The most successful brands in the retail industry recognise that branding influences every touchpoint or experience any customer will have, from product packaging to the printing on your delivery or shopping bags, the price points you offer, and the tone in which you communicate.
Great branding is particularly important in the hyper-competitive retail space, where any company, whether online-only or with physical stores, must stand out, establish a clear and tangible brand message, and ensure it is perceived as credible and trustworthy by its target audience groups.
While many companies assume a snappy logo, catchy slogan, and a few clever marketing campaigns will be sufficient, the reality is that branding should infiltrate all the aspects of the way your business interacts, serves and responds to customer needs, where a shopper knows who you are, what you stand for, and what they should expect when they buy from you.
What Do We Mean By Retail Brand Identity?
Brand identity is the starting point of all successful retail branding strategies. It’s impossible to design and implement a long-term strategy for growth, market share improvement, or higher customer satisfaction ratings without first defining the ethos, values, and character of your brand.
Think of brand identity as your business’s personality—whether that persona is young, fresh, and vibrant, based on sustainability and community values, or is a high-quality luxury brand. Your logo isn’t the defining cornerstone of your branding but instead is one element of a broader brand image, and part of your visual assets that showcase the retail brand identity you’ve crafted.
The best branding strategies evoke positive feelings, where customers are drawn to your business over a competitor and as their first preference, because they have certainty that their in-store experience or time spent online shopping will live up to the brand promise.
Strategies should be incredibly detailed, breaking down every small factor to ensure that there is never a gap in consistency, which could include:
- Rethinking the colour palette of all brand visuals, logos and communications.
- Repainting the walls of physical stores and changing the music broadcast to customers.
- Considering product brand packaging, labelling, care labels and even in-store bags and receipts.
Online channels are just as reliant on branding to communicate and attract new customers. E-commerce retailers pay attention to those granular details that can make all the difference, perhaps relating to the tone and style of the website, the returns policies on offer, and the way customer services teams deal with queries or complaints.
Consider this: how would you picture a brand if an in-store server or email response greeted you with ‘Welcome’, ‘Hey there’, ‘Good evening’ or ‘What’s up!’. You can see how this nuance can make a substantial impact on brand perceptions.
Key Aspects That Highlight the Importance of Retail Branding
Part of the reason branding strategies are pivotal for retail companies is that, whether you trade online or have one or several bricks-and-mortar stores, you will inevitably be competing against other brands that may have similar product ranges, price points, or services.
Strong branding ensures that customers recognise your brand instantly and develop the familiarity that helps to foster customer trust. The major UK supermarkets are an easy example; even though the products are pretty much the same, and many are price-matched, you likely have a preference.
Whether that’s because you feel the produce is better quality, you prefer the parking and store layout, you perceive the pricing as a little lower, or you simply enjoy your grocery shopping more, this isn’t an accident—it’s all down to smart branding that creates a positive emotional connection.
Consistency is key, where a brand’s image is carefully curated and protected, always referring back to the underpinning brand strategy that sets the tone for each touchpoint. Consistent experiences improve the reliability of your retail brand and mean your loyal customer base will not consider shopping elsewhere because they trust you.
It’s also essential for retail companies to use branding to position themselves and, over time, generate improved returns and value—that might not translate to immediate upticks in sales but to repeat custom and brand equity, where your business branding stands apart and has a quantifiable value.
A Real-World Case Study of Strong Retail Branding in Action
Using case studies to illustrate the impact and long-term outcomes exceptional retail branding can have may help to clarify how this all ties together – and show how branding is the foundation on which competitive businesses build their reputations, brand marketing campaigns and communication styles.
Flintlock Marketing’s Work With Armac Martin
Armac Martin is an incredible British business founded in 1929 and run by the fourth consecutive generation of family owners. The company, already well regarded, creates luxury brass hardware with a reputation for exquisite design and high-quality materials.
The current leadership team wanted to find a way to triple their growth and leverage the brand’s history and loyal following, using strategic branding to scale. One issue we uncovered during our sparking sessions and in-person workshop visits was that the positioning had become replicated by competitors, making this very special brand somewhat lost in the noise.
Flintlock listened to customers who had unparalleled confidence in the quality and prestige of the brand and highlighted ways to differentiate and drill down into the core offering to ensure Armac Martin clarified its status as an industry leader and a company with both heritage and ambitions for the future.
All of this work went far beyond the logo that represented the business and helped to uncover core messaging, ways to tell the story and history of the company, and to tie back to the family values of a brand deeply connected to Birmingham’s landscape.
Richard McGrail, CEO, noted that the process was enlightening and that the belief in a strong brand and positive culture acted as foundations for success – with this insightful branding project helping to support growth, creativity and collaboration.
Retail business brands keen to learn more about sector-specific branding, on-brand visual design, or our work are welcome to contact Flintlock Marketing at any time. Our resources and knowledge guides also provide further case studies and articles explaining how our sparking process works and providing information about retail-specific branding.
