Some companies are very good at defining their product brands but struggle when it comes to their corporate brand. As an Australian example, Treasury Wine Estates is one of the world’s largest wine companies, with more than 70 distinctive product brands like Penfolds, Lindeman’s and Rosemount. 

But how distinctive is the corporate brand of Treasury Wine Estates? How is the corporate entity perceived by customers? And could making a more powerful corporate brand translate into more sales?

This introductory guide to corporate branding elements explores the key issues.

What is Corporate Branding?

Corporate branding is the ‘umbrella’ brand that stands above a range of individual product brands. Apple is a very successful corporate brand, with separate product brands for iPhones, iMacs, Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple TV and so on.

It has a broader scope than a product brand and seeks to define qualities, values and feelings which unite its products into a product family that makes sense to its target audience.

Why is Corporate Branding Important for Businesses?

You only have to look at the top 5 most valuable brands, according to Forbes, to appreciate how successful corporate branding conveys brand personality, enhances customer relationships, distinguishes one brand from others and cements customer loyalty.

Top 5 most valuable brands: 

1. Apple – $241.2 B
2. Google – $207.5 B
3. Microsoft – $162.9 B
4. Amazon – $135.4 B
5. Facebook – $70.3 B

These brands communicate their personality and values to both new and established customers. It gives them an immediate head start over their rivals because the target audience feels like they know and trust the brand. 

The advantage of a strong corporate brand

A strong brand can improve customer recruitment and retention, as well as multiply opportunities for sales. Apple’s loyal ‘fan boys’, for example, eagerly buy many of the company’s new products on release because they wholly embrace the brand.

Corporate Branding Strategy

Developing a successful corporate branding strategy is not a simple undertaking. Yet it can be an incredibly valuable process with many benefits, including sales. 

It begins with exploring these key questions:

— What is your brand about?

— What services and products do you sell?

— What purpose do they serve?

— Who is your target audience?

— Why should they choose your brand?

— What promise and values do you offer?

Defining your brand

The Harvard Business Review has a useful tool to help develop your corporate identity — the ‘corporate brand identity matrix’. It further elaborates on the questions above, asking companies to reflect on their internal and external relationships, mission, culture and personality.

This can help a business define its ‘brand core’ — what it stands for. Examples include:

Audi — Progress through technology

3M — Science. Applied to life.

Nobel Prize — Rewarding people who have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind

Patek Philippe — You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.

The Sales Benefits of a Powerful Corporate Brand

A good branding strategy will help your business in a number of ways, not the least of which are benefits in the key area of sales.

Developing your brand’s identity can:

— Create an emotional connection with customers that develops their brand loyalty

— Give you an edge over competitors due to customer awareness of your corporate identity and brand

— Increase trust in the parent brand that makes marketing easier for product brands 

— Enables easier access to new markets and customers due to prior perceptions of quality and value

— Create top of mind recall from brand image elements like your logo, tagline, brand colours, tone of voice and identity. 

Proof of the competitive advantage

Brand management is not just a virtuous exercise, as these statistics show, but makes a profound difference to the bottom line:

— Strong brands — 31% higher shareholder return

— Strong brands — grow profits three times faster

In a comparison of B2B brands, the top 10 brands with the best customer connections enjoyed 31% greater revenue growth over three years versus the 10 lowest brands.

Corporate Branding Elements That Boost Sales

There are four essential elements that form critical elements of your brand strategy — identity, image, culture and personality.

Corporate brand identity

Brand identity can be understood as everything that intentionally contributes to your presentation in the marketplace. This includes your logo design, fonts, brand colours, illustration, imagery and videos. It also reflects where you choose your brand marketing material to be seen, such as billboards, web banners, TV commercials and social media posts. 

Corporate brand image

If your brand identity is how you want to be seen, your brand image is how you’re subjectively perceived by customers. When these two align, your brand is working at maximum efficiency. When they depart, your brand’s in trouble. 

This can be seen in the devolution of Facebook’s identity from “a social utility that connects you with the people around you”. Much bad news and the feeling by many that the brand had become toxic prompted the company to change their brand name to Meta. 

Corporate brand culture

Unsurprising, brand culture is built on shared values and vision. When management and staff live and work by those values, and demonstrate them to customers, it reinforces all the external brand elements.

Canva is an Aussie global success story encouraging fun, sharing expertise and building a community where staff eat chef-provided meals together, play board games and can bring their kids to work. Their work culture reinforces their brand.

Corporate brand personality

Just as a person without a personality would be dead boring, a brand also needs a personality to do three things:

—create instant recognition

—distinguish you from competitors

—build an emotional connection

Personality makes a brand stand out as distinctive and uniquely itself, as can be seen from this list of top brands and their brand personalities:

—Harley Davidson — rugged

—Volvo — competent

—Nike — exciting

—Disney — sincere

—Rolex — sophisticated

Corporate Branding Conveys Brand Personality

We’ve shown how a strong brand personality will help distinguish you from competitors, increase recognition and build an emotional connection that can translate to sales. 

Patagonia not only pledged to avoid harm to the environment, but they suggested customers not buy too many of their clothes, in order to reduce waste. This ‘anti-sales’ personality has made them one of the world’s most popular adventure clothes brands.

Corporate Branding Improves Customer Relationships

Because it costs five times more to attract new customers rather than keep existing ones, you should nurture a shared relationship with your customers.

Two methods of doing that are: 

Share success stories

Sharing user-generated success stories promotes engagement of your brand. Because it is ‘bottom-up’ content, it conveys authenticity and fosters loyalty.

Personalise communication 

When you personalise marketing with people’s first names, it makes the transaction feel more human, which strengthens relationships.  

Corporate Branding Sets Your Brand Apart

With over 7.5 million blog posts published each day, you need to stand out. One effective method to boost sales is to create a branded referral program.

When your customers invite their network to try out your brand products, it’s a far stronger pull than a cold sales pitch. As a way to increase customer acquisition while reinforcing your brand, it achieves two goals at once. 

A simple incentive, like a gift card or discount code, encourages customers to share their enthusiasm for your brand. 

Corporate Branding Boosts Customer Loyalty

Loyalty is the gold mine many brands chase but few discover. The 80/20 Rule says 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your customers. 

So when your branding works to engage them emotionally, and you offer a loyalty deal, they are much more likely to buy. Almost 60% of loyal customers buy more from the brands they love.

How to build your corporate brands in 2022

If the above sounds like a lot to wrap your head around, why not seek help from the experts?

Rothfield has many business solutions we can offer to match your corporate branding needs and individual industry landscape.

Rothfield Connect is our cloud-based platform that puts you in total control of your inventory, including promotional products.

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