Product Branding- All you need to know about it

Be it a product or service, your brand is ‘Your Promise to Your Customers’ for your offerings- Payal

In this competitive world, it’s difficult to sell your product to the right customers & in the right value & hence for your product, Branding comes in the picture.

What is Branding?

Branding is a marketing tool to build loyalty, awareness & reputation in the market by using branding elements such as Name, logo & designs.

What is Product Branding?

Product Branding is the process of giving an identity or building a personality of your product by giving it a look & feel to differentiate it from other available products. Unique branding techniques give a major edge to your product in an increasingly competitive market. Eg: Trending Guerrilla Marketing. It is an advertising strategy that focuses on low-cost unconventional marketing tactics to surprise the audience. Packaging plays an important role in Product Branding which we can’t see in personal / business branding.

Product Branding can be done in 2 ways.

To build a product image around the company’s reputation is easier while individually managing the separate product brands requires more finance & resources.

1. Build a Brand of your company offering a varied range of products. 

This is the easiest way to gain the customer’s trust as they understand that if I buy any product of a particular company it has to be good. Eg. Apple; Be it iPhone, MacBook, iPad or accessories we buy it blindly. Of course, if someone has that much budget. Or Dove, they run marketing campaigns for their products individually but always highlights the USP of their brand i.e. Softness in each campaign.

2. Brand the product directly if you have the same company name or a single product eg. Coca-Cola

Branding each & every product individually can be expensive. This option is suitable for the company who is selling the products from two different segments or having a highly distinct target audience. eg. Nestle. Nestlé’s products include baby food, medical food, coffee and tea, confectionery, dairy products, ice cream, frozen food, pet foods, and snacks. But they run different ad campaigns for KitKat & for Maggie.

Steps for branding your product:

Research:

Research about your competitors: Check out what they are offering, what are their USPs & weaknesses. Study their Branding & marketing strategies for their Target audience.

  Research about your product: Make & define how your product is different than competitors. Think about how you can fulfil the weaknesses which exist in your competitors. Underline the Benefits, USPs & features of your product & accordingly determine your Target Audience.

Research about your target audience:

After defining the target audience, try to observe their habits. Define the platform for reaching out to them. Eg. For a local restaurant, you can go for social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram & hoardings, leaflets, newspaper ads in nearby local areas. Or for an online fashion brand, you can go for social media platforms like Facebook Instagram, Google ads & not necessarily local area.

2. Take surveys before entering into the actual market: Simply ask your close ones for their opinions and suggestions about the idea of your product. 
3. Implementing brand elements in the right way:

Brand elements such as right name, logo, designs, and tagline play an important role to stand out in the market. Make your product recognizable by giving it a relevant, easy to remember “Name”. Logo & Design of the product should also be relatable to the name which can make a product memorable.

4. Define the vision, mission, goals of your brand. Each marketing materials should convey the perfect message for your product.
5. Decide brand identity guidelines with similar fonts, colour schemes, logo placements to use it throughout all marketing materials & platforms, online or offline.

From your website, social media to your billboards & leaflets everything should be in sync to get people familiar with your brand.

Plan your Branding & marketing strategies: 

Keep a plan ready for the next 12 months for the sequential execution according to the research.

6. Plan a unique launch / Relaunch event: Be it online or offline, Rise the excitement by letting your Audience know that something new & exciting is coming soon. Be ready with the plan of promotional activities 6 months before the launch.
7. Conduct surveys officially in your target audience. Honest feedback and reviews are important. Also asking people regarding the platform they used to know about your product is important.
8. Decide if you are getting the Patent or Trademark for protection of your product brand or are you going to take a little risk of competitors copying some aspects of the brand identity.

In case even after such hell lot of work, your branding & marketing fails, don’t worry. There’s always a second chance I.e. “Rebranding”

Let’s see the Rebranding of a product:

In simple words, it means changing the identity of a product brand right from its name, logo to all the necessary designs for recreating the new image of a brand.

Rebranding can be risky as it will either give a boost for the sell or consumers won’t like the new brand at all. So rebranding is necessary when you want to stand out against your competitors in the market.

The rebranding also has two types:

1. Proactive means taking steps in advance.

When you see an opportunity to grow or want to expand into the new market or you are updating your outdated product & want to reconnect to the consumers; you can choose this option.

2. Reactive means in response to some event.

When there are company takeovers, mergers, change of the habits in Target audience or to resolve the negative image or to change the game of failed marketing, reactive rebranding can be used.

Additional tips for branding and Rebranding:

1. When it comes to trust, it does come to emotions & feelings. If your product promises one thing & delivers something else all your efforts for branding fails. Remember the quality of your product should be ×2 than your Branding & Packaging.
2. Stay flexible. It never goes as planned so be ready with plan B for every other possible thing.
3. Branding takes time to build a trustworthy relationship between your brand & your customers. So it should be consistent. Keep posting on social media.
4. Decide what you want your brand to be known for. Brand positioning owns a place in the mind of your consumers & in the market, so keep checking your branding and marketing strategies.
5. Update the marketing strategies from time to time. Keep a track of what you communicate about your brand, both visually and verbally.
6. It is important to correctly predict the time for the rebranding & what resources you are going to use for it. Because Rebranding can cost you much mentally, physically and financially as you have to brainstorm & rework to change every possible thing.
7. Don’t forget to take Brand Audits frequently. Ask questions to yourself what promise does my Brand deliver & does the product really deliver it.

Keep researching & evaluating, if your product is the best don’t be afraid. Head to the market with these tips!