Are you also looking to expand your brand through brand leveraging?
If yes, then you’re at the right place!
Brand extension is one of the most obvious steps for a business to expand in the real world. Brand leveraging is the biggest supporter of any existing brand that wants to launch new products in the market. It always helps brands to grow and gives them their required boost. If you also know about the brand leveraging concept, no one can stop you from being successful at its very top.
Thus, this guide has mentioned all the necessary information regarding brand leveraging. If you also want to grow your brand quickly, give 5 minutes to read this article.
Without any further delay, let’s begin the guide !!
What Is Brand Leveraging?
Brand leveraging refers to taking advantage of an existing brand name to gain support and popularity while entering a new but relatable product category. Leveraging the brand can help you only when you enter a similar product category.
For example, you have a reliable company providing the best quality coffee beans in the market, and your audience loves it. Then, you decide to enter into the market of manufacturing and selling coffee maker machines as well. An excellent relationship between the products and the audience is also similar.
Thus, the audience also prefers to purchase new products from your brand and this is also called umbrella branding for a brand. Because they have a good experience with your existing brand quality and delivery. However, you have to maintain the quality of your new launches because some disappointment can change the entire perception of a customer towards your brand.
Brand Leveraging Strategy
Enter Into The Similar Field
Before leveraging a brand, you must enter into a similar field. This step will let you have all the benefits of existing branding & create a brand positioning map.
Remember the example of a coffee beans company. If you also offer similar products, you will have the required customer base, trust factor, connections, and much more. Thus, find your next business near your previous one to have the most of the possible advantages.
Count All of Your USPs
Secondly, you have to break the mindset of not being required to build great products with quality if you already have existing branding. It can never be the case. You must create the best possible outcome and write down all its USPs (Unique Selling Proposition).
When you showcase all of your mighty USPs to your audience, they will find you creating more valuable products than the other companies in the market. Thus, it is essential to create a worthy product.
Maintain the quality
Though you have a lot of benefits if you have an existing successful brand, it has some downgrades if you fail to maintain the quality of your product. Brand leveraging meaning is to use the credibility of an existing brand to boost your new one.
Thus, it also indicates that if you don’t maintain the quality like the previous one, you are also putting your previous brand’s credibility in danger. Because customers need only one disappointing moment to break their trust in any brand, all we will say at last is you have to maintain the quality even better than the previous one.
Leverage The Existing Credibility Through The Marketing
Now, the mainstream role of brand leveraging strategy comes into action. When you showcase all your points in your marketing and your existing credibility, you will get a lot more exposure and appreciation than you could without it.
Create a strategic brand development plan, which helps in getting customers’ trust, and you will get significant sales in the initial launching phase too. Every successful company brand has its own separate loyal customer base list, and you can also use that.
Inform Your Loyal Customer Base About Your New Launch
Once you are done with all the essential preparations, you should inform your loyal audience base about your new launch. They will become your biggest supporter if they find everything well and generously. It will bring you sales. After this point, your brand leveraging remains with nothing to contribute further. Your newly launched products have to bear all the responsibility.
Use Your Existing Connections
In the end, since you’re in a similar industry, you will also have the required business connections, which will help you to promote your products more and get more genuine sales and revenue. Having existing relationships is a blessing for any business. And, here, you can freely use that blessing.
Real-Life Brand Leveraging Examples
Examples of Successful Brand Extensions:
Gillette’s Razors and Shaving Supplies
Gillette used to create authentic razor blades for shaving, and they later extended their products to generate shaving foam. This separate complimentary Gillette’sGillette’s product has significantly boosted its whole brand.
Star Wars Action Figures
Children did not much appreciate Star Wars during its first release. However, it was pretty famous among the adults. However, its franchise has had tremendous success after it released toy characters in the real-life market. They have obtained a new set of audience through this brand extension process.
Colgate’s Toothbrush
Likewise Gillette, Colgate also has two complementary products – toothbrush and toothpaste. There is no use of toothpaste without a toothbrush. Thus, Colgate entered the separate toothbrushes market and eventually captured the third-largest position in the oral care market.
Examples of Unsuccessful Brand Extensions
Cadbury’s Instant Mashed Potatoes
Cadbury is one of the most prominent high-end chocolate and candy manufacturing leading industries. Then there was a time when Cadbury stepped into the low-end food products, like instant mashed potatoes. It has weakened its chocolate side. Ultimately, Cadbury had to sell the company Smash in 1986 after sticking to it for 20 years and introducing the world to instant mashed potatoes. Thus, it teaches you to select your new products very wisely.
Levi’s Tailored Classics
From the very start, Levi’sLevi’s was highly associated with a casual, rugged, and outdoorsy lifestyle. And, when they entered the high-end men’s suits field, people didn’t trust them, and it eventually conflicted with its core identity. Thus, customers didn’t like the idea at all.
Leveraging Secondary Brand Associations
The brand expansion or extension of an already established and developed brand is quite a fascinating process. Because you can take advantage of your already set brand by withdrawing some of its brand elements and knowledge, it is called leveraging secondary brand associations to build your brand equity in the market.
But, brands should launch their new products or brand strongly related to or associated with their previous brand. Otherwise, they won’t have any benefit from brand leveraging. One of the best examples of secondary brand associations is when Nokia introduced its mini laptop in the market, named the Nokia 3G booklet. People could associate its quality and efficiency with their technical gadgets – mobile phones.
Conclusion
We hope you like the guide on brand leveraging and its benefits. It would have helped you understand all the concepts of brand leveraging. Therefore, brand leveraging has numerous benefits for a brand extension if correctly executed. Thus, follow all the steps we have mentioned in this guide.