Effortless Expansion: How Great Business Branding Plants the Seeds for Punchy, Effective Sub-Brands
A Strong Brand Presence is a Must-Have for Your Business
Establishing a strong brand presence is essential for any business that has success in its aims (in other words, EVERY business). It’s not just that a compelling visual brand builds trust, establishes credibility, and makes it easier for clients to fall in love with you. No, one of the biggest perks of having a flourishing brand is that it makes growing and expanding your business SO MUCH EASIER, because it gives you a solid brand foundation to build from.
Once you've invested in your sturdy visual brand foundation, it takes so much less effort to spin off sub-brands for specific courses, products, or programs – the lifeblood of growing your business. You’ll have ready to use fonts, colors, graphics, and an overall style and vibe that will eliminate some of the friction that comes with growing your business.
Having a Solid Brand Foundation Will Make Your Life & Your Marketing Easier
Having an established brand streamlines and simplifies the process of creating sub-brands, and this can have a profound influence on your overall brand image. It’s a beautiful self-perpetuating cycle!
I will ALWAYS shout from the soapbox of “having a distinctive brand serves as a huge trust signal to your audience.” When clients are familiar with your brand and have had positive interactions with it in the past, they're more likely to engage with new offerings that come from under that same umbrella.
Think of it like this: if you've had a delightful experience with a particular brand of shoes, you’re going to be more inclined to try out their new line of accessories because you already trust the quality, aesthetic, brand ethos, or whatever else they bring to the table that just clicks with you.
When you've already invested time and effort into building a memorable brand, extending that brand into new territories becomes a natural progression. Whether you're
- diversifying your product line,
- expanding into new markets,
- or launching innovative programs,
your established brand serves as a rock-solid foundation upon which to build and grow. No reinvention of the wheel needed!
Good branding has a way of perpetuating itself.
A strong brand identity provides a clear framework for developing sub-brands that are visually cohesive and aligned with your overarching brand message.
You already have consistent visual elements–logos, color schemes, typography, vibes–that can work in harmony to create a sense of unity across all your brand's offerings, making it easier for clients to recognize and associate new offerings with the trust they feel for your brand.
Real-Life Example: BS-Free Business
Our client BS-Free Business is as prolific as they come, but every new venture they bring forth speaks the same language as the powerhouse brand at the center of it all because it incorporates the same design elements and visual language we built for them. And their dedicated following travels to each new offering with them as a result.
Leveraging your brand’s visual elements and reputation can give a significant boost to the credibility of your sub-brands.
Real-Life Example: Stripcraft’s Quick-N-Dirty Weekends
Suppose you're launching a new course or program under your main brand, like our saucy client Stripcraft did with their sweet spot investment-level Quick-N-Dirty Weekends retreats. In a case like this, potential clients are more likely to perceive the new enterprise as valuable and trustworthy simply because it's associated with a brand they already know and love. The Quick-N-Dirty Weekends sub-brand is set up to be a wild success because it’s an offshoot of the tried and true Stripcraft brand – which is so trust-inducing that clients strip down to their skivvies for it. Some testimonials just write themselves!
Sub-brands give you the agility you need to keep your brand alive and relevant in a changing world.
What if your brand hits a wall with your current service offerings and needs to pivot to new solutions to keep growing? You don’t have to start over from scratch with your branding – you can create a sub-brand that will take all the good stuff from your existing brand and transplant it into the new frontier you’re venturing into.
Real-Life Example: VAS Exclusive
VAS Exclusive is a sub-brand we created for our client All About Juicing when she wanted to move from solely offering information to also selling tangible physical items. Bringing products like bottles, straws, and lids under the umbrella of her trusted juicing resources tapped into a new stream of revenue for the brand. With a strong brand at the core and people who already loved the brand supporting it, All About Juicing was able to diversify and thrive thanks to its sub-brand.
Having dedicated sub-brands helps your brand walk the delicate knife-edge of being both for everyone but also for a very specific someone.
Real-Life Example: Page & Podium Press
Our publishing and ghostwriting client Page & Podium Press offers three distinct services: Memoir Method, Editor in Your Pocket, and Write for You – which allows the brand to connect with potential clients who are in different phases of their author journeys. The overarching brand sets the tone of trust and capacity for clients, and then the sub-brands capture their interest by letting them specifically identify their needs and see themselves in the services offered.
You don’t HAVE to turn all your services into sub-brands to land the clientele you want, but it makes it a whole lot easier – and it can be fun having all those beautiful logos and wordmarks to use in your marketing!
Creating Sub-Brands is Easier Than You Think
If all of this sounds like a lot, remember this: starting a sub-brand is kind of like having a second kid.
You already have the first-time jitters and missteps out of the way.
You’ve honed your parenting style.
Your strong established branding is ready and waiting to do the hard work of setting the tone for your communications, guiding your marketing efforts, and shaping your social media strategy.
If you have a sub-brand idea just waiting to be born, set your nerves aside and know it’s not going to be as difficult as the first time around – because the hard work you put into building your core brand is already behind you!
Future-Proof Your Business with Strong Branding
So, yes — establishing a solid visual branding experience is super important, not just for the here and now but also as a means of future-proofing your business and giving it the foundation it needs to be able to grow. Capitalizing on the trust, consistency, and credibility that comes with that strong brand identity allows you to seamlessly and effectively expand your brand's reach when the time comes to expand your horizons.
Whether it’s a new podcast, course, service, or retreat, it’s easier than you think to create sub-brands for these specific offerings when you’re starting with beautiful, effective visual branding that sets your business apart from the rest.
At Perennial, we can bring your sub-brand idea to life in just one week with our VIP Week service.
We’re not talking about just making a little logo – this is building a genuine sub-brand and fleshing out all the design assets that entails, and yes, doing it in a mere week’s time. That’s because working with brands that were built to be robust from the get-go makes us incredibly nimble when it’s time to spin things off. Here are just a few of the sub-brands we’ve been able to bring to life for VIP Week clients:
- We created Page & Podium’s new Editor in Your Pocket sub-brand, including a sub-brand wordmark, sales page, and all supporting graphics. This sub-brand carves out a perfectly defined nook of the brand’s service offerings.
- Using her existing branding, we designed an effective lead magnet quiz for Get Your Goal with Pahla B, including website graphics and beautiful PDFs for quiz results – all in Pahla’s signature style. A sub-brand can be as small as a lead magnet and still give you trajectory-changing results!
- We rebranded the Make Marketing Suck Less podcast for the Communication Rebel brand by giving the Perennial polish to existing brand elements and building an entire package of logos, episode graphics, and Canva templates for them to use.
Ready to grow in a beautiful new direction?
Keep reading, friend!
