Developing a corporate branding strategy is essential if your company plans to expand into new markets. The corporate branding strategy will help you navigate through challenges that will be necessary to meet customer expectations, manage diverse teams, maintain performance standards, and more.
In developing a strategy, it is important to understand that brands are continuously evolving entities that must be maintained to function properly. If not carefully managed, you could encounter a variety of issues, including the risk of your brand becoming diluted.
The Difference Between a Corporate Branding Strategy and a Product and Services Brand Strategy
When you expand a business, it is important to recognize the challenges and opportunities for corporate branding. One main problem that companies have when expanding is not focusing on corporate brands. Instead, often, the focus is on the new location, or the products and services.
Product and service branding is associated with how people interact with products and services. Therefore, your strategy might focus on the experience customers have when using your services or the feeling they get from your products.
Your corporate branding, on the other hand, involves how people interact with your company. It is the essence of your company. It is broader than the branding of your products and services, helping stakeholders connect all products and services to one brand identity. As such, your corporate branding strategy needs to focus on all aspects of the company, such as your marketing, employees, customer service, etc.
Challenges and Strategies of Maintaining a Corporate Brand
Once you recognize that your corporate brand is different from the branding of your products and services, you can better understand your challenges and embrace opportunities. Here are some of the challenges of maintaining a corporate brand during expansion, as well as examples of corporate branding strategies to help you capitalize on the opportunities.
Adapting to New Markets
Expanding into new markets requires careful planning and cultural understanding. Maintaining your core brand identity when expanding can be challenging because you want flexibility in adjusting your messaging and visual elements to appeal more to different demographics or geographic regions. You want to adapt your brand in a way that will be relevant in distinct cultures and match consumer preferences.
To help adapt to new markets, consider a research strategy that can help you more thoroughly understand your target audience in these markets. You can then craft your brand messaging and visuals accordingly.
Maintaining Consistent Communication Across Your Company
Be aware that when entering regional and international markets, your message can be misinterpreted during language translations. This is especially a problem when companies rely on extensive use of AI for translations. Not only do some words take on different meanings in other cultures, but how they are phrased can also change the interpretation.
A strategy in policy can help you maintain consistency in all your business interactions while also ensuring everyone (i.e. stakeholders, employees, customers, etc.) understands the perceived message you are presenting. In addition, using predictive brand strategy tools can help you gauge everyone’s understanding of your corporate brand.
Creating a Cohesive Brand Identity
Communicating a cohesive brand identity becomes more complex when expanding. You will have the opportunity to increase knowledge and innovation while improving performance. But you also want to find a balance that keeps your team focused on your uniqueness and strengthens your brand’s value.
As a corporate branding strategy, consider creating clear and comprehensive brand guidelines outlining the visual identity, messaging tone, and key brand attributes to ensure a unified image and cohesiveness across all communications.
Diversifying with Branding and Business Growth
Diversification is part of the process in branding and business growth that comes with expansion. But it also becomes more challenging to integrate new products and services when bringing new people into your team.
One strategy to help in your diversification might be to utilize key employees as brand ambassadors to promote the company culture and values.
Employee training is also important. A strategy can include training all employees on the company’s brand values and how to represent the brand in customer interactions.
Corporate Brand Consulting to Customize Your Strategy
Impact Branding Consulting offers corporate branding services to help you understand the many challenges of expansion and identify opportunities to develop a customized corporate branding strategy. Learn more about our corporate branding services at https://www.impactbrandingconsulting.org/corporate-branding-consulting/ and power chat with our brand strategist consultant about how our services can help you develop a good strategy.