If you think branding is the same as advertising or marketing, you’re doing it wrong. Your business’ brand is not an advertising campaign. Advertising and marketing aims to make customers aware of your company, whereas branding involves creating and maintaining the desired perception of your brand.
You can think of branding as the art of crafting the best connotations for your business relative to your industry, desired image and positioning. It’s essential to keep branding ideas flowing when working on your brand, as your prospective customers should have a clear and positive impression about your business and product or service offerings.
We know it’s easy to get stuck in a routine of doing the same thing when it comes to branding, so here are six branding ideas to change things up when working on your brand.
See also An Introduction to Branding for your Business.
6 Branding ideas to reignite your brand
1. Choose an archetype your brand
Renowned psychologist Carl Jung created and popularized the concept of Archetype Branding. This strategy suggests that a brand needs to sell a definite perception and story to your target customers, along with your products and services.
Many creative brands have used this philosophy in their branding, including Apple positioning their brand as ‘visionary’ by adopting the ‘creator’ archetype. This archetype gives the impression that a brand is a trendsetter and forward-thinking innovator. The brand voice that accompanies this archetype is daring, inspirational and provocative.
One of the best branding ideas is to give your brand a unique archetype to help you write an intriguing story based on your brand identity. You can use this as a guideline for branding as well as for advertising and marketing.
2. Re-evaluate your social media branding strategy
Are you struggling to see results from social media? You may be missing a tool in your arsenal.
Influencer marketing is one the most popular brand activation ideas on social media at the moment. It involves partnering with an influencer on a specific social media platform to show off content relating to your brand, no matter whether you sell products or services.
What makes this one of the best brand activation ideas is that an influencer has their own ‘brand’ that you can use to your advantage – though, it’s a good idea to ensure that their brand aligns with yours!
Other branding ideas that creative brands use are developing a unique tone of voice for each social media platform they’re active on and getting involved with other businesses in the industry on social media.
3. Invest in compelling visual content that highlights your branding
You may have spent ages choosing the perfect logo, but your brand’s visual journey doesn’t end there. Every single publication, webpage, press release and social media post involving your brand should be seen as an extension of your business. Don’t forget that the content on your website tells a lot about your brand, too!
As such, you should be very intentional about which visuals you post, why you are posting them and where they should be posted and shared.
If you want to take a page out of a creative brand’s book, you might decide to emphasize video content. According to a recent study, 54% of customers prefer video content from brands instead of other types of content.
Video content is also one of the best brand activation ideas, as businesses are using videos to build brand awareness on social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok. It’s important to remember not to be overly promotional when creating video content, as narrative or storytelling is the most popular.
4. Start a branded business blog
Another one of our top brand activation ideas is creating a valuable blog for prospects and customers.
Having a regular blog (like ours!) can help project your brand as an authority in your industry. When blogging, remember to keep it relevant. Ideally, your content should solve your prospects’ problems and add value to them in a unique way.
Additionally, blogging is an insightful way to keep your target audience informed of updates in your company and the broader industry.
Remember not to forget about the user experience design on your blog. A great website design should include space for your blog without going to an external website with a different URL. Additionally, your blog should be able to accommodate a mix of video content, infographics and images and text to become more engaging and exciting for your audience.
5. Create a new email marketing campaign
We already covered the fact that branding isn’t the same as marketing. However, we haven’t yet told you that you can use marketing to emphasize your branding efforts – and one of the branding ideas that creative brands use is clever email marketing campaigns.
Designing and conceptualizing a branded email campaign can help promote your brand and create a positive image of your brand. Additionally, you can use this space to tell your audience who you are, what your products/services are all about and what your brand can do for them.
Additionally, banner graphics work nicely as email headers and can convey a professional image for your brand. Our top tip is to keep your emails concise, clear and engaging with extra visuals. Whether you decide to embed gifs in your emails, show off a new branded video or embed an infographic or image is up to you and your desired brand image!
6. Get in touch with a branding agency
If you feel lost in finding ways to revive your brand for your business, you may decide to partner with a branding agency.
The agency you choose should help you understand the following steps for designing or improving your brand. Whether you need rebranding or brand consultancy services, a good agency should have it all.
If you want to choose an appropriate archetype for your brand, it may help to get branding consultants involved.
This stage is where we step in! BigToe Creatives is a small creative branding agency with a passion for the business of all sizes. We’re more than just a brand agency, with a knowledge base that spans a broad spectrum, including corporate design & photography, event management, lecturing, mentoring and financial management.
We are one of the best options for South African businesses, so contact us if you need to reignite your creative juices for your brand!
Refresh your brand with creative brand activation ideas
There are many ways you can refresh your brand image, no matter what your industry is or who your target audience is. Brand activation ideas typically involve launching a new product or service and are seemingly affiliated with influencer marketing and email campaigns.
Our recommended first step is to follow creative brands and discover your brand archetype, no matter what it might be – not everyone should be a creator like Apple!
You don’t need to do a full-blown influencer campaign, smaller ideas include branded email campaigns, a better blog for your website, outsourcing unique visual and video content, or re-evaluating your social media strategy.
