As an important sub-type of higher education market, institutional market is an arena developed by universities to vie for reputation, status and resources. As the main competitor, universities need to strengthen their branding to send out signals about quality and characteristics and gain competitive advantage. To build university brands, we should consider the branding mechanism and logical relationship of internal brands and external brands as a whole. From the perspective of internal brand, the positive correlation among effective internal market orientation, faculty organizational identity and faculty brand support behavior is the key to the formation of internal brand in universities. From the perspective of external brands, universities should take the initiative to interact with other organizations in the higher education system and social system, so as to tap and make full use of social capital embedded in social networks and strength their brand by enhancing identity and social values. For both internal and external brands, importance should be attached to signal transmission and feedback mechanism to ensure the benign interaction between internal and external relations. Generally speaking, the internal and external brand of a university are essentially “two sides of the same thing.” A university’s branding process is a process of value co-creation between the university and its key internal and external stakeholders, but there are differences in the value co-creation behaviors or methods between the university and its internal and external stakeholders.