There’s a lot of strategic planning that goes into corporate branding as it incorporates external and internal resources to gain the most profit for the organization. Incompetent branding and marketing often lie at the root cause of failure to launch high-quality products and services. However, with some winning corporate branding strategies, brands can build and maintain their reputation in the long run.
In today’s DayBPO blog post, we take a look at some simple yet super-effective ways to reimagine your corporate branding and breathe some new life into your marketing efforts!
What Are Corporate Branding Strategies?
Corporate branding revolves around promoting, building, and expanding your organization’s brand as a corporate entity. Thus, corporate branding strategies are how organizations present themselves to the world and to their employees. These branding strategies are much broader than specific and singular product or service branding as they incorporate consistent branding that spans across a brand’s marketing, communications, and corporate social responsibility activities to target new customers and investors. As the LCI Barcelona Master in Branding and Brand Strategy, the value of branding and brand strategy lies in the fact that only those businesses that properly plan remain in stable positions in the market.
Brand vs Corporate Image
There’s a difference between a corporate image and a brand. Corporate images are how brands present themselves to the public. This is generally where trademarks, product design, public relations, and advertising come into play.
You’re familiar with the golden arches that form an “M” to help you recognize the McDonald’s logo, right? You might instantly think along the lines of fast, convenient meals for the whole family when you think about Mcdonald’s. And that’s what brand image is.
The feeling your audience gets when they see your logo is your brand image, but the way they know by heart that McDonald’s is associated with a big yellow letter M and red branding colors, that’s a corporate image.
How Can Organizations Build Corporate Branding Strategies?
The Vision-Culture-Image Alignment Model is one of the most popular ways for creating corporate branding strategies. It’s known to help brands create a consistent company vision, culture, and public image. It’s also a great way to get your marketing, branding, and business goals aligned and create a strong brand image.
Here are the fundamental steps businesses can use to create their corporate branding strategies:
#1 – Set Brand Goals
Perhaps you want to establish a brand image or simply grow awareness and brand visibility. You might also be focused on attracting more investors. Whatever those goals are, it’s imperative to write them down and set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to define and measure your success.
#2 – Determine Corporate Values, Mission, and Vision
With clear corporate values, a mission, and a vision, you can lay the foundation for branding efforts. What does your organization stand for? What philosophies shape your company’s culture? Those are your values. Your mission statement is your strategic direction toward reaching your long-term goals. And your vision statement is all about the ideals you strive to reach as a brand.
#3 – Work on Your Corporate Brand Voice
Corporate branding strategies rely heavily on corporate brand voices. Your corporate brand voice must reflect your brand’s values, personality, and identity, and it needs to be consistent throughout your external and internal communications. This must also resonate with the VOC (voice of customers) and the audiences you cater to. In essence, you’ll craft your brand voice by assigning a set of human characteristics to your brand.
#4 – Nail the Key Brand Message
One of the most important things you need to consider for corporate branding strategies is your brand’s unique value proposition (UVP). Your UVP needs to clearly communicate the value your brand brings to the table, the unique edge that sets you apart from the competition, and the ways you solve problems in unique ways for your audience, and it should be as simple as possible. This can be presented in a slogan, a motto, unique taglines, or even an elevator pitch that makes your brand stand out as big and bold.
#5 – Grow Your Online Reputation
A corporate branding strategy must include your solution for managing your brand’s online reputation and nurturing customer loyalty. These days, it’s much easier for customers, investors, and even employees to share their experiences online, and brand reputations have become more fragile due to this, not to mention harder to manage. Social media monitoring tools can be used to help you keep track of how your audience is engaging with your brand, but it’s also essential to ensure that all info about your brand is accurate across your various profiles on social media channels. Don’t forget to oversee your brand’s customer reviews and tags on rating platforms!
Wrapping Up Corporate Branding Strategies
Corporate branding strategies help organizations streamline how the public, their customers, and their employees perceive their brand. It relies on corporate identity, corporate image, and a series of strategic plans to maintain brand reputation.
Brands that invest in their corporate branding strategies stand to gain amazing benefits including:
- Building trust with customers and nurturing long-term relationships
- Enhancing customer advocacy, engagement, and loyalty levels
- Streamline the purchasing pipeline for every new product or service that they launch