How to Brand Your Own Product and Why It’s Important

Branding is the science and art of giving a product, company, or brand a distinct personality by creating logos, colors, names, packaging, and messages that identify the product or service. The goal is to have a loved and recognized product, which is one of the most valuable assets of any company. A Nielson survey found that 59% of consumers prefer to purchase new products from familiar brands, which proves loyalty toward branding. For those of us with a sole product or operating a small business, we are competing against larger brands with endless amounts of capital and a wide customer base. For this reason, it’s critical to stand out from the competition. That means you must build a brand and not just a business. This ensures raving fans and repeat sales, which results in massive growth. To learn more about how to brand your own product and the branding behind it, keep reading!

What Is Product Branding?

To answer the question—what is product branding?—the formal definition is that it’s an activity that gains awareness of products, brands, and businesses using campaigns and strategies with the goal of creating a lasting and unique image in the market. The formula is simple: have a positive product image + differentiation = product success. Branding is comprised of three categories:

Product Strategy

Brand strategy is a map of how I make my product likable, memorable, trustworthy, and different in the eyes of my target consumer. Developing a product strategy is the first required step when attempting to brand a product from scratch.

Product Identity

The second part of product branding is creating a product identity, which conveys the product to the target consumer using experience, messaging, and visuals. The brand strategy influences the product identity and aims to be the most impactful and successful approach. Visuals include logos, packaging, advertising, content, website design, collateral, icons and patterns, and colors and fonts.

Product Marketing

The third segment of product branding is product marketing, which is the way a business brings awareness to the product by connecting a voice and values to the targeted audience via strategic communication. Tactics include focusing on the user experience, paid advertising, email and social media marketing, and SEO and content marketing.

How to Brand Your Own Product

Now that I have answered the question—what is product branding?—it’s important to learn how to brand your own product. The following general steps can help with product branding.

1. Understand the Purpose of Your Product

All successful products have a powerful purpose. The following questions can help you better understand the purpose of the product, which is integral to the rest of the branding process:

• Why does the product exist?
• What differentiates this product?
• What problem does it solve?
• Why should the consumer care?

2. Research Competitor Brands

The next step is to research competitor brands for inspiration but never imitate exactly what they are doing. The goal is to differentiate your product from the competition, to convince the consumer to buy from you and not them.

3. Determine the Target Audience

The foundation behind building product branding is to find the target audience. When branding a product, you must always keep in mind who exactly you are attempting to reach and tailor the message to meet those needs. This means being specific to the target demographic, which helps you remain committed and focused from the beginning.

4. Develop a Product Mission and Vision

Next, create a product vision and mission, which is a clear expression of this product’s focus. This also ties into further developing a company or brand vision with this product in the arsenal. The vision is an aspirational statement about a future that the product is driving toward achieving. A good example is Nike, whose mission is to offer innovation and inspiration to all athletes around the world.

5. Outline Key Benefits

Brands with more resources and larger budgets will always exist within every industry. To compete, you must outline the key benefits of your product that further help differentiate the product from the competition. It’s important to note this isn’t a shopping list of features, it’s how to provide value that improves the customers’ lives.

6. Develop a Voice

Brand voices must be authoritative and professional, friendly, technical, and promotional, but conversational and informative. In general, you should choose a brand voice that resonates with the target customer.

7. Let the Product Personality Shine

No customer wants a cookie-cutter product that offers the same features and characteristics as every other variant on the market. Instead, they demand an experience customized for their needs that is backed by personal interaction. Therefore, you must show the product’s personality to the potential consumer, so they can feel a connection.

8. Build a Story

Telling a story about a product further helps create an emotional connection to the consumer. By using your newly created branding voice, your messaging must define who you are, what you offer, and why the consumer should care. The product story should be told on a human level.

9. Create a Product Logo

Finally, you should create visuals that integrate the first eight steps when determining how to brand your own product. This is by far the most exciting part of the process because you get to see all the challenging work come to fruition in a visual format.

Can I Sell Branded Products on my Website?

In addition to selling products on a website, many ask, can I sell branded products on my website? The short answer is yes, but you must always get permission from the brand or company. Many well-established companies have affiliate programs, which give you a small percentage of every sale of their products. Another aspect of selling branded products on your website is that you shouldn’t advertise products that are in direct competition with yours. Instead, if you’re just starting out and only have one or two products, selling branded products on your website using affiliate links is a wonderful way to draw customers to the website to see your products while also making money. If you have a new and innovative product you want to introduce to the market, understanding what product branding is, how to brand a product, and how to sell branded products on your website form a great introduction to success. By following these tips, your product will be flying off the virtual shelves in no time! And if you need help with all of it, contact us for a complimentary consultation.