A corporate branding strategy is the cultivation of a brand for a business or business-adjacent entity. It works as a shorthand for the company’s mission statement and values, as well as more tangible qualities like pricing, or specific content or personalities. 

Corporate branding is an increasingly essential tool for businesses to define themselves within specific target markets. For instance, a luxury brand is designed to attract and speak to a different group of people than a budget brand. Yet both follow similar baseline tactics to accomplish their goals — chiefly, defining purpose and target audience, and conducting market research for insights into strategic approach. 

Once created, corporate branding strategies should be implemented throughout an organization via specific operational guidelines that relate to everything from pricing to internal operations. Ideally, these guidelines are not only internalized by everyone from the CEO to the newest hire, but infused within the culture itself.

Personal branding strategies focus on a single individual. Traditionally, personal branding has been used by politicians, movie stars, athletes and other high-status people for a variety of reasons (but usually to enhance their visibility and profitability). With the advent of digital marketing and social media in recent decades, though, millions of lesser-profile people now engage in personal branding every day. 

Yet even though social media is currently the foremost venue for personal branding, it’s certainly not the only one. A personal branding strategy can also include other digital activity like regular blogging or YouTube video production. In a physical sense, it could also include joining a club or group, attending conferences and other public events, or publishing a book. 

From executives who work to extend the brand of the companies they lead to local musicians cultivating a fanbase, personal branding has become a significant part of American and global culture. At the same time, striking the right balance between personal behavior and professional conduct in an era of media saturation, instant communication and viral sharing requires discipline and expertise.

Product branding strategy uses a similar framework as a corporate strategy, but focused on a specific product or piece of merchandise. It involves defining a product’s specific positive characteristics and then working to communicate them to a target market. For instance, within Apple’s overall corporate branding, there are separate product strategies for specific products, like the iPhone or MacBook Air. 

While some products are created to fill a void, others must work to distinguish themselves in an already-competitive marketplace. Creating a consistent, effective branding campaign that delivers value can help meet that goal. Yet to do so, it often requires extensive research into target markets and the competitive landscape.

Service branding is a business strategy that’s focused on a specific service provided by a person or organization. It can also encompass an assessment of the overall service provided, such as a company’s reputation for customer service wait times, or the quality of its technical support. 

Customers are more in control today than ever before, and many businesses are actively enhancing their customer experience to win them over. Since service can be defined as the relationship between businesses and customers, service branding is instrumental in the pursuit of a superior customer experience.   

As with product branding, service branding strategies require defining saleable characteristics for a specific audience, then representing them within a unified brand. Since services are less tangible than products, effective strategies may require out-of-the-box thinking. Actively improving the quality of the service in question is also a component, making service branding more than just a job for sales and marketing but a priority across an entire organization.

Similar to product and service branding, retail branding is oriented around a specific aspect of commerce — in this instance, the retail sales of products. Retail itself has a variety of sub-categories, from companies that sell only self-produced items (as with Apple), to those that offer the full spectrum of retail products (Walmart), to those focused on a specialty niche (IKEA). 

Whatever the specific market, most retail branding strategies share components like product branding, quality of service and digital and physical architecture. Over the past 20 years, online selling has transformed the mechanics of retail branding, multiplying customer touchpoints and selling opportunities. But the central goals have remained the same, as has the need for smart market research to meet them.

Cultural branding and geographic branding are often used synonymously. And, while there is enough crossover to justify categorizing them together, they’re not always quite the same thing. 

Geographic branding strategy is based on a specific location. That could mean different branding in different countries for a multinational company. It could mean different branding in different states for a fast-food franchise, or different counties for a utility service. Cultural strategy, on the other hand, is focused on a specific group of people, as defined by shared cultural demographics. 

Yet these two concepts are often inextricably linked. Geographic distinctions are sometimes mostly defined by cultural considerations. For example, branding that’s focused on India will be different than branding focused on Italy because of differences in culture more than differences in physical terrain. 

At the same time, cultural branding can also be used to communicate with groups like religious or ethnic communities in a way that isn’t necessarily tied to geography. And geographic branding doesn’t always involve cultural considerations; it could also be used by a country’s tourism board to boost interest in traveling to a region, or a farm-to-table restaurant’s focus on local community. 

In the online era, geography isn’t as important as it once was. Consumers today generally expect a customer-forward experience no matter what country they live in. Yet it’s also important to remember that some cultures have different priorities — for example, the greater need for a brand to communicate trust in a developing country, where buyers have different standards and experiences.

Other types of branding strategies are also available to meet more specific goals. For instance, non-profit branding is oriented more around concepts like engagement and activism than profit and revenue. And co-branding is a strategy that seeks to integrate two brands into a single campaign or concept — a process that’s more complex than simply presenting two logos together. 

Some experts also consider online and offline branding to be their own distinct strategies — the former focused on digital, social and app-based communications, the latter on print media, broadcast, or even person-to-person interactions. While some entities will find value in differentiating online and offline strategies, for most businesses, they’re elements of a larger corporate strategy that are best approached holistically, and not as separate concepts. 

As the marketplace continues to fragment and diversify, we can expect to see less common branding strategies increasingly being used to reach people in different places and different ways.