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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

For B2C brands, delivering social media customer service has become a necessity, as consumers have grown to expect businesses to respond to their queries and complaints through popular social channels. This expectation has also spilled over into the B2B world, so it’s often a good idea for brands that sell to other businesses to offer some level of customer care through social media. 

While it’s something brands should do as good practice, companies using social media for customer service will find that it provides a lot of additional benefits beyond simply making customers happier. The most immediate benefit is that it enhances your brand reputation by demonstrating your commitment to customer care in a transparent, public channel.

The rewards of a good brand reputation cannot be overstated, it’s something that all marketers work very hard to achieve. This in itself will lead to increased customer retention and stronger word-of-mouth referrals.

Social media customer service can also cut costs by either solving customer issues with fast responses or directing them to self-serve online resources, it reduces the pressure on your customer support team. What’s more, all of the data generated by tracking and responding to customer queries and complaints on social media channels can provide valuable insights into your customer preferences, needs, pain points, and trends, which can help you improve your product and service offerings.

But getting customer service right on social media can be challenging. For a start, it’s often the case that customer service and social media are two completely separate functions within a business, so they need to be aligned and working together seamlessly. Meltwater's social listening solution, Explore, is ideal for customer service as they are designed to help you identify and respond to customer comments on social media, no matter how big your organization. With the Salesforce Social Studio sunset, Meltwater integrates easily with Salesforce, so that customer queries raised on social channels can be effortlessly synced with the platform that your customer service department is likely to be using.

Below we’ve collected some real-world social media customer service examples from a wide range of different brands, to highlight the challenges they face and how they respond:

Domino’s Pizza is one of the world’s best-known fast-food brands, with millions of hungry customers ordering pizzas to be delivered every single day of the year. So it’s no surprise that the company’s social media channels are bombarded with questions and complaints because with an operation of that scale, it’s inevitable that a small percentage of deliveries won’t meet customer expectations.

The company clearly treats social media as an important customer service channel, with every query receiving a response that attempts to resolve the problem. Each message is responded to with a clear answer advising the customer of the best next step, whether that might be moving to a more detailed conversation in DMs, or escalating to the company’s online complaint handling system.

The customer is given the name of the rep dealing with their query, so that they can see a level of accountability, and a reference number enabling the case to be tracked accurately throughout the handling process.

Tip: Read our Domino’s Customer Story and learn how they use Meltwater to improve their social media operations.

South Korean auto brand, Hyundai, is the next customer service example on our list. The company is the third largest car manufacturer globally in terms of production volume and sells its vehicles in almost every country in the world. Cars are a big ticket item for most consumers, and will often represent the most expensive purchase people make other than their home, so it’s a topic that consumers not only research in great detail but also have very strongly held opinions about. 

Customers sharing negative comments and experiences about the brand on its social media channels can have a big impact on sales because nobody wants to risk spending tens of thousands of dollars on a vehicle that has a poor reputation. So it’s easy to understand why Hyundai USA makes a point of quickly responding to queries, complaints, and even negative comments posted on social media.

In this example, the poster seems to be making a general comment about the quality of Hyundai cars, rather than raising a specific issue that he needs help with, but the brand still makes the effort to assist him and resolve the problem. 

Tip: Read our Hyundai Customer Story and learn how they are using Meltwater's social listening suite to better understand what consumers are looking for when it comes to electric cars.

As one of the world’s most widely used money transfer service providers, Western Union is relied upon by millions of people to send money to friends and family wherever they are in the world. That’s an important service, and the company’s customers depend on it to work perfectly every time.

When customers encounter difficulties with the service, they need to know they can get quick and reliable support from Western Union. The company delivers comprehensive social media customer service, responding to all queries and complaints, whether they’re concerning specific issues a customer needs help with, or more general comments about how the service works. 

Tip: Read our Western Union Customer Story to learn how Meltwater helps the company truly understand not just the outputs and outcomes but also the impact of messages on social media.

Every morning, millions of people around the world start their day with Kellogg’s breakfast cereals, but sometimes customers are left a little disappointed. Maybe their cereal isn’t up to the usual high standards they expect from Kellogg’s, or maybe they’re just struggling to find their favorite product. Whatever the issue, the brand is always on top of social media customer service, making sure that customers get answers to their questions and any problems are resolved professionally. 

With a brand like Kellogg’s, it’s unlikely that many of the issues raised on social channels are urgent or even particularly important in the grand scheme of things, but nevertheless, the company understands the importance of keeping its customers happy. By demonstrating a commitment to social media customer service, Kellogg’s is safeguarding its brand reputation. 

Not all social media customer service examples are about responding to complaints and negativity, sometimes your brand just has a lot of fans with a lot of feedback. Vans is a sneaker company with a pretty big cult following, and those fans are always keen to let the company know how they feel about the latest designs on its social media channels.

Vans does a great job of letting its fans know that it’s listening to their ideas and feedback, and if you take a look at the brand’s social channels, you’ll see it responds promptly to any questions.

Read our Vans Customer Story and learn how Meltwater helps the sneaker company support successful event execution, connect with influencers, generate reports, and measure ROI.

Brands don’t come any bigger than Coca-Cola, and the company’s social media channels boast some of the largest audiences in the world. While that’s a great place to be for any B2C brand, it does come with its own challenges, namely the huge volume of queries and complaints posted on the company’s owned social channels every single day. 

Coca-Cola rises to this challenge admirably, effectively responding to all queries across its broad range of international social media channels, showing customers that it cares about their problems and concerns. In this case, we see an example of the company effectively directing a customer to an online resource that provides further information about the problem they have encountered. 

It would have been easy to simply ignore this complaint since it is not requesting immediate support, but instead, Coca-Cola shows that it’s listening to its customers and takes their concerns seriously. This is one of the reasons it’s such a powerful brand. 

For luxury hotel brands like W London, it’s essential to maintain a reputation for impeccable service quality, since that’s at the very heart of their offer to customers. So when somebody publicly complains about the level of service they received, the brand needs to be seen to be doing everything possible to ensure the customer receives a satisfactory outcome. 

As we can see in this example, W London monitors its social channels for any complaints and swiftly escalates the complaint to a private discussion in DMs. This is especially important in this situation, where the customer has a complaint relating to a personal health-related issue, which should not be discussed on a public channel.

Tip: Read our W Hotels Customer Story and learn how Meltwater helps them connect with customers on a personal level, get an insight into the guest experience, and measure ROI.

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing/email marketing automation platform, used by millions of small and medium businesses around the world. As with many technology brands, the company has to handle a lot of tech-support queries through its social channels, as well as the regular complaints and queries that most B2C brands will be familiar with. 

This requires an additional layer of training for the social media customer service team since they need to be able to provide customers with the most appropriate technical answers as well as being able to handle complaints and queries. The benefit to the business is that in many cases, such as in this example, the query can be answered quickly and easily, which reduces pressure on the tech support team and saves the customer time. 

Safely flying your customers and their luggage around the world is not without its challenges, as any airline employee knows. Passengers can run into all kinds of difficulties which require support from the company. Booking problems, delayed flights, and, as in this example, lost luggage, are just a few of the problems that airline customer service teams have to deal with.

Air travel can be a stressful thing for a lot of people, and it’s understandable that they might want to take to social media to voice their complaints. The social media customer service team needs to provide timely help in a calm and professional manner to reassure the customer that their problem will be dealt with. In this social media customer service example, the Air France team has responded to the customer, requested further information in order to progress the case, and provided a couple of options for the customer to contact customer services directly with their details.

Tip: Read our Air France Customer Story and learn how the company uses Meltwater to monitor traditional and social channels to ensure accurate, up-to-date information, measure and report on major crises, work to mitigate any negative impacts, and identify and target influential sources writing about aviation and air travel.

Puma is a popular sportswear fashion brand, and it’s important that the company maintains a reputation for high-quality products. When a customer publicly complains about a pair of running shoes falling apart while still relatively new, there’s a risk of its reputation being tarnished, so it’s vital to respond to that customer and resolve the issue. 

In this social media customer service example, we can see that Puma has not only replied to the customer privately via DM, but also publicly noted this so that other customers can see the company is responding and fixing the problem. 

Tip: Read our Puma Customer Story about how they are using Meltwater to engage users in over 80 countries, track unique uses of campaign hashtags, and obtain a 24x higher than average engagement rate.

Learning from Social Media Customer Service Examples

When customers have complaints or questions about your brand on social media, it’s just good business sense to respond quickly and positively. You won’t be able to resolve every single issue all of the time, and often you’ll need to direct the customer to your conventional customer service channels, but nevertheless, showing that you are responsive and helpful to customers on social media can earn your brand a lot of goodwill.

If you’re ready to start delivering social media customer service that will make customers love your brand, Meltwater Engage is the best solution to get it right. Contact us today for a demonstration of how it can work for you.

10 Social Media Customer Service Examples to Learn From

Millennials are the most racially diverse generation in US history. 43% of today’s young adults are non-white, compared to 25% of the people over the age 55.

This generation is not only more diverse, but also more liberal. According to a recent survey by Pew Research Center, people in the ages of 18-33 hold more socially liberal stands, including being more supportive of same-sex marriage and interracial marriage.

And now Millennials expect brands to reflect these values.

According to research by Google, Ipsos, and Nielsen, “75% of Black millennials would like to see brands better represent diversity in ads. 70% say they are more likely to buy from a brand that takes a stand on race-related issues”.

Diverse society asks for diverse advertising. Inclusive representation is nowadays in demand.

L’Oréal Paris perfectly captured this zeitgeist.

Earlier this year the global beauty brand launched a campaign that celebrates diversity. The “Your Skin, Your Story” campaign is all about finding the perfect match for your skin.

The campaign featured 16 people from different colors and genders. The chosen team of influencers included a trans influencer, a plus size model, bloggers and models from Nepal, Hawaii, Poland, and more. During the campaign, each person shared her/his own skin story.

The campaign theme was inspired by the 33 shades of True Match, L’Oréal’s range of foundation shades. The influencers posted inspiring stories that empowered the audience to feel great within their own skin.

The campaign launch was nothing but epic. During one of the Golden Globes intermissions, L’Oréal shared the first campaign’s video. Among known celebrities and models, like Blake Lively, there was Hari Nef, an actress, model and known trans activist. Her post was one of the most popular videos during the campaign.

Tip: Take a look at more influencer campaign examples.

L’Oréal “Your Skin, Your Story” Influencers

And here is the team of influencers who participated in the campaign. Click on each image to view their full profile:

Measuring the Impact of Inclusion in Influencer Marketing

The campaign results show clearly that pursuing inclusion was rewarding.
Here’s a short summary of the campaign in numbers:

The campaign reached targeted audiences from the States, the UK, Australia, the Philippines, Poland, and other countries where the influencers got strong presence.

Tip: Take a look at the top beauty influencers in the Philippines and at the top South African beauty influencers.

With the right influencers, L’Oréal managed to reach their target audience: people who are highly interested in content related to Beauty (6% of the audience), Fashion (5%), Lifestyle (4%), Styling (4%), but also content that support Inclusiveness (3%) and Diversity (3%).

Learn more about the influencers performance:

Tip: Learn how to find the right influencers for your brand.

Leveraging the Power of Diversity in Influencer Marketing

L’Oreal takes diversity and inclusion very seriously. In fact, the company got an online project which explains their philosophy and actions they make to pursue this idea.

One of the tag lines of this project is “when diversity creates value”. It’s no secret that pursuing this ideal holds substantial benefits for brands. Embracing diversity helps both brands and consumers grow together.

The L’Oréal #TrueMatch campaign addresses the millennial expectation from brands. It genuinely acknowledges the diversity of people, and their different needs.

Brands who wish to follow this path can adopt the L’Oréal way, which went beyond a simple inclusion of people from different colors and genders.

What made this campaign so impactful wasn’t just the variety of colors, but the depth and the authenticity.  The influencers shared their own life experiences and pushed the campaign to go beyond color and gender.

L’Oréal Shows The Beauty of Diversity With Influencers

“Was this blog written by an AI chatbot?” A year ago, this question probably wouldn’t have crossed your mind, but in 2023, talk about the potential and possibilities of generative AI technology is all around us. 

Chatbots, and their abilities to generate content and answer questions, have especially taken the world by storm, but to what degree? We used our AI-powered social listening platform to learn more about how people have been talking about the rise of AI chatbots this year. (And, for the record, this blog was researched and written by humans!) 

Test drive our social listening platform with a free demo.

What are AI chatbots, and why are people talking about them?

In general, chatbots are computer programs that simulate digital conversations by responding to text inputs. Digital assistants from Microsoft Word’s Clippy to Amazon’s Alexa have incorporated different iterations of chatbot technology over the years, but recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLM) have taken the tools to a whole new level. 

The most well-known AI chatbot is ChatGPT, created by OpenAI. Its release on November 30, 2022, kicked off the tech world race to create the best generative AI LLM tool. Since then, a handful of competitors have entered the field, including Bard by Google, Bing Chat by Microsoft, Llama by Meta, and Claude by Anthropic.

AI chatbots have seemingly captured the world’s attention because of their potential to revolutionize certain aspects of different industries and people’s everyday lives. So far, some of their biggest impacts have been in education, finance, and medicine, where they have been used to automate everything from writing school reports to picking stocks to answering patient questions.

Mentions of AI chatbots increased by nearly 440% PoP.

From January 1 to October 31, there were more than 1.2 million mentions of AI chatbots in general (i.e., mentions of “AI chatbots”, “chat AI”, and related keywords, not mentions of individual branded tools). This was up about 440% from 224,000 mentions over the prior 10 months.

Notably, the conversation volume peaked on February 8, two days after Google announced Bard, its ChatGPT competitor, when word spread that a Bard ad included incorrect information. The chatbot conversation peaked again on May 10 after Wendy’s announced plans to test an AI chatbot called FreshAI in its drive-thrus. 

The themes of these peaks — how AI chatbot tools compare to one another and their unexpected potential uses — were common in other popular AI chatbot stories of 2023, which included an article comparing ChatGPT to Bing, coverage of a church service generated by ChatGPT, and an article about how Nasdaq engineers are experimenting with the technology. 

Like ChatGPT and its competitors, our social listening platform uses LLM, as well as natural language processing (NLP), to analyze and understand textual data. This technology powers features like our platform’s content clusters and sentiment analysis, which shows that, overall, there were about as many positive mentions of AI chatbots as there were negative ones.

Learn more about the many ways that Meltwater uses AI to help you get from data to insights faster.

ChatGPT is the most talked about AI chatbot.

And it’s not even close. Since January 1, ChatGPT’s share of voice has consistently dwarfed that of all of its competitors, racking up more mentions than all of them combined.

The volume of the ChatGPT conversation shows, in part, the benefit of being first off the blocks. Bard and Bing Chat are fighting it out for second place, but both have a long way to go to catch up to the OpenAI chatbot's visibility online and off. At this point, ChatGPT is on its way to becoming the generic term for the general tool, similar to Kleenex for facial tissues or Google for online search.

Unlock insights from social data. Find out how with the Meltwater Suite. 

Mentions of ChatGPT grew by nearly 1160% PoP.

From January 1 through October 31, there were nearly 9 million mentions of ChatGPT across English-language news and social sources — an almost 1160% increase from 711,000 mentions during the 10 months prior. Conversations about ChatGPT took off in the first half of 2023, but seem to have leveled off since late July. 

Similar to the general AI chatbot conversation, the ChatGPT conversation has been spurred on by discussion about its competitors and how it can potentially be used. One top story about the tool was an April 17 Reuters article about Elon Musk’s launch of his own rival chatbot, TruthGPT. That article was posted, shared, and reshared on social media over 62,400 times. Meanwhile, an April open call for comment from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce was posted, shared, and reshared on social media over 54,100 times. 
Explore how Meltwater has integrated ChatGPT and DALL-E as part of our Summer 2023 Product Release to help marketers create content even faster.

Men dominate the AI chatbot conversation on Twitter. 

This gender skew was consistent across all of the conversations about individual AI chatbots that we analyzed. It may be attributable to the fact that Twitter has more male users than female users.

However, it may also partially reflect who is actually using these tools. A recent survey of 5,600 professionals found that 54% of male respondents use AI tools compared to 35% of female respondents.

At this time next year, the AI chatbot conversation will look radically different as the technology advances, people discover new uses for it, and new regulations and standards develop in response. By then, marketers everywhere should have asked themselves important questions about if and how they will incorporate AI chatbots into their work as well as the ethical and other considerations that go along with it. For marketers in industries that are still beginning to incorporate generative AI, now is the time to tap into people’s fascination with the tool. 

No matter what you do, make sure that you don’t get left behind. Learn more about how to use ChatGPT and other AI chatbots for marketing and PR.

Need consumer insights tailored to your business? Try our social listening and analytics platform out for yourself! Fill out the form below to schedule a demo.

Why 2023 was the year of AI chatbots

Some products are just as recognizable as the companies that create them. For example, there’s no mistaking a bottle of soda with a red label and white scripted font for anything other than a Coca-Cola. Or if you happen to hear the words “You’re not you when you’re hungry” over the radio, you know instantly they’re talking about a Snickers bar.

These are basic examples of product branding — the face and brand personality given to individual products.

In general terms, branding is the act of identifying a product in the market in a way that separates it from any other product. The stronger the brand strategy, the more that product will stand out.

You don’t have to be on the level of Coca-Cola or Snickers to take advantage of good product branding. Here’s how you can build a solid product branding strategy that gets noticed.

How Does Product Branding Differ from Corporate Branding?

How to Build a Better Product Branding Strategy

What is product branding, exactly? Let’s start with a product branding definition.

Product branding is the development of a distinctive brand for a given product with the intention to reach a brand's target consumers.

Everything from household cleaners to candy to cars can have its own brand positioning and marketing strategy. Regardless of the product, the idea remains the same: to stand out in a sea of similar products and give people a reason to choose yours.

Just like a company builds a corporate brand to earn customer loyalty, products can benefit from brand building to create trust and increase sales. Your product is a brand extension of your company, so when you get product branding right, your company gets a boost too. 

The purest form of brand marketing is a standalone product. It uses the name of the corporation in its branding — the two are one and the same. It’s when companies have more than one product or brand that things get more complicated.

Take Mars, for example. The company makes a range of products, including M&Ms, Skittles, and even Whiskas cat food. The company's brand positioning focuses more on innovation and being a long-standing leader in its field, while its product brands each have their own unique brand identity.

Corporate branding is much broader and encompasses the entire company and all of its products. This is what you use on your corporate website and marketing.

Product brands are more nuanced and tailored to an individual product. The goal is to differentiate a product in its niche.

Some companies choose to create a brand family, where all the products share the name of the company even though they’re different. Campbell’s is a great example of a brand family with its diverse line of soups all under the Campbell’s name. The company has also expanded into a multi-brand company with its line of Campbell’s Chunky, Well Yes!, Slow Kettle Style, and Homestyle soups.

But for companies that sell a diverse product line, such as diapers and cleaning products, using a single brand or a brand family could prove tricky. That’s why companies like Procter & Gamble, for example, opt for individual product brands.

Product brands often tie back to the corporate brand in some way. But the key difference is that product brands have visuals and personality traits that are separate from the company that makes them.

Brand recognition with a product provides a number of benefits to a company, even if customers don’t immediately associate your product with your corporate brand. 

Let's review four of the benefits of distinctive product branding: 

As with any type of branding, branding a product makes it easier to identify among lookalike products. A strong brand stands out. The more recognizable it becomes, the more ROI you can get from your advertising and marketing. Think about the last time you went shopping and you found yourself looking for the distinctive color of the product you were hunting for, like the turquoise on the lid of Skippy's peanut butter, rather than the brand name itself to locate the product. This resource gives you insight into some marketing agencies successful branding ideas.

Having a brand people already know and love can make it easier to expand into a new market or product category, or even introduce a new brand from the same company. It builds instant credibility for new products and encourages people to try them.

For example, Dollar Shave Club started with just razors and shave butter. Then in 2015, it expanded its product line to include hair care. Having built its credibility as a reputable personal care brand, the company was able to seamlessly expand its brand.

Brand awareness carries a lot of weight when it comes to consumer preference. People buy the brands they know and trust. When you create an intentional brand that’s consistent and appeals to your target audience, you stand a better chance of winning them over. Platforms like Crowdspring can help businesses build a strong visual identity through custom branding and design, making it easier to stand out and earn customer trust.

Part of a good brand strategy means paying attention to other brands in your market. Strong brands can discourage other companies from entering your niche. It creates a higher barrier to entry, especially if people show a strong affinity for your brand over others.

Good product branding also means you have to compete less on price. People are willing to pay more for the brands they like, especially if they think that run-of-the-mill products might also be of lesser quality.

Product branding is the intersection of many moving parts, including logo, colors, package design, product names and descriptions, brand voice, brand values, brand story, and the general messaging used by the brand. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts — a sum that is calculated strategically.

Ready to develop your product branding strategy? 

Here are our top product branding tips for success:

Every new branding strategy starts with market research. You need to decide who you want to buy your product, then work backward to create a brand that resonates with them. 

Some questions to ask during this process might include:

Why would they use this product and not one from a competitor?

Getting consumer insights is invaluable to your brand development because it puts you in the shoes of the people to whom you want to market. Conduct surveys or access data to uncover real pain points consumers experience and see how you can solve them with a great product and strong brand.

Learn more about consumer insights in our blogs: How to Do Customer Profiling, What is Customer Intelligence, and Top Customer Insights Tools

Part of good branding hinges on your ability to stand out. To do this, marketers first need to know who else is fighting for visibility. Do some competitor research to understand current branding trends. Find out how customers feel about those brands and what might make them switch to yours (e.g. better pricing, higher quantities, product quality, etc.). These will serve as some of the building blocks to your product branding strategy.

Related resources: Competitor Monitoring Ultimate Guide, Competitive Intelligence Guide, Creating a Competitive Intelligence Database

If your branded products could speak, what would they say? What would they sound like? Smell like? Feel like?

Branding is a collective of visuals, sounds, smells, textures, and associations. Defining your brand’s personality can help to inform choices like logos, colors, packaging, and other details that consumers will rely on to identify your brand.

Once you understand how your product brand should look and function, you can start sharing its story with your audience. Talk about its history, its values, and what makes it unique. Help the audience feel connected to your brand so they can build familiarity. In other words, give people a reason to choose it over others.

No matter how you approach a product branding strategy, the single common denominator is always consistency. Make a style guide that details how your brand should be presented. 

Common things a brand style guide should include are: 

This same style should be consistent throughout your e-commerce presence, your customer service for that product, your business cards, and every marketplace where the product is sold. Many brands now apply this consistency to digital formats too, using tools like Uniqode’s business card, HiHello, or QR-based profile links to keep their branding aligned during networking and online interactions.

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