Nail Your Marketing Game With These 6 Types of Branding Strategies

Many coaches believe they can only foster a trustworthy client relationship during coaching sessions. But they overlook that generating trust starts even before a client signs up for a session. That’s because trust begins with a strong brand. 

Brands aren’t just logos and color palettes that represent a business. They’re a uniform company image. Branding tells your business’ story and embodies its core values. When potential clients see a well-thought-out branding scheme, they know a company and its founder(s) have made efforts to build the business. For coaches, it means they’ve set up a coherent brand, presenting themselves consistently and demonstrating professionalism. 

Here’s more on the different types of branding strategies and how you can create one to succeed. 

The foundations of effective strategies for branding

Like any other business owner, coaches have the core data they need to launch an effective brand and know their company inside and out. Creating a brand is an opportunity to translate those ideas into an identity. Here are the foundations of a brand strategy to guide you: 

• Brand purpose: A company’s purpose is central to a strong brand. Go to the drawing board with your mission statement in mind. Know what your business hopes to achieve, your services, and your target audience.  
• Brand vision: Your vision is what inspires you. Are you motivated to help clients lead healthier lives because of your personal wellness journey? Do you help entrepreneurs because you possess first-hand experience? Transform this vision into your branding, allowing potential clients to instantly connect with your brand.   
• Brand values: Many coaches stand for betterment, trust, strong communication, and accountability. Ask yourself what other values your practice embodies and what you’d want a potential customer to feel just by looking at your branding.
• Brand voice: Yes, branding paints a company’s image, but it’s also a voice. Perhaps your business coaching company has a powerful tone worthy of a motivational speaker. Or, maybe your life coaching practice has an approachable, empathetic persona. Establishing this voice is essential so all your branded written materials, videos, and commercials sound the same to clients. 
• Target audience: Consider your ideal client when building your brand. Think about the demographic’s requirements and behavioral patterns to maximize your reach. For instance, minimalist branding may invite interest from wellness clients, while a voice with a can-do attitude may push a potential financial coaching client to take the next step and book a session.

6 different types of branding and marketing strategies

You know your offering and audience –– two essential components to creating a solid brand. Before strategizing, learn the six different types of branding strategy and pick the right one for your business:

1. Personal branding strategy: This branding strategy represents you instead of your company and works well for coaches. You’re the face of your organization, so you want clients to connect with you. This strategy helps establish a brand personality and character via your identity. For instance, some celebrity coaches embody the same values as their companies, ensuring people remember the brand through the coach’s name.
2. Service branding strategy: This branding strategy shows your company’s unique value proposition concerning the customer experience. Determine your services’ differentiator to stand out from the crowd. 
3. Product branding strategy: A product branding strategy defines any marketing campaigns you run around a specific product. For example, if you launch a book on coaching, you could develop a branding strategy for your text that runs in tandem with the overall strategy for your practice. 
4. Co-branding strategy: This strategy reflects partnerships. If you collaborate with an organization or another thought leader, create a plan representing both brands and your affiliation. 
5. Corporate branding strategy: This strategy represents your company and is a must, even if you’re the sole proprietor. Your practice’s brand should represent your vision, purpose, and service offerings as well as focus on reaching the right audience. 
6. Cultural or geographic branding strategy: This branding strategy is tailored to an audience in a specific geography. If you’re an online coach or public speaker, you may want to switch up your branding for campaigns based on your target location. 

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How to create a branding strategy

Perform all the research and soul-searching you’ll need to create a unique brand through the following steps: 

1. Define your business’ purpose and mission: Get a pen and paper, and write down your mission statement. Detail what inspires you, the changes you want to make in people’s lives, and how you plan to do it through your services. 
2. Identify your target market: Be as specific as possible when pinpointing your intended audience. Entrepreneurial coaches aren’t likely looking for fitness clients, even if the potential customers for both businesses are interested in coaching. Envision your ideal clientele, and highlight why they should seek your services.
3. Establish how you stand out: What’s your business’ X-factor? Is it your years of experience in a specific profession, or have you designed a proprietary coaching model? Whatever the case, delineate how you stand out for your audience.
4. Create a brand personality: Take your values and inspirations, and turn them into your brand’s voice. Do you motivate your clients through an upbeat vibe or help them open up with a compassionate one? Your company’s tone should sound like the one you’d use in sessions or when writing a book or blog post about coaching. 
5. Choose a brand name and tagline: Choose a name that’ll stick. Be sure it showcases your coaching niche, and try to develop a catchy moniker that clients won’t forget. 
6. Design a unique brand image: Create a high-quality logo (or hire a professional), and determine the colors and fonts you’ll use everywhere you market your company. Be specific and consistent across the board, ensuring you and your brand stay fresh in your clients’ memories. Insert these brand identity elements into templates for your social media posts so your online presence looks as coherent as possible.
7. Create brand collateral: Put your branding strategy to work. Design business cards, a website, and social media profiles that reflect your company’s voice and visual elements.

Keep learning about marketing your business with Practice

At Practice, we understand the challenges of running a small business. Whether driving traffic to your website or ensuring smooth coaching sessions, single-handedly managing everything on your plate can be daunting. That’s why we created a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. This allows you to record client data, send files and folders, and save contracts –– all in one place. 

‍We also write a wealth of blogs for coaches and solo-prenuers learning how to run and promote a successful company. Find out how to run excellent coaching ads, use social media platforms to your advantage, and capitalize on content marketing strategies and search engine optimization (SEO). Try it today.