A Guide to Alternative Branding Strategies

What is a Brand Strategy?

Branding strategies are long term plans that outline how a brand will grow. They typically go through a set of actions and objectives that will determine the success of a strategy. But, these more mainstream strategies don’t work for every business. So what is it that makes a branding strategy alternative? It is simply a lesser-known tailored strategy for a specific business.

Might be of interest – How to Stand Out From The Crowd: 7 Brand Strategy Examples to Copy

Our Top 3 Alternative Brand Strategies

Here we’ll break down our alternative brand strategy ideas.

Product Branding

Instead of trying to grow your business’s brand as a whole, focusing on only the product can allow for faster growth and give you the competitive advantage. This is even more apparent when the product is already successful or top of its class.

Examples of Product Branding

A good example of a company that has done this well is Henry Hoovers. The company that makes Henry Hoover, Numatic International, has achieved incredible brand recognition. They’ve gained such great traction through good product design and quality.

Why This Strategy Might Work For You

The strategy works by investing in top quality products and design and not marketing. With minimal marketing expense businesses use their product as their strategy.

Don’t Brand Market

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the idea of no brand marketing. This idea might seem backwards but it has resulted in some great success stories. The idea behind this is that the business focuses on minimalistic designs of products and doesn’t advertise. They let the product speak for itself and use a word of mouth approach to gain their brand loyalty.

Examples of No Brand Marketing

One of the biggest up and comers is The Ordinary. A face care brand that focuses on low price, high-quality products. The low price factor comes about because their marketing budget is low, meaning product investment is higher.

Why This Strategy?

This is, of course, a riskier strategy. The product still needs branding, however, it needs to be subtle. The risk factor comes from the fact that no one may find the product.

In a similar vein to Henry Hoover, it relies heavily on product quality. The difference between these two strategies is that Henry Hoover still uses branding on packaging etc.

Personality Branding

Centre your branding strategy around a certain personality or attitude in your marketing communications. This idea requires a good understanding of the target market, but if effective, it can have a massive impact, pushing a brand towards a certain market through actions and tone of voice. However, this can also backfire and needs to be carefully performed and researched.

Examples of Personality Branding

There are plenty of examples of personality branding that have worked, but, one of the best is undoubtedly Apple. When Apple first started, this concept wasn’t as widely used.

Apple focused on the individuality at the start. With bright coloured products and advertising focussing on customisability, bringing to life the idea that creative individuals used Apple laptops and had iPods. This brand image is still held firm by many, particularly when it comes to people working on their MacBooks in coffee shops.

Why this Strategy for you?

The strategy has had many success stories – and the reason it works is that it focuses on reaching out to an individual’s mindset. It gives those individuals the idea that if they have this brand’s product, they’ll display themselves with the brand’s core ideas.

However, it can also have a negative impact. For example, Yorkie, the chocolate bar that was ‘Just For Men’. This brand strategy in 2020 would be far less likely to be successful due to its riskier slogan.

Use sustainability as your strategy? Checkout our blog on packaging sustainability

Importance of Branding and Alternative Branding Strategies

With so much choice when it comes to brand strategies and so many ways to market your brand, we’ve only just scratched the surface. Focusing on building your brand’s personality to engage with your audience has had many success stories. However, in 2020 this may not be the best option.

Not branding might also seem like a great idea and a cheap and efficient way to grow, but it’s less tested. Or there’s branding with your product – designing great looking products that are good quality, but what can you do to make your product stand out?

There are so many strategies which might be right for you, but which one is? Get in contact with us at Fellow and we can work with you to find the perfect brand strategy.