What is a Brand?

There are many businesses in this world and a lot of them work for the same thing but what gives them their unique identity is their brand. A brand is an identity that is given to a business to make it popular and easily remembered by the people. A brand can be easily recognized by its unique logo designs and taglines which makes them stand out in the crowd.

What are the functions of a brand?

1. Brands make it easier to manage the accounting, selling, shipping, and all other activities of a business.
2. A brand protects the products under the trademark laws and packaging designs under the copyright laws.
3. Brands assure customers of quality services and product delivery.
4. People usually have brand loyalty which saves them from the rising competition in the market.
5. Brands have higher profit margins and they are extremely valuable legal assets that might be bought and sold at higher rates than usual.

The different branding strategies for any business are:

1. Product Branding Strategy
2. Line Marketing Strategy
3. Range Marketing Strategy
4. An Umbrella Branding Strategy
5. A double Branding Strategy,
6. Endorsement of Marketing Strategy

There are variously internal and external factors that affect the branding strategy, these factors are:

1. Market Size

When a product’s market size is big, firms follow a product marketing strategy if the sales generated could fund the investment within the brand but when the size of a market is small and growing slowly the investments in an exceeding brand might not be equal. In this situation, the company should check for the brand assets that increase the brand asset.

2. Competition

When the competition is high, the products have to make completely different from other brands. This needs telling your clients about the benefits of your brand. In such highly competitive surroundings, the alternative could be product branding, endorsement marketing, or double marketing depending upon the resources on the market. 

3. Company Resources

When the resources are scarce building a brand becomes expensive and in such situations, the umbrella marketing strategy will be a good option. In this, all the products come under one equity. Product quality is to be maintained and the client services too.

4. Product Newness

Products become obsolete with a new product coming into the market and the consumers get a lot of alternatives to choose from. It becomes difficult for consumers to choose when the brand has a large range of products, therefore, to differentiate the all-new features of the new product from the previous products, the company could follow the product-branding strategy. This is often expensive but the other choices that could be opted for are a double marketing strategy or an endorsement branding strategy.

5. Innovativeness and Technology

There are so many changes happening around the world in everything, especially in bringing innovations and new technologies every day. Business needs to stay updated and very creative when they bring their brand in front of people. The success of the product builds the reputation and popularity of a brand but it often fails because of some reasons. Here the sales of different brands mustn’t get affected badly. In a situation like this, the product marketing approach can be chosen but it requires a lot of investment. The next option is endorsement marketing, here there is a mention of the name of the company, for an example, big brands like Apple, Du Pont, and 3M follow product branding and endorsement marketing ways and the double branding strategy that is followed by Tata Motors for its Indigo brand could be another option.