What is Corporate Branding and how to build a strong corporate branding strategy?

Hiren Panchal
5 min readFeb 11, 2022

As the world becomes more digitized and global, corporate branding is becoming increasingly important. Companies invest in corporate branding to ensure that their products and services are visible in a competitive marketplace.

Let’s do a small experiment.

What colour is the McDonald logo, and what does it look like?

We bet you answered both questions correctly from memory. And this is why branding is vital.

A strong corporate identity design will help your company stand out from competitors and connect with customers on an emotional level. But how do you go about designing a strong corporate identity? In this article, we’ll explore what corporate branding means, how it affects your business and tips for ensuring success.

What is corporate branding?

Corporate branding is the process of creating a company’s identity, which includes its name, logos, and colours, among other things. Every company needs to establish an identity to serve as their competitive advantage to stand out among their rivals.

Corporate branding is largely external. Your customers will identify your company with its logo and colours, whereas your employees (internal) might experience it through its mission statement and core values.

Keep in mind that building a brand requires a deeper interaction between your company and consumers. It’s not enough to simply establish an identity; you need to ensure that your brand is authentic and has integrity.

Why is corporate branding important?

Identity

One of the most important reasons to invest in corporate branding is establishing a company’s identity.

When deciding on your brand name, mission statement, and visual logo design, keep in mind that all aspects work together as one cohesive unit. For example: if your business’ tagline emphasizes quality service, but its colours are bland, or your logo is difficult to recognise, the company’s identity will be inconsistent.

Once you’ve defined your brand, it can help establish a relationship with consumers because they’ll have an idea of what to expect when coming into contact with your business.

Trust

Building trust with consumers is another reason why strong corporate branding can be beneficial for businesses.

When you invest in creating a strong brand identity, your customers will have faith that they’re making the right decision by choosing to do business with you. A positive first impression goes a long way!

Targeting

Corporate branding isn’t just limited to establishing your company’s identity. It can also be used for targeting a particular audience or demographic that will connect with the brand you’re building.

For example, if your business sells products geared towards children of all ages, it might benefit from using bright colours and playful fonts in its logo design. On the other hand, if your company offers services to a mature audience, such as healthcare or financial advice, then you might want to consider using darker colours and more professional fonts for your logo design.

Value

Lastly, one of the most important reasons to invest in corporate branding is to increase your business value.

Establishing a strong brand identity can help influence consumers when they’re making purchasing decisions. It doesn’t matter if you offer high-quality products or services; without an established brand that customers are familiar with and have faith in, they’ll consider doing business elsewhere.

Tips for building strong corporate brand awareness

1. Make an Impact

Create a clear identity. It is not always about the name and logo (they are important too). But you need to explain your values and what you stand for. Keep in mind that your brand does not only need visual elements; it requires a soul.

Did you know?

As seen by these statistics, customers, investors, and B2B buyers are all branding-sensitive.

2. Be consistent with branding

People like to know what they can expect. They say that if you build it, then they will come (it is not true 100%). You also need to create content for them regularly and be consistent with your branding.

It might look simple at first sight but the more layers added over time, the stronger your brand awareness.

If you have a strong brand, then don’t be afraid to grow with it. You can use the same logo and just update your colors or fonts as well as refresh other assets such as website design, email templates, etc.

3. Aim at building an online presence

The digital world is constantly evolving, and with it comes more and more consumers looking for information online. This means that strong digital corporate branding has to evolve as well to reach these consumers.

Social media platforms might help you achieve this goal, but they should not take all your time! Before investing more money into digital corporate branding strategies, make sure that you have a strong strategy laid down for what it is that you want to accomplish by using them first. This will ensure success when it comes to branding your company online!

4. Know your audience

This is one of the most important tips when it comes to corporate branding. It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into your brand identity; if people don’t feel a connection with what you’re trying to communicate, then they won’t care either way!

When building strong brand awareness for your business, make sure that you understand who will be reading and viewing this content first. Are they young or old? What do they like? Where are they from? And so forth.

Once again, social media might help here, but there’s more involved in finding out about your target audience than just picking which platforms would suit them best online. You need to get creative and find ways of reaching them where their attention lies naturally.

The Bottom line

Corporate branding is essential for any business, but it’s important to remember that there are different kinds of corporate brands. How you choose to build your brand identity will depend on what industry you’re in and who your target audience is. Make sure that you have a clear brand strategy in place before spending money on branding.

If you are unsure of where to start, you can get in touch with our team at Litmus Branding, one of the best branding agencies in India. We offer comprehensive corporate identity design services, so you can focus on what matters the most to you.

Let us know how we can help make your business thrive online by contacting one of our experts today!

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Hiren Panchal

Founder and Promoter of Litmus Branding. Designer at the core. 20+ years in Advertising. Branding insights on fingertips. A man with wise marketing words.