What is Brand Strategy? How to develop an effective Brand Strategy?

Before we go ahead to understand the meaning of Brand strategy we should to learn about Branding.  To create effective Brand strategy, one should go with Marketing Goals or Organisations goals. Business Goals and Brand Building or creating a Brand strategy should match to each other.

Here is the Table of Content list that we are explain in this article-:

• What is a Brand
• What is the Brand Image ?
• What Is strategy ?
• What is Brand Strategy ?
• the position of the brand
• The architecture associated with a Brand
• Brand and Product Line Extensions
• Why is branding Important ?
• Brand Image and CSR

What is a Brand?

A brand is a company or group’s image as perceived by the customers when buying products or services in the market. A brand is a non-taxable asset, and if adequately maintained, brand image a go a long way to support a company or group power to the top.

What is the brand image?

Brand image is the identity that one associates a company or group with when purchasing a product or service. Brand image is an intangible asset for a company or group.

 A right brand image can help a company or group to do well in business and gain customer’s faith and confidence. Brand image can go a long way to generate more significant sales and increase the overall revenue of a company or group.

The brand image does not develop in one moment. It takes years and even decades for a company or group to become a successful and famous brand.

Brand image demands a company or group to make specific promises in terms of the product or service quality and standards.

The company or group must adhere to those standards, no matter how long it has been in business. The company or group needs to stick firm to the rules as per the commitment made by it earlier to its customers.

Any non-adherence to the quality or the standards of the company or group’s commitments are bound to harm the image gained by it and certainly decrease its sales and creditability in the minds of the customers.

What is Strategy?

A strategy is the process of determination of long term business goals and objectives of a company that at the proper allocation of necessary resources and the appropriate adoption of appropriate courses of action.

What are Brand Strategy and its importance?

Brand Strategy is a pretty hard concept to define. It encompasses the promises one sets to be associated with his or her company. The messages one conveys through the company.

The behavioral approach and practices followed in the company. To sum up, Brand Strategy is the company personality that its owners or promoters try and project to its customers and the markets in general.

A successful brand image created by a company or firm involves the adoption of specific vital strategies by it.

These strategies, when applied with proper planning and orientation, can push the company’s brand to greater heights and catapult its image amongst customers.

These strategies are as follows:

1. The positioning of a Brand

Positioning a brand refers to the place where you want your brand to be in a prospective customer’s mind.

It is a psychological level where you want to be when a customer, in search of a particular product or service. Ideally,   you want to reach to such a level of confidence, in a customer’s mind, that he or she will correlate a particular brand with a specific product.

For example, we often demand a packet of Surf in the market, not even realizing that Surf is the brand name of Hindustan Unilever Limited.

We are so used to with the name Surf that we tend to forget the actual name of the product that is detergent powder.

Such is the level of a brand that should ideally be thinking of positioning itself in the customer’s mind. Other examples of brand association with products are Colgate for toothpaste, Maggie for instant noodles, Life India Corporation of India with life coverage insurance policies, etc..

All these examples remind us about the brand-specific correlation with the product or service. Brand positioning regarding a place in a target customer should be high. A brand should be easily co relatable, and the benefits associated with a    brand’s product or services should be top.

There must be enough proofs available for a customer to verify with the benefits claimed by a Brand.

2. The architecture associated with a Brand

A brand is well perceived if it follows a   proper architecture related to the products and services it offers.

A brand can create a   master brand and then club multiple sub-brands under the same umbrella. For example, the Tata Sons have many sub-brands like Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy    Services, Tata Teleservices, Tata Motors, and so on under the parent brand of Tata.  

This generates a sense of the Tata flavour in any sub-brand offerings made.    Customers tend to go with the parent brand reputation when it comes to brand architecture is concerned.

A competent business firm can generate a broad business base and a wide array of businesses under the ahead and parent brand umbrella.

Talking of brand architectures and their management, another brand stands out; it is the Reliance   Group.

This group, too, holds several sub-brands like Reliance Jio, Reliance    Petroleum, Reliance Industries, and etc. all under the same parent brand Reliance.

This easily attracts customers to buy any product under the name of Reliance and effectively generates more significant revenue for the company and the group at large.

Thus brands with a distributed architecture are more likely to grow its business and spread its market reach and expand its businesses at large as compared with brands with the improper or weaker architecture of brands.

  3. Brand and Product Line Extensions

A brand producing a particular product can extend its product line to create variants of its existing products or services.

For example, Coca Cola has options like Diet Coke, Coca Cola Cherry Zero, etc. These variants constitute a product line extension of existing products of Coca Cola. Kinley also a product of Coca Cola, but it is in the market with an entirely new brand identity.

Thus this can be termed as Brand Extension. Brand extension is the creation of an entirely new brand for a product and launching it in the market. This minimizes the risk associated with the failure of a particular product, and it reduces the risk of deteriorating the existing brand image. 

In brand extension, a new product with a   different brand name is less likely to produce a significant impact on its failure on the parent brand.

This strategy is applied by many established brands to safeguard against product failures and minimizing risk associated with failed products or services.

Product extensions and product line extensions are, however, risky. The risk factor associated is a huge one.

As new products are just only an extension or curtailment of an existing brand, risks of failure are enormous, evolving out of a    product line extension failure upon the entire product range.

It can lead to loss of faith in the brand series and, as a result, can force producers to stop production of the whole range of products or services.

Why is branding important?

Reading through, we find that designing a brand strategy should be very intricate to impact a brand’s image growth positively. A particular brand has to very cautiously develop a customized brand strategy that suits its business, style, and ethical policies.

It should mould a plan to adapt its culture and values ideally. A company or group can think of developing a strategy wherein sustainable brand development becomes a reality.

It should choose the appropriate steps in brand strategy formulation, followed by its implementation. It should focus on customization to suit itself because not one size fits all businesses.

Brand Image and CSR

A company or group, to gain popularity and generate brand-loyal customers, must engage in some Corporate Social Responsibilities as well.

Engaging in Corporate Social Responsibilities helps develop a positive outlook towards the company in his or her mind. 

Corporate Social Responsibilities tend to make an impression that, “The Company has a good moral and social policy.”  This helps gather a great attraction of the media and the public at large towards the brand. Many people associate such a brand as “the brand to look forward to,” which represents greater faith in the company or the group at large.