Branding gives a shape to your company and name to your products and services. It’s the brand we know and it’s the brand we prefer. Branding makes the process of selecting from a huge array of choices much easier. Customers often love to have a series to choose from, and that’s what makes them the king of the market. Businesses are always competing with their competitors in order to be customer’s first preference. This is the power and game of branding.
What’s a Product?
Broadly, a product is anything that can be offered in a market to satisfy a want or a need, including physical goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information, and ideas. So a product could be anything: a hotel, a spa, clothes, shoes and what not, what differs one product from the other is the brand.
In fact the difference in prices that you often see, while comparing two products is the brand value of the product. Branding is a very extensive process which aims to penetrate into their customers mind till the customers becomes the advocate of the brand. This is how brand loyalty is incorporated.
Brands make one’s shopping experience fun and exciting, and it’s very important to increase your brand visibility in order to sustain in the market.
Loyalty takes time, but creating brand visibility is a matter of strategy.
What’s a Brand?
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.
As mentioned above, to create a brand it takes a lot of strategies, as one not only needs to penetrate into the market but also leave a mark in their customers minds.
Different Way of Social Media Branding:
1. Name brand recognition
A well-established company will often use the weight of its own name brand to extend to its products. Most often, a company with large name brand recognition can be recognized by its logo, slogan, or colors. Most of the time they prefer their names to be showcased and highlighted. Eg. Coco Cola makes sure people see it’s font and color and name whenever it advertises its product.
2. Attitude branding
This kind makes sure that customers’ self-expressions are well reflected in the brand. Such as Nike, Apple they focus on personifying a personality.
These brands all use strategies that bring to life personality and a customized experience with products and services. This Usually seen in luxury products.
3. Brand extension
This is when a brand diversifies its product and extends its brand to many other new products. Per say, if your brand was known for clothing wear and now has extended to shoes, this is where brand extension comes in.
4. Private label
Store brands—or private labels—have become popular at supermarkets. Example; Wal-Mart
5. Crowd sourcing
These brands are outsourced to the public for brand creation, which allows customers the chance to be involved in the naming process, and effectively drives up personal interest in a product.
6. Social media targeting
This is one of the most popular forms of branding, since in today’s era social media is trending, it’s one of the best strategies to let your brand shine on these platforms. It’s one of the most effective and efficient ways of marketing and branding.
The era of 21st century is all about going digital. The best way of marketing on digital platforms are social media platforms.
It’s one of the cheapest and very effective forms of marketing and branding. Social media is a very powerful tool which if used in an optimized manner can reap all benefits. No matter which social media sites you decide to invest in, you have a high chance of reaching customers that you may not have reached otherwise!
Furthermore, people aren’t just using social media, but they’re using social media specifically to make purchasing decisions!
Hence, this market needs to be taped with precision.
How Is Social Media Used in Business?
Social media sites are a huge platform; they are great for reaching bigger audiences. By using these platforms effectively, you can increase visibility of your business, promote your products or services, generate new leads, and increase capital creation. This will help you increase sales and boost your capital creation.
The Best Social Media Platforms For Branding:
1. Facebook
Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms of all time. With 2.41 billion daily active users, Facebook is the most widely used social platform. One can make their brand page on these platforms in order to tap into a larger segment of people. Also to top everything, Facebook’s advertising platform is by the far the most developed of all of the social media platforms and increases the reach.
2. Facebook Messenger
While Facebook Messenger is a part of Facebook, you have to download the Facebook Messenger app separately from Facebook to use it. One can increase the connectivity with others and increase their networking horizon by using messenger. It allows users to send direct messages to people.
3. Instagram
Instagram comes very close behind Facebook, Instagram is owned by the same person who owns Facebook, and has 500 million daily active users. This is one of the most used social media apps on a daily basis, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, saw so much potential in the platform and the benefits of Instagram and bought it out just 18months after its launch.
Since both the platforms are owned by the same person. The advertising platform is the same for both the platforms giving it access to both the portals.
4. Pinterest
If your business is all about creativity, Pinterest is the best social media platform for such businesses. One can showcase their art or their creativity in various ways on this platform.
5. Snapchat
Snapchat is a fun social media platform that allows users to send Snapchat (a photo or video) either directly to another user or to their Snapchat Story. This is a very fun way to let customers know about “what’s trending” by looking at photos and videos of the same.
6. Twitter
One of the most used social media platforms, anyone who has an opinion or want to put forth their version or story can use Twitter. This social media platform is a great hit in order to increase visibility.