Brand Strategy 101 A Beginners Guide to Branding your Business

You wanted to know more about brand strategies that work and you came to the right place. This beginners guide to brand strategy will explore 3 brand strategies for your products and 4 brand strategies to help grow your business. After this, you’ll have a better understanding of how to brand like a pro and well on your way to contributing meaningful insights to your team.

Product Brand Strategy
The three brand strategies commonly used amongst large firms for deciding which products will contribute to which brand names are Multi-product Branding, Multi-branding, and Private Branding.

Multi-Product Brand & Benefits
Multi-Product Branding, also known as family branding, or corporate branding is when a company uses one brand name for all of its products within a class. For example, the brand name Sony is used on most if not all of their products. Sony is the company or parent brand name, but you will also see it on televisions, and on their PlayStation series. The benefits of Multiproduct branding is brand equity return, lower promotion costs, and growing brand awareness. These benefits come about through the extensive use of your brand name over a wide array of product offerings. The idea is to take a brand name which has established itself in one product class and apply that brand name to another product, in another product class, expecting for the brand awareness to carry over. However, there is also a negative effect on the multi-product brand strategy.

How to Avoid Multi-Product Brand Issues
The downside of multi-product branding is that it will spread your brand thin. When a company spreads their brand thin the result is often a weaker brand image. The more a brand name is used on products of a different class, the greater the diluted effect on brand equity. In order to avoid the negative effects of Multiproduct branding, companies use sub-branding. Sub-branding allows a company to use the big brand name while giving each product a little brand of its’ own. For example, Gillette’s Mach 3 razor for men. The Gillette brand is clearly marked on the package so consumers associate the new Mach 3 with Gillette quality. This gives the Mach 3 a sub-brand and distinguishes it from other Gillette razors.