When I initially started in brand marketing, I was overwhelmed by the numerous strategies available. Everyone seemed to have a different perspective on what worked best, and I was constantly trying new things without a clear approach. But, with time, I discovered several strategies that truly worked. In this article, I’ll discuss ten brand marketing methods that produce results. Whether you’re an experienced marketer or just getting started, these strategies will help you develop your brand and reach true success.
What is a Brand?
A brand is how a corporation distinguishes itself from competing brands. A brand can be considered as the company’s personality, expressed through an identifying mark, logo, name, tagline, voice, and tone. Some of the oldest and most famous brand names in automotive, toys, and food and beverage have been around for decades, with some exceeding a century of constant and identifiable branding.
Brands are classified into three types: company/corporation brands, product brands, and personal brands. The brand marketing standards apply regardless of kind. Now that we know what a brand is, let’s look at how to develop a brand marketing strategy.
What is Brand Marketing?
Brand marketing is the process of establishing and developing a relationship between a brand and its customers. Rather than focusing on a single product or service, brand marketing promotes the entire brand, using the products and services as proof points to support the brand’s promise. The purpose of brand marketing is to increase the value of a brand and, by extension, the value of the company.
The channels accessible for a brand marketing strategy are the same ones that businesses can use for product marketing, such as digital, social, and paid search advertising. An excellent strategy is to combine multiple channels to produce a media mix that reaches a large audience. Brand marketers, for example, may utilize a brand advertising strategy in conjunction with email and content marketing initiatives to increase brand awareness and attract potential customers across numerous digital marketing channels. However, before we can decide on the best messaging for the relevant audiences in these locations, we must first examine brand qualities.
Why is Branding Important?
There are various reasons why establishing your branding is an important step for your organization.
#1. Branding sets you apart
Your branding is what others think of you, thus it stands to reason that, when done well, it can be utilized to make customers think more highly of you than your competitors. Customers prefer to become devoted to brands rather than things, so creating and maintaining an emotional connection is critical.
#2. Branding can mobilize people
Defining your values and beliefs is an essential component of any successful branding campaign, and it can make both employees and customers feel like they are a part of something unique. Whether your beliefs are centered on sustainability, exceptional value for money, or cutting-edge performance, raising brand awareness around those ideals can enthrall almost everyone – both internally and externally.
#3. Branding drives value
Consider one of the world’s largest brands. Now ponder about purchasing them. Is the price you’d have to pay consistent with the price of all their actual assets? Probably not, because their market value is far more than the sum of their parts; it is also the total of their brand identity, brand awareness, and overall brand value, as viewed by the general public.
What is the Difference Between Branding and Marketing?
Here’s a very basic way to look at it:
Branding is your home. Marketing is the hammer you use to build it.
Your branding is how you represent yourself as a company, and it is the image you cultivate. Branding is how you want people to see you, and it is critical, thus branding should be done before developing any marketing strategies.
Marketing, on the other hand, refers to all of the strategies you use to spread the word, such as video, written material, ads, PPC advertising, and so on. This can include spreading the word about your products, brand, or both.
Step-by-Step Guide for Effective Brand Marketing
Here’s a quick guide to developing and implementing effective brand marketing methods that will help your brand stand out and connect with your target audience.
#1. Create a strong brand identity
Brand identity is the collection of all the pieces that a firm generates to project the correct image to its target audience. This comprises your logo, color scheme, typography, voice, and design aesthetic. A strong brand identity helps your company stand out from the competition and develops consumer loyalty.
How to Create a Strong Brand Identity
Begin by outlining your brand’s key values, goals, and vision. This foundational work is essential for developing a consistent and engaging brand identity that connects with your target audience.
When I originally started developing my brand identity, I prioritized ideals such as innovation and transparency. This influenced the development of my logo, website design, and even the tone of my social media posts.
#2. Utilize content marketing
Content marketing helps you create authority in your field while also providing value to your target audience. It also helps your SEO, resulting in increased organic visitors to your website.
Developing a Content Strategy
- Identify Your Audience’s Needs: Conduct research to determine the type of material your audience is seeking for.
- Plan Your Content: Make a content calendar to organize your postings and ensure consistency.
- Measure Your Success: Use analytics tools to monitor the performance of your material and alter your strategy as appropriate.
Implementing a content marketing strategy centered on answering frequent industry queries resulted in a 50% increase in organic traffic to my site.
#3. Leverage social media marketing
Determine which social media networks your target audience frequents. Concentrate your efforts on these sites to increase your visibility and interaction.
Creating Engaging Content
Post a variety of material kinds, including blog entries, videos, infographics, and user-contributed content. Engage your audience by swiftly replying to comments and communications. By continuously publishing valuable information and connecting with my LinkedIn followers, I increased engagement by 40% and significantly expanded my professional network.
#4. Invest in SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical for improving your website’s visibility on search engines such as Google. A well-optimized website draws more organic visitors, which leads to increased conversions.
Key SEO Strategies
- Keyword Research: Determine which keywords your target audience searches for and include them in your article.
- On-Page SEO: Make sure your website’s pages have relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and alt text.
- Backlinks: Create high-quality backlinks to boost your website’s authority and ranking.
Example: After boosting my site’s SEO, I observed a 30% increase in organic traffic in three months.
#5. Implement email marketing
Email marketing allows you to build relationships with your target audience by delivering important material directly to their inbox. It’s a highly efficient technique to keep your brand top of mind and increase conversions.
Creating an Effective Email Campaign
- Segment Your Audience: Break down your email list into groups based on demographics, behavior, and preferences.
- Personalize Your Emails: Customize your content for each group to boost interaction.
- Tracking Performance: Use email marketing solutions to monitor open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
#6. Create high-quality visual content.
Visual material (pictures, videos, and infographics) is more engaging and shareable than text alone. It improves the effectiveness with which you transmit your brand’s message and can considerably boost your marketing efforts.
Techniques for Creating Visual Content
- Professional Design: Purchase professional design tools or engage a designer to produce high-quality visuals.
- Consistency: Check that your visual content matches your brand’s identity.
- Variety: Use a variety of visual formats to keep your audience interested.
After introducing more video content into my marketing strategy, I noticed a 20% boost in social media interaction.
#7. Engage with influencers
Influencers have earned the trust of their followers, transforming them into powerful brand advocates. Working with influencers can greatly increase your brand’s visibility and trustworthiness.
How to Select the Right Influencers
- Relevance: Select influencers with an audience that matches your target market.
- Engagement: Seek influencers with strong engagement rates.
- Authenticity: Collaborate with influencers who truly believe in your brand.
Working with influencers in my field resulted in a 30% rise in brand awareness and a big spike in revenue.
#8. Use retargeting ads
Retargeting advertising let you target customers who have previously visited your website but did not convert. This keeps your brand top of mind and encourages potential customers to return and finish their transaction.
Setting Up Retargeting Campaigns
- Install Tracking Pixels: Use Facebook Pixel or Google Analytics to track visitors.
- Make Compelling advertising: Create advertising that remind users of the advantages of your products or services.
- Monitor and Optimize: Conduct regular reviews of your campaign’s performance and make any necessary changes.
Our retargeting campaigns achieved a 70% better conversion rate than standard display advertisements.
#9. Optimize for mobile
With an increasing number of mobile users, making your website mobile-friendly is critical. Responsive design, quick load times, and simple navigation can enhance the mobile user experience and increase conversions.
Major Mobile Optimization Strategies
- Responsive Design: Ensure that your website adapts to various screen widths.
- Fast Load Times: To improve site speed, optimize images and employ a content delivery network (CDN).
- Easy Navigation: Simplify your site’s navigation for mobile visitors.
When we optimized our site for mobile, we experienced a 30% boost in mobile conversions.
#10. Conduct A/B Testing
A/B testing allows you to compare two versions of a webpage, email, or advertisement to see which performs better. Testing various aspects such as headlines, graphics, call-to-actions, and layouts can help you improve your marketing results.
How to Perform A/B Testing
- Identify Variables: Determine the elements you want to test.
- Run the Test: Divide your audience into two groups and display each one a different version.
- Analyze Results: Using analytics tools, identify which version performed best.
Example: A/B testing our landing pages resulted in a 20% boost in conversions.
Trends in Brand Marketing
The move from product marketing to brand marketing is becoming more widespread as the benefit of branding is recognized. When customers emotionally connect with a brand, they are more inclined to try a new product from that firm; when a customer believes a brand has a strong purpose, they are 4.5 times more likely to suggest the brand to relatives and friends.2
Here are four major trends in brand marketing to keep an eye out for:
- Using programmatic advertising – the use of technology to buy and sell digital ads – to achieve greater efficiency, more customized reach, transparency, and real-time measurement and optimization for brand campaigns
- Incorporating video marketing to more effectively tell a brand’s story than static imagery and copy alone. Video is useful for driving brand awareness and for reinforcing messaging with established customers. In fact, according to a Wyzowl study, 69 percent of customers surveyed said they’d prefer to learn about a new product or service via video over other mediums like text-based articles or infographics.
- Taking an omnichannel approach to marketing a brand across channels such as digital, over-the-top (OTT), social media, company blog, email, and more to optimize performance.
Supporting brand advertising with content marketing to reinforce a brand story. Tools like Amazon Posts and Amazon Follow enable consumer connections. According to Colleen Aubrey, Vice President of Performance Advertising at Amazon, “Once a customer ‘follows’ a brand, they gain immediate visibility into updates coming from that brand, including new product launches, deals, new Posts, and when a brand streams via Amazon Live—making sure the customer doesn’t miss a beat.”
Related: Enhancing Content Experience: Strategies for Deeper User Engagement
Download our Brand Marketing Campaign Planning Template to help you organize and implement your strategies more successfully. This template includes sections for setting your goals, identifying your target audience, creating your content, and assessing your progress.
Brand Marketing Campaign Planning Template
- Define your brand’s values, goals, and vision to distinguish yourself and generate loyalty.
- Consistently create great material to develop authority and drive organic traffic to your website.
- Concentrate on channels where your target audience is engaged and share engaging consistent material.
- Increase your site’s exposure and make it mobile-friendly to provide a better user experience.
- Collaborate with influencers to boost credibility, and utilize retargeting advertisements to convert returning visitors.
Conclusion
Improving your brand’s marketing demands a diverse approach that incorporates multiple strategies to produce a unified and effective plan. By applying these strategies, you may increase your brand’s visibility, engagement, and conversions. In your experience, which brand marketing approaches have proven to be the most effective?
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