DEV Community

Cover image for Leveraging Merchandising the Right Way!
Love In Store Technologies
Love In Store Technologies

Posted on • Updated on

Leveraging Merchandising the Right Way!

Simply put, merchandise branding is branding your goods by printing your logo on t-shirts, making stuffed animals of your mascot to give away at business events, ordering stickers with your logo, or designing specialized drinkware to enjoy your branded craft beer.

Before delving further into product merchandising branding, let's first discuss branding as a concept.

The act of branding involves letting the world know who you are. You must make deliberate design decisions to demonstrate your brand identity to potential customers, partners, investors, and competitors.

Cake mix packaged in a container with a green label and a picture of a slice of carrot cake serves as product merchandising branding.
Which audiences you are targeting—and which you are not—are apparent with clear branding.

All of the intentional design decisions you make up your brand identity. It's the color scheme of your website, the tone of your text, and the Design of your logo.

The way others perceive you is another crucial factor. To effectively brand yourself, you must clearly articulate your industry position and produce content that appeals to your target market.

The color scheme, the messaging, the fonts, the illustration style of the walking donut, and the sunbeam-like lines expanding behind the mascot all work together to create a distinctive impression.

The ultimate goal of product merchandising branding, no matter how you go about it, is to make your brand tangible so that consumers can own a little bit of you.

With a magnet resembling a faucet with water coming out, merchandise can be branded with it.
The Design of your merchandise may incorporate your responses.

Understanding your brand's identity is the first step in successfully branding yourself and your inventory. Ask your company the following questions while imagining it as a person.

  • Are the prices of your goods and services higher, lower, or roughly the same as those of your rivals?

  • What do you provide for your clients?

  • How do you distinguish yourself from your opponents?

  • How do you and the brands you want to compete with compare to your rivals and competitors?

  • What values do you hold?

  • Are you up-to-date or traditional?

  • Your business size is how big?

  • What are you most adept at?

Who exactly are your clients?

Decide who your customers are after deciding who you are. Answer a few inquiries about your target market, such as: as you did before.

  • What are their values?

  • What do consumers anticipate from businesses?

  • How do they want businesses to communicate with them?

  • What sort of goods would they like?

  • Would some product features be more functional or practical?

Merchandise branding using pet pads of various colors.

An excellent way to win them over is to brand the kinds of products that your audience already purchases. Agnes Design created the product design.

You can better develop your brand's visual identity by being aware of your target market's values and needs. To establish a genuine connection with them, you can precisely pinpoint the products you should brand.

The development of a visual brand persona.

You are prepared to brand yourself once you understand who you are, who your customers are, and how these factors interact. Choose from the following to create a unified brand identity:

Typography. How people view your brand is significantly influenced by the fonts you use in your logo, website design, advertisements, and other places. Consider this: block letter fonts feel simple and practical, whereas script fonts frequently have a fancy feel. While sans-serif fonts feel more approachable and affordable, serif fonts add a touch of elegance.

Color. People are influenced subconsciously by color. For instance, red can arouse enthusiasm, rage, or general intensity. White frequently represents innocence, sterility, or a new beginning. Consider who you are, what you stand for, and the audience you aim for as you create your brand identity, and then choose your colors accordingly.

Graphics and shapes. The shapes you use in your logo and other branding materials, such as a custom pattern on branded apparel, are also essential to your brand identity. Squares represent boundaries and stability, whereas triangles stand for action and motion. Circles, a popular choice for logo frames, stand for friendliness and openness.

Voice. The copy for your brand uses this tone of voice. While your copy isn't necessarily a visual component of your brand identity, it still needs as much consideration as every other part. Are you the brand that uses the most current slang, or are you a total grammar nerd? Does your brand paint flowery, highly-detailed word portraits on its blog, or do you say just enough to give your photos context?

Developing products with a consistent brand.

Once you've established your color scheme and overall visual identity, you can experiment to produce one-of-a-kind products.
Once your brand identity is complete, publicize your logo, website, business cards, product packaging, and branding merchandise wherever you can.

Keep in mind that consistency is critical to successful product merchandising branding. It won't be as easy to identify your products as yours if they don't feel the same as your other branded properties. Look at Agnes design's bib designs to see on-target, unified branding. The warm color schemes and hand-drawn style contribute significantly to the four bibs' uniform appearance and feel, even though each is distinctive. It is obvious that they are all a part of the same set, and it is simple to picture purchasing a four-pack of them.

Determining what products to brand.

Selecting the goods to brand is the next step in the branding process. Brand merchandising aims to provide something your target audience finds valuable. To make this choice, consider your response to "Who are your customers" and determine what people in that audience like.
To get you started, here are a few everyday items for merchandise branding:

  • T-shirts.

  • Baseball hats.

  • Pens.

  • Notepads.

  • Mugs.

  • Containers for water.

  • The tote bag.

These can be excellent options, particularly if you're new to brand merchandising. However, consider them more of a starting point than a comprehensive list. If you can brand a product that has yet to be seen, it will work as long as your target market is into it. The only restrictions on branding merchandise are what makes sense for your brand and fits your budget.

Top comments (0)