If you’re a budding entrepreneur still trying to learn the ropes of the trade, you can learn a great deal from how the world’s most successful companies promote their brands. They would go to great lengths to try to keep these supposedly trade secrets for themselves. Fortunately, some of these secrets are now out in the open for all up and coming business-savvy individuals to learn from.

These techniques are widely used by different brands such as technology giants and direct marketing agencies and encompass a wide part of the business spectrum. These secret tricks include sending emails containing custom sales pitches to their target clients, as well as maintaining excellent traits such as keeping true to promises and making honest and factual marketing claims.

As it is, there are wrong ways of marketing one’s brand, and then there are proper methods of getting the message across to a company’s clientele to enjoy recognition, success, and respect.

Here are five of the best-kept marketing secrets employed by the world’s top brands:

1. Have a striking and recognizable brand logo and name

Have you ever wondered why the world’s top companies invest heavily in their branding, specifically their logo and brand name? It’s because all of them recognize the power of a visually appealing logo and an easily recognizable name.

In fact, a lot of big-ticket companies spend big money to go as far as rebrand themselves to better capture their target market’s attention. For example, Symantec reportedly spent a staggering $1.2 billion to announce their rebranding and acquisition of VeriSign. Meanwhile, British Petroleum was reported to have paid a whopping $210 million back in 2000 for its logo—the second most expensive logo in history.

So if you want instant recall for your brand, investing in a great name and logo is a tested way to do it. It doesn’t have to be as expensive as the ones paid for by the top brands, just as long as your branding is striking and easy to recall enough.

2. Offer great value to the target market

The best brands with the greatest financial success and highest respect among their target market are known to deliver great value. Apple, for example, offers market-leading tech products that consistently command admiration and sales supremacy. IKEA, on the other hand, delivers affordable yet high-quality products to buyers. In short, great value can be in terms of pricing or quality, preferably both.

Knowing this, you have to conduct price analysis to know how much your competition is. You should also feel your target consumers’ pulse to know what they want and need and then strive to deliver the best value proposition possible. It’s a tough job to do but one that would surely be worth all your efforts.

3. Establish connections and partnerships

In much the same way as no man is an island, no brand could expect to achieve great market success without establishing and maintaining some sort of partnerships and linkages with other market players.

While this idea may seem counter-intuitive, it actually is an excellent marketing strategy. Among the most commercially successful co-branding initiatives are the Apple-Hermes Apple Watch, the BMW-Montblanc luxury car luggage, and the IKEA-Dreamworks Lattjo product line.

You can adopt the same technique and try to find a business that is willing to collaborate with you to launch a new product or service. The key is to find a collaborator that adds value proposition to your brand and make it function or look better in the eyes of your target clientele.

4. Mind your community

Just recently, beverage giant Pepsi sent shock waves across the marketing and sporting communities when the company suddenly pulled out of its Super Bowl partnerships after 23 long years. Pepsi did this to focus its advertising efforts on engaging more aggressively with its online community.

The move was just among the many similar shifts in advertising focus among big-ticket brands such as Google, Skype, Facebook, and Amazon. By shying away from traditional advertising methods and mindset, these brands are behaving like rebels and challenging the long-held status quo in the marketing industry.

You can also be a maverick of sort and follow a similar path, especially if you want to establish a really strong relationship with your community. This method is an excellent way of not only making your community talk about your brand but also getting their trust and loyalty in the process.

With such groundbreaking techniques and secrets to marketing and advertisement, you can expect a great level of success for your brand. Success, truly, is sweeter when you work hard for it.