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Top 10 Tips for Branding Products

Top 10 Tips for Branding Products

Whether you’re an entrepreneur who has just launched a product or are looking to improve upon an existing brand, this short guide will help you understand what makes products memorable and how to communicate that value.

It’s not enough to have great products and offer a fantastic experience. It would be best if you stood out from your competitors. This can be tough, but you can design a distinctive and memorable brand if you understand your market.

Today I will share a few things that you can do to make sure your brand is as strong as your products. Here are ten things you need to know about branding products.

1 – Create a strong brand identity

Apple Brand Identity System

A strong brand identity isn’t just something that happens magically. It would help if you made a deliberate effort to build your brand. 

Branding products involves thinking about who you are and what you’re offering. Think about your logo and visual identity

  • Do people recognise your brand? 
  • Is your brand memorable? 
  • If not, what makes it distinctive? 

Once you’ve figured that out, start communicating your message to your audience to ensure that they understand what you are offering.

If you want to sell many things, you need to have a brand identity. Without a brand, customers will never see your products the same way and won’t feel they can trust you. 

When developing your brand, consider the following. 

  1. What do you want your audience to think about when they think about your company? 
  2. What does your brand stand for? 

If you’re selling shoes, you’ll likely want people to associate your brand with style, comfort, and good value. You might want to emphasise safety, quality, and reliability if you’re selling medical devices. Your brand should reflect your audience and what you want your products to stand for.

2 – Define the Brand Personality

When you define a product or brand’s personality, you define who the company wants to be perceived by. What is the identity of this company, and how does it want to be known? 

You can’t sell someone else’s brand or image; you have to sell yourself. Think about how your company defines itself or your brand. Do you want to be a friendly and helpful, a competent and authoritative expert, or a fashionable one? If you have to describe your company, it’s likely because you’re selling a brand or a personality.

While we all know the importance of branding in marketing and branding products, not everyone understands the basic concept behind a brand. 

  • What is it? 
  • Why is it important? 
  • How can we apply it to our businesses? 
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These questions may seem overwhelming to some, but they’re pretty simple and easy to understand once we define the brand personality.

Create a Brand Vision

Suppose you’re looking to launch a product. In that case, it can be helpful to create a brand vision that includes not only the features or benefits of your product but also why the customers should care about your product and why your competitors’ products aren’t good enough. 

This helps set up the value proposition you’ll use throughout your marketing. The brand vision serves as the foundation for all your messaging and helps you keep the big picture in mind.

3 – Build Brand Awareness

Brand Awareness Strategy Facts

In many cases, people are just looking for a particular product or service and don’t know what they’re looking for. There are always many options that are too overwhelming for consumers to consider. 

A better approach is to look at a category of items your business offers and find out what makes it stand out. If you can give your customers something unique or different from everyone else, it could help your business grow.

Brand awareness is when people know who you are. This means you need to build a brand identity and promote it across your marketing channels. It would be best if you built your brand into the minds of your target market. 

Brand awareness also helps build a good reputation for your company or product. The most important thing for consumers to know about a company is its brand. Once they know this, they’ll begin to recognise what the company is known for.

4 – Incorporate Brand Features

Brands are made up of many things, but one of the things that makes brands unique is their personality. The brand’s voice and presence online give consumers confidence that a company knows who they are and that they are trustworthy. 

An active online brand will likely be seen as an expert or authoritative source of information. Consumers will feel more inclined to trust that a brand’s opinion is essential.

Today, consumers are no longer interested in just buying something and having it work. They are interested in buying something that comes with a branded experience. 

We call this type of shopping experience the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey starts with researching brands online, searching for information about products, comparing prices and reviews, making a purchase, and then using that product for a while to see if it lives up to its promise.

Choose a unique selling proposition

The unique selling proposition (USP) is a marketing term that describes what your company offers its customers and why it is unique and differentiated from all other companies in the same category. What’s unique about your product?

You can’t use the same one for every product you sell. This is because you need to stand out from the crowd. 

Once you have figured out your USP, it’s time to look at your business and its products. Find ways that you can personalise the USP to meet your goals better. 

Don’t just make a generic statement. If you want to build a successful business, make sure your USP is the foundation for all your branding products.

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5 – Choose the Right Colours

Product Packaging Design Tips Language

For most brands, the colour of their products is the first thing people see and interact with. So if you want your brand to stand out, your colours have to scream the message loud and clear. 

But there’s a big difference between choosing attractive colours that help people easily remember and recognise your brand. 

If you choose the right colours, your customers will remember your brand long after purchasing something from you, and they’ll feel connected to it.

Colours affect our emotions. People are emotionally affected by colours, conveying positive or negative messages, especially branding products and services. 

When choosing the right colour, ask yourself: what message am I trying to send? 

If you’re using the colour to make people feel comfortable, happy, or relaxed, choose a warmer colour like orange. On the other hand, if you want to make people feel aggressive or alert, choose a cooler colour like blue.

You can’t go wrong with black. Black has a clean, sophisticated, classic look and feel, and it’s straightforward to read. Black is a safe colour choice, as consumers can associate it with many different things, depending on the type of brand you’re trying to build. 

For instance, if you’re selling jewellery, your logo and website could be in shades of gold and silver. If you’re selling furniture, your site and logo can be in a neutral colour like grey, white or black.

6 – Make it look good

Many product designers fail to use design and graphic elements strategically because they haven’t been trained to think about what they are doing as part of the marketing strategy, says Jeff Sass, founder of SASS Design, an independent studio based in Portland, Oregon. 

Product designers tend to start with a brief or concept from a marketer. After building the design, they often discover that the product doesn’t look good. The result is that product designers end up designing without understanding their client’s business goals and what the company is trying to achieve.

Product photography is one of the most underutilised marketing tools today, but it can make a massive difference if you use it properly for branding products. 

We all need to sell our products; however, the problem is that we often don’t know how to sell them. Product photography provides the best way to do just that.

Consider the Product Environment

When considering the branding of a product, consider the environment you will use it in. You’ll want to consider the space your product will be displayed, the style of the display area, and the brand’s colour palette

Consider whether a different look and feel would improve your product’s visibility, whether or not you have an established brand, and if your product fits into a particular category or niche.

7 – Select the correct font

Colourful Product Packaging

How to choose the right font for your brand, company, or business? There are many considerations when selecting a typeface for your business. These include whether it conveys authority or expertise. 

Whether the typography is simple or intricate, whether it looks clean or cluttered. And, most importantly, whether it works well in your visual identity.

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One of the most important aspects of any design is its typography. It’s the way you display and organise the words on a page. But the wrong font can be a problem for any brand. 

“When people see a typeface, they immediately think about its brand,” says Peter Clements, director of Adobe’s web and mobile products. And while there are specific fonts that you definitely shouldn’t use, others can be useful for branding products.

Don’t be too fancy

Your logo and typography should never distract from what’s being sold. This doesn’t just apply to logos; it generally applies to your brand. 

One of the central tenets of design is that your design should always reflect your product or service quality. It’s no secret that consumers aren’t crazy about logos or branding. 

They often prefer products over brands. You should use the logo and typography to support your brand further rather than distract from it.

Whether you’re a designer or an entrepreneur, using more than three different fonts in your web design is a surefire way to turn off your audience. 

If you use a font for every part of your website or app, you’ll create a cognitive load in your users’ minds and distract them from your product or service. If you don’t use the right fonts, you could waste money. To avoid wasting money on fonts, stick to a minimum of two fonts.

8 – Add personality to your packaging

You don’t need to spend much money or time developing exciting packaging. Just make sure that you choose something unique, memorable, and different. 

Your packaging should convey a certain feeling or mood, whether funny, informative, exciting or just plain silly. You can add a slogan or tagline to your design as well.

People don’t buy products; they buy people. By personalising your packaging, you are allowing your customers to see and feel you as a brand and relate to you as a person. 

It would help if you also reflect your company’s values and beliefs on your packaging. For example, if your company has a strong environmental focus, you should include this on your packaging to show your customers that you are environmentally conscious.

Avoid stock images

Stock images help present your company’s brand, but it’s essential not to fall into the trap of using stock photos for branding products. 

You’ll often see products from the ‘big brands’, ‘top manufacturers’, or ‘leading companies’. But what you don’t see are the small businesses and entrepreneurs behind those brands, and what you don’t see are their individuality and creativity. 

So, don’t rely on stock images if you want to portray your company in the most favourable light. Instead, be sure to hire a graphic designer to help you create unique visual content.

9 – Create the right size

Functional Product Packaging

A packaging strategy that incorporates both design and branding elements is an effective way to develop brand equity. As you can imagine, many packaging options exist for this purpose, but specific strategies have proven themselves over time. 

One of these is creating a package that appeals to the senses. The most common examples are packaging that includes a visual appeal (i.e., eye-catching graphics), textural appeal (i.e., material texture and colour), and sound appeal (i.e., product audio).

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Packaging is an essential element of your branding strategy because it’s the first thing people see when they pick up the package. 

But, the packaging is often overlooked by marketers and designers. Many companies don’t even consider this when creating their packaging. 

Design plays a vital role in packaging, but it’s not the only factor. Packaging must be thoughtfully designed to achieve brand differentiation, increase sales, and establish the brand as a leader in its market.

10 – Make sure you have the best products

If you’re trying to make a new brand, product, or service, you’re already aware of what can derail your efforts: bad design, weak messaging, boring brand attributes, etc. The list goes on. 

So, you have to know what your brand stands for and why your consumers should care about your brand. Otherwise, nothing stops a competitor from coming in and stealing your consumer.

If a brand is selling in an online marketplace, its products should be the best-selling items on the site. There’s no point in having a large inventory if no one is buying it. 

The brand gets visibility and recognition by having the best products available on the site. Plus, by providing top-notch products, brands make sure their products are easy to find, so consumers don’t waste time browsing through listings that are not worth their time.

I’m no expert in this, but one thing I’ve noticed about products is that they don’t always have a great brand associated with them. 

Most people think about Apple computers or Nike shoes, but what about a refrigerator? Many people think of them as just appliances that do the same thing and don’t even consider the brands. This is a huge mistake. The brands that consumers associate with a particular product have a powerful effect on how people perceive that product.

Conclusion

Branding has become one of the most critical elements of a company’s success. People are starting to expect a certain quality from a product—and often expect it to be branded. 

Branding involves a lot of research, design, and strategy, so it takes extra work to create a brand identity that will attract new customers. This guide will give you a few ideas on how to go about building your brand and creating a unique image that your potential customers will remember.

To boost sales, you need to get noticed. The easiest way to do that is through branding. A brand is a promise that you make to your customers, the promises you make to your employees, and the promises you make to yourself. 

Brands don’t only reflect your products or services; they shape your products and services. Brands don’t just reflect the person who creates them; they define that person. 

Brands don’t just represent a business; they are the business. If you’re a brand new entrepreneur or have been around a while but want to rebrand, this blog is for you. You’ll find these 10 tips for branding products that you can apply today and tomorrow.

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Stuart Crawford

Stuart Crawford is an award-winning creative director and brand strategist with over 15 years of experience building memorable and influential brands. As Creative Director at Inkbot Design, a leading branding agency, Stuart oversees all creative projects and ensures each client receives a customised brand strategy and visual identity.

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