When you think of branding, it’s natural to apply the concept to an entire business, but as businesses grow, branding can be used to promote different lines of business within a business. For example, if you run a plumbing business, but you also offer heating and cooling services, you can use branding to promote all of these services separately.
What can branding do for your business
As a strategy, branding can help customers and potential customers think of your business before they think of a competitor. Branding can do more than help your customers remember you. It can also help create an impression of your business, products or services that customers and potential customers find desirable. It can also help the customer align the value of your business with their own values, making it easy for them to choose your business over a competitor.
Branding involves many different elements. Logos, color choices, word choices, website design, ad placement, ad timing and associations with other businesses or events can all help create the branding for your business.
But branding can also be applied to subsets of your business, especially when you offer different or complementary products and services. The heating and cooling example I used earlier demonstrates this neatly. Plumbers rarely do just plumbing. They also tend to branch into heating and cooling because heating and cooling systems often rely on plumbing for safe operation. Providing HVAC services, therefore, is a natural extension of a plumbing business.
Seasonal businesses may also benefit from branding separate business lines. Businesses that provide lawn care and landscaping in the summer may also provide snow removal in the winter. Through robust branding, customers may turn to a single business to get two very different (but complementary) services.
Strong branding in one business line can also help introduce customers to new lines of business, or other lines of business that they were previously unaware of. A shop that is known primarily for its auto repair services may also provide new tires, quick oil changes, towing or auto detailing. Strong branding in the primary service line may entice customers to try the business’s other service lines, recommended by their past experiences with the provider’s primary service line.
If you have a business with multiple product or service lines, or would like to experiment with branding options, please contact our Creative Director, Dave Ramsell or give Dave a call at (330) 243-0651 to set up a branding consultation.
Photo Credit: dimitri_c, via FreeImages.com
