth.
What Are The Most Important Aspects of a Successful Corporate Branding Strategy?
If your corporate branding strategy is going to prove profitable, you need to make sure that you do the proper research regarding your potential customers, the marketplace, and your current corporate identity.
In order to ensure the best ROI on your marketing, a brand image needs to be informed by reliable data and marketing expertise.
For this reason, many businesses work with corporate branding companies in South Africa. Working with a professional and dedicated team will help you to save time and money by ensuring you don’t make costly missteps and present unattractive corporate brands to your target audience.
Whether you choose to use a professional service to help you with your brand image or want to work on a brand marketing strategy on your own – here are the key steps to building a successful brand identity.
Do Your Research and Plan Accordingly
Corporate brand management doesn’t just involve choosing the images, color scheme, and brand messaging that appeals to you.
Instead, you have to do your market research and work with professional designers to make sure your corporate brand image aligns with the tastes, lifestyle aspirations, and needs of your target customers.
The proper research and developing of a customer avatar will inform every aspect of your corporate branding presentation, including:
- Your company’s mission statement.
- A company’s values.
- Social media accounts.
- Product or service advertising.
- Branding, logo, and packaging.
- Messaging on your website.
- Brand activation and promotional events.
Making sure that every department in your company is on the same page about your brand’s identity will make sure that potential and existing customers are getting the same strong brand messaging at every turn.
Keep Your Corporate Branding Consistent
One of the key aspects of a successful brand strategy is consistency. You need to establish and reinforce a single strong brand image and identity across the board. If your messaging and product or service branding is inconsistent with varying colours, presentation, and values then this can lead to confusion and damage brand loyalty.
Whether you are developing personal branding of corporate representatives, producing new marketing materials, or establishing a brand voice – your messaging and visual identity need to remain the same.
Corporate Brands Should Be Targetted to Your Customers
As we hinted above, you need to make sure that your corporate branding reflects the needs and requirements of your customers. You need to be prepared to discard your own personal tastes and preferences if they do not align with those of your customers.
The aim of your corporate brand strategy is to attract, engage, and increase customer interest and loyalty. The more your brand and marketing campaigns align with the tastes of your target audience, the better your results will be.
Brand Management Needs to Be Company-Wide
Your corporate brand identity isn’t only the concern of your marketing channels or a corporate branding agency instead every department needs to know the ins and outs of your company’s identity.
This will help to ensure that every aspect of customer experience reflects your brand’s message and is aimed towards pleasing your potential customers. A consistent corporate image will increase customer satisfaction and leave a positive perception whenever they come into contact with your products or employees.
Some of the Best Corporate Branding Examples
Now that we know why it is so important to develop a corporate brand strategy, let’s look at some of the best branding examples from the corporate world. These leading brands have been able to develop strong customer loyalty, brand awareness, and huge market share through constant messaging and strong brand strategies.
Nike’s Just Do It Campaign
There are few places around the globe where the phrase “Just Do It” won’t remind someone of Nike and the company’s famous swoosh logo. By promoting this motto, the company stands for the values of ambition, hard work, and fearlessness – all of which are a great match for a company selling athletic shoes.
The brand has further reinforced this image with decades worth of collaborations and advertisements featuring some of the biggest athletes in the world. All of these have led to huge sales and major market growth over the decades and Nike is one of the most recognizable brands in the world.
Apple’s “Think Different Campaign
Another very successful corporate branding strategy is embodied in the “Think Different” message from the Apple brand. The company presents itself as an innovative company on the cutting edge of technology and its tagline reflects this.
Apple is consistently introducing new products with new features, so its branding encourages customers to always want more from their technology and desire the newest features and developments.
The brand’s motto has proven so successful that their iconic 1984 commercial that encourages customers to expect more from their home computers resulted in 72,000 sales within 100 days. It also won the status of the best Superbowl commercial over 40 years before it aired.
Tesla’s Futuristic Corporate Branding
Tesla is successfully transitioning from being considered solely as a car manufacturer to a technology company on the cutting edge of what is possible. With a branding strategy centered around futuristic tech, innovation, and forward-thinking they have carved out a unique spot in the corporate landscape.
This strong corporate image means that the company can enter premium pricing positions which each new product market they enter and have built up a notoriously rabid customer base who are keen to lap up every new development the company release.
As you can see from the examples above, no matter what industry you are in – corporate branding is going to be essential if you want long-term success and serious business growth.
Below we will look at how a professional corporate branding company in South Africa can help you to develop your own successful strategy.
What are Corporate Branding Companies?
A corporate branding company will help you to develop a successful brand based on detailed research, years of marketing expertise, and brand activation. Most businesses, whether large or small, do not have the time, resources, or experience to develop an effective and profitable branding and style guide.
A professional branding company in South Africa will have a ready-to-go team of experts ready to research your target customers, position your products in the market, and establish an identity that will appeal to your audience.
An expert team will be able to work on either developing or refreshing your corporate image according to your current market position, company image, and what your customers expect or want from your business and products.
What Are The Benefits of Using Corporate Branding Services?
Access Marketing Expertise
Corporate branding companies will have an expert team made up of individuals with different areas of expertise and skills. These specialists have years of experience in developing corporate identity, branding strategies, advertising campaigns, and visual representations.
Collaborating with experts will save you time and resources, and make sure that you don’t waste money on branding which is wrong for your market and customer base.
Cut Down on Your Research and Planning Costs
Developing an in-house team for your brand management means will cost your company a lot of time, money, and resources which could be cut down by hiring a professional service. You also won’t have to worry about paying full-time salary costs, instead, you will only be paying for the services and time you used.
A marketing agency will also have the connections and knowledge to make sure that you are presented with the most detailed and important data to influence every aspect of your marketing and branding campaigns.
Access Marketing Networks and Advanced Advertising Tools
An experienced corporate branding company will have developed a strong network of marketing vendors, suppliers, and vendors which will help you to develop your branding strategies quicker and with beneficial discounts you might now be able to access when working on your own.
You may also find that the company you are working with has been able to develop beneficial relationships with media channels, print media, or social media influencers who will be able to increase the visibility of your brand and products.
Where to Find Corporate Branding Companies in South Africa?
For more information about corporate branding, marketing events, and project management – contact B&W Productions today. Our expert team has been working in corporate marketing for over 25 years and can help you with all aspects of your marketing planning, social media posts, digital marketing, and corporate branding development.
