6 Types of Branding and How to Leverage Them for Your Business

How your customers and potential customers view your brand isn't something beyond your control. However, your branding efforts can directly impact how customers feel about you and start building trust with them before they even make their first purchase. By considering your branding, you can improve your reputation and get more exposure, increasing your revenue.

The importance of branding

What is branding? Branding is the process of creating an identity for your brands and business using design and messaging elements to set your business apart from the competition. Your branding represents who and what your business is to help it form long-lasting relationships with customers. Not only does it promote brand recognition by helping potential customers remember design elements and messaging elements when they see your marketing and advertising across various mediums, but it can also help you get more customers by creating better marketing strategies.

Your marketing must align with your brand values and positioning to maintain brand consistency across your marketing, whether they're interacting with your brand online or offline. It can also help you begin to develop trust.

As you may know, different colors can evoke emotions from customers, making them subconsciously begin trusting you and forming relationships whether they realize it or not. Branding is an effective piece of the marketing puzzle that can help you find new ways to get attention in a crowded marketplace.

6 Types of branding

Before you can understand the basics of branding, you must learn about the different types. Different types of branding are used depending on your goals. Believe it or not, one company can use multiple types of branding if they are cohesive and can help you reach your business goals. Here are some of the different types of branding that might work for your business.

1. Corporate branding

Corporate branding includes every aspect of the business, including products, services, employees, and more. As a result, your corporate branding plays a huge role in your business reputation. Rather than focusing on one aspect, like your products, it focuses on the business as a whole. Good corporate branding focuses on the unique selling points (USP) and value proposition of the business as a whole and includes the creation of brand guidelines to cover the ways you'll communicate those selling points with customers and the public.

Corporate branding affects more than just your marketing and sales efforts; it can improve your hiring strategies and help you find partners. With good corporate branding, you can attract top-performing candidates because they know your brand's values and understand how they'll be treated within the company. It can also help you find business partners and investors by establishing where your company stands in the marketplace.

2. Personal branding

Personal branding is how a single person brands themselves. Personal branding is best suited for self-employed individuals like freelancers, affiliate marketers, or influencers who must develop a personal brand identity to stand out from the rest. Personal branding can differ from your personal image. Who you are through your business doesn't have to be the same person as you are in everyday life.

Personal branding allows you to specifically target a niche and leverage any existing fame you have to earn more business. When using personal branding to establish or grow your business, consider how something in your personal life can affect your business.

3. Product branding

Product branding is one of the most well-known forms of branding because it's done for single product lines rather than the entire business. Every time a business puts out a new line of products, they do branding for just those products because they may have a variety of products with different price points, benefits, and end users in mind.

When considering how to brand products, always consider the end user and customer journey. You may also need to perform a competitive analysis to see how competitors are marketing a similar product. Ultimately, if you want to be successful at product branding, you must solve a customer's problem in a unique way and advertise your solution to them, taking a different approach than your competitors.

4. Retail branding

Retail branding is branding designed just for retail businesses. This type of branding takes all of the different products under one roof and finds a way to market the seller rather than each individual product, which may come from multiple other businesses and manufacturers.

Retail branding allows you to sell products from multiple manufacturers and other brands. But, of course, you can also sell your own products only, in which case you'll still need retail branding that conveys why people should shop at your business instead of somewhere else.

5. Geographic branding

Geographic branding focuses on the customers in your area and the traits of a specific region as a selling point. This type of branding is best for the tourism industry because it can attract people to a city, town, or state. But, of course, businesses can benefit from geographic branding, too, especially if your primary customers are located in the same region as your business.

By using visual elements that represent where your business operates, you can attract locals by building a sense of community through your branding efforts. For example, you could put a famous statue or attraction in your logo to generate interest from local customers.

6. Service branding

Service branding is a lot like product branding in that you're focusing on one aspect of the business rather than the business as a whole. Unfortunately, service branding is much more difficult than product branding because you don't have physical items like packaging or the product itself. Instead, you have to brand something consumers can't see to generate trust. Branding your services requires you to understand the pain points of potential customers and be able to provide them with a service that can solve their problems.

Branding examples

Now that you understand the different branding types, it's time to see if you understand how they're used. Here are a few different types of branding examples to help you understand when each instance is used.

Corporate branding: Apple

Apple's corporate branding focuses on products that are high quality and easy to use. Ultimately, Apple could be considered a luxury brand because its products come at a higher price point than competitors. Anyone, even non-Apple users, can identify Apple's corporate branding.

Personal branding: Neil Patel

Neil Patel is an SEO guru who has done exceptional personal branding to make digital marketers of all levels trust his insight by building a blog and making digital marketing tips accessible to everyone.

Product branding: Nike

Nike is one of the most popular footwear brands because they developed timeless branding that allows them to reach several markets. Their tagline, "Just Do It," allows them to stand out from other top brands in the same niche.

Retail branding: IKEA

Everyone knows IKEA for their minimalistic yet modern and affordable furniture (and, of course, their meatballs). In addition, IKEA is known for their prices and a huge selection of furniture, giving individuals looking to furnish a home tons of options, so they only need to go to one store to get all of their shopping done.

Geographic branding: London

London advertisements often feature Big Ben as a tourist attraction to pique your interest to try to get you to book a stay at a hotel or visit the city.

Service branding: Delta Airlines

Delta Airlines has become one of the top airlines because its service is reliable, and they offer comfortable seats. Of course, this comes at a price, but more people will be willing to pay more for a larger seat and better service while traveling.

Unique branding helps you stand out from the competition

There are many branding types, but the ones you choose will depend on your unique offering. For example, an eCommerce company should focus on corporate and product branding, while a hotel might focus on corporate and service branding. Whichever branding you're working on, always consider who you'll be marketing to find the best colors, fonts, and messaging.

Mailchimp makes branding easy. With our content creation tools, you can effectively design your website that's consistent with all types of branding to enhance your marketing efforts to provide visitors with a seamless user experience throughout all of your marketing channels, from print materials to email marketing and beyond.