Brand Marketing Essentials: The Winning Formula

So many business owners want to jump straight into advertising because it presents the best opportunity to get immediate returns. However, before they decide to do so, they should consider this fact: 81% of consumers need to trust a brand before they’ll purchase anything from it. So, without brand marketing, even the most compelling ad copy and creative design may not yield the results that you want.

Beyond getting the customer’s loyalty (and, therefore, sales), a solid branding marketing strategy will also help you stand out. Given how important this is, what does it take to do it right? That’s what we’ll cover in this article. Keep reading and be prepared to dominate in your field with brand marketing!

What is Brand Marketing?

Brand marketing is the means by which a company promotes its brand, which is the identity that it uses to communicate within and outside the organization.

So, what is brand strategy able to do for you? The answer is clear:

Improve awareness of your business and its offers;
Increase the trustworthiness of your brand;
Generate loyalty from your target audience.

Of all the changes that you may make in your product line or even how the company operates, brand marketing is the only thing that should remain consistent. It’s your opportunity to tell everyone what the company is about and what it represents.

How is It Different From Product Marketing?

Product marketing is nothing more than advertising. Although it is an important part of paving the path for long-term growth, it’s not focused on the overall brand. So, here’s the main difference: while the former is focused on promoting a product, our topic of interest is developing the brand itself. While campaigns for a product can last weeks or months at most, brand marketing is never-ending. Plus, elevating the perception of a brand boosts how all its products are viewed. This is not a feature that you can enjoy with product marketing.

Essential Elements for a Winning Brand Marketing Strategy

Having a brand strategy is important to ensure that everything you do is contributing to your ultimate goal. More importantly, the last thing you want to do is to inadvertently do something that takes you further from it. With a well-informed brand advertising strategy, you can prevent this from happening. Make the most out of your resources and knowledge.

It’s not just having a clear branding definition in marketing. More than knowing what the target of your efforts should be, you should know what you need to do to achieve your brand advertising-related goals. We’ll talk about the elements of any successful strategy for marketing a brand in the following subsections.

Clear Brand Identity

A strong brand identity is the center of all brand marketing strategies. It encompasses all that you want your company to be and to represent. This includes:

Values: For example, does the company believe in sustainability? That should be part of brand marketing as well.
Personality: Since the brand is the personification of the company, it should also have its own personality. This could be formal, friendly or anything in between that will make its voice distinct.
Overall mission: A part of brand marketing is also communicating what your company is all about. What do you want your mission to be?

All these elements help make you more recognizable not only to your target market but also to people who may want to invest in or work for your company.

Audience Insights and Segmentation

Product marketing and branding may not be the same, but they have one thing in common: both can benefit from audience insights and segmentation. This is something you do in parts:

Audience insights: This is perhaps one of the most important brand marketing activities because it’s something that you’ll need to use for practically every element discussed here. This is about gathering as much data about your audience as you can. Then, to truly benefit your brand marketing efforts, organize all your data and identify patterns and trends.
Audience segmentation: Knowing what you know now about your audience, how can you segment them? Doing so is important to ensure that your brand campaign strategy captures their attention.

Consistent Brand Messaging Across Channels

Remember, one of your goals is to establish what the company is. Set a unified image for your brand development marketing so you don’t send mixed signals to your target market. According to the Rule of 7, a customer must encounter the brand messaging seven times before they make a decision. For your brand marketing to be effective, it should be easily recognizable as from your company. This includes having consistency in the following:

The colors used;
The voice used in communication channels;
The images and graphic designs used;
People you feature in communication and promotional materials.

With the best brands, marketing efforts incorporate branding in some form, even in everyday communications.

Value Proposition and Differentiation

The value proposition is the value that you deliver to your customers. In brand marketing, you’re making a promise of what they will get if they purchase your products or services. For this, you need to refer back to your audience insights as the value proposition needs to be aligned with their needs. Another element of brand marketing is differentiation. You should make it clear what separates the company (and, therefore, its products) from other competitors. After all, creating a distinct and widely known identity is what we want to achieve with brand marketing. Meaning that failing to stand out may mean your efforts are in vain.

Customer Experience and Engagement

The experience and interactions with the company can propel or prevent the success of your brand-based marketing. So, what should you pay attention to?

Quality of your products and services: If the products are high quality, then that’s what the company will be associated with. For brand marketing, even the product packaging should reflect what the brand is about.
Interaction with customer support: Addressing consumer issues promptly helps with brand marketing because it frames the company as a reliable option.
Personalization: A highly relevant and personalized experience is more likely to generate positive responses and help make brand marketing a success.

Effective Use of Digital Marketing Channels

Today, it’s almost impossible for a business to scale beyond a certain point without using digital channels. So, for your brand marketing, you’ll need to go online, too. There are a range of options that you can use to strengthen your brand. These include:

Social media marketing: Social media platforms are great for reaching your target market in channels where they expect to engage with your brand.
Content marketing: In terms of brand marketing, producing quality and authoritative content can help your audience see your company as an expert in the industry.
Email marketing: This is a great way to nurture relationships with an engaged audience. Brand marketing using email is great for allowing leads to be part of your journey as your brand evolves.

Leveraging Data and Analytics

Whether we’re talking about how to market a brand or a product, you definitely can’t do without data and analytics. These help you make informed decisions, which allows you to get the best possible results from your brand marketing campaigns. Here, you need to look into the usual metrics that you consider for a regular advertisement, such as impressions and customer insights. However, it’s important to remember that brand marketing are part of your long-term efforts Therefore, you may not see results right away. So, don’t feel discouraged if things don’t change overnight!

Creation of Advocates

Here’s a secret that a lot of marketers tend to ignore: you don’t have to do all the work for the brand-promoting efforts. Brand advocates are not only huge fans of your products or services, but they also actively let people know how awesome you are. So, how do you make this a part of your brand marketing strategy?

Create a community: This creates a sense of exclusivity as they’re now all part of your inner circle.
Provide an incentive: As part of your brand promotion, you can hold a contest where they share why they keep on buying your products.
Just keep being awesome: You don’t always have to incentivize them. If they’re that impressed with their experience with your products, they’ll gladly tell everyone else about them.

What Are the Benefits of Developing Strategies for Branding?

The business exists not only to serve a clientele but also to generate an income. So, shouldn’t you be focusing on these factors instead of brand marketing? Especially when you have limited resources, it can feel like it makes the most sense to focus on endeavors that can generate income immediately. However, having a brand marketing strategy is too important to be done away with. So, we would like to answer that question with another question: Why not both? The benefits of having a solid brand development plan may help change your mind.

Brand Marketing Makes the Company More Memorable

One of your primary goals is to make sure that your brand is memorable. And in a world where people are constantly inundated with ads, how will your target audience remember you? So, if you want to truly make your mark in your industry, you can’t skip this step for long-term growth. The more people that know about the company, the better. This way, your products and/or services will be at the top of their minds should they need them. The best brands marketing today know that being an afterthought is very costly.

It Helps Develop Trust

Imagine you have a choice between two beverages: Coca-Cola or Brand X. And yes, for the purpose of this thought exercise, that’s what it’s called. You’re probably going with the well-known brand because you trust it more. That’s what brand marketing delivers. It lets your brand speak for the quality of the products or services that you’re offering. Building trust takes time, so your brand marketing not only has to be consistent but also persistent. By ensuring that your strategy has all the elements we discussed in the previous section, your target market will be more likely to trust you.

The Company Gets to Enjoy a Higher Brand Equity

What if you could offer the exact same products for a higher price? That’s what brand marketing can do for you by improving your brand equity. If the perceived value for the products attached to the brand is high, they will also be able to command a higher price. The returns from brand marketing may not be immediate, but it surely is worth it! Unless something very wrong happens, you should be able to maintain that elevated level of brand equity moving forward.

Trends to Consider When Formulating Branding and Marketing Strategies

Even though there are timeless truths (like making sure that you base your strategy on research) that you should always follow, it’s necessary to keep up with trends. Having a brand marketing strategy that reflects the conventions today ensures that your efforts stand out in all the right ways. Another important thing to note is how your competitors are following these trends. As you’re vying for the same market, you need to take up space where they are! But no, we’re not saying that it’s time for a completely new brand marketing plan. Just incorporate these factors to appeal to today’s markets.

Personalization and Hyper-Targeting

Today, users expect to be catered to at a personal level. While you don’t need to have a dedicated person following them around as part of your brand marketing, it helps to make use of the audience information you collect. Part of it will come from your research. However, the more useful data will be from past and present brand marketing campaigns. From product recommendations to regular content, it’s important to ensure that the materials that you create for brand marketing will help foster a stronger connection between the person reading it and your company.

Social Responsibility

Younger consumers tend to be more socially conscious. And as their purchasing power increases, so does the emphasis on social responsibility in your brand marketing. Here are a few ways that this may be demonstrated:

Dedicating a portion of your profits to a cause;
Posting about social issues that may be close to the hearts of your target market;
Promoting transparency in your operations;
Supporting eco-friendly practices.

Every action that is done on behalf of the company contributes to brand marketing. Someone is always looking, even if the communication isn’t directed at them.

Digital-First Strategies

Radio and print ads had their era. However, it’s time to move forward with digital-first strategies for your brand marketing. Unless you’re a mom-and-pop who is dedicated to only serving the local community, you’ll need to think about how to best incorporate digital platforms into your brand marketing efforts. This will also entail the creation of various digital assets to increase your online visibility. So, why is this important? Nowadays, people tend to look on the internet in search of solutions to their problems. Therefore, your brand marketing needs to exist where they are. If traditional methods are still relevant for you, there’s no need to let go of them altogether. Instead, revisit what will be the most impactful allocation of your resources.

Influencer and User-Generated Content

Online brand marketing nowadays isn’t just about opening a two-way communication between the company and its clientele. Users can communicate with each other. This can work amazingly for your brand marketing, as 92% of consumers trust what their friends say. So, even if one person within a circle of friends hypes up your product, it can help boost the stature of the brand. It is for the same reason that influencer content works. To boost your brand marketing, just choose influencers whose audience AND values align with what the company represents.

Experiential Marketing

People don’t need to buy your products or services first to experience the brand. After all, why would they purchase if the trust isn’t there yet? That’s why some brands go the extra mile with their brand marketing. Through the use of experiential techniques in the strategy, they’re able to create new ways to engage their target market. These can include:

Pop-up events;
Interactive websites;
AR experiences.

The goal here is for the consumers to associate the brand with positive emotions. Just remember, it doesn’t have to be high-tech. Even interactive quizzes related to a pop culture trend can have the same effect when done correctly.

Brand Marketing Tips for Creating a Stronghold in Your Industry

A good way to start your brand marketing endeavors will be to refer back to the necessary elements stated in our previous section. Treating it as a checklist will help you cover the basics. Beyond that, here are a few things that we recommend for your brand marketing strategy.

Don’t be afraid to swim against the current: A brand needs to stand out, and that won’t happen if you just echo the competition. Even having a unique value can go a long way.
Leverage storytelling: The human race is a huge fan of stories. That’s why interesting news spreads like wildfire! For your brand marketing, think about how you can incorporate an interesting story for your audience.
Collaborate with complementary brands: A non-competing brand can have a similar target audience that may want to hear about your company.

Brand Marketing Examples and Case Studies from Well-Known Companies

To understand why this is all worth it, why not look at the success of some of the most recognizable brands in the world today? They didn’t command that presence on day one. With their brand marketing efforts over the years, they built sufficient brand equity for their respective markets:

Nike: Its iconic logo and “Just Do It” campaign
Tesla: With Elon Musk as its CEO, Tesla is now the most recognizable electric vehicle company on Earth.
Starbucks: A lot of its brand marketing is focused on the experience that people get in their coffee shops. They also formed a brand community through their rewards system.

These may be in different industries, but they all did something right: they knew what their audience wanted to see, and they delivered just that.

Brand and Marketing Strategy Pitfalls to Avoid

As you’ve seen in the previous section, the rewards of successful branding can go a long way. However, brand marketing is a continuous effort on your part, and it’s easy to let things slip, especially if the sales generated start to overshadow branding concerns. To secure the long-term relevance of the company, brand marketing should always be taken seriously — especially when profits are at an all-time high. After all, this indicates that people are paying attention to the company. Everything you do can have an amplified effect. So, as you implement brand marketing ideas for brands that you own, represent or work for, avoid these pitfalls.

Inconsistent Branding

Imagine if Coca-Cola bottles came in 20 colors. Unless you were the biggest fan of sugary and carbonated drinks, this failure in consistent brand marketing would surely confuse you. In the case of Coca-Cola, the goal should be for consumers to spot their bottles from a mile away. That’s why, as we mentioned earlier in the article, consistency is a crucial element of brand marketing. We don’t expect anyone to make this big of a mistake. Still, this displays the need for strong guidelines for brand marketing. As your team grows, this guarantees that everyone knows the do’s and don’ts.

Neglecting the Audience

Your audience gives the final verdict on whether the brand marketing strategy worked or not. So, even after you’ve reached a certain level, make sure to keep your target market at the center of all your efforts. After all, what works for brand marketing now may not work tomorrow. This means you need to continuously learn about your audience and their potentially changing preferences and ensure your future efforts resonate with them. Apart from your initial audience research and the data from existing campaigns, a good source of information for brand marketing is your competition. Are they communicating with a relevant market segment that you haven’t paid attention to? Your quest for information should reveal the answer to this.

Lack of Adaptability

Brand marketing is not just about continuous effort. It’s also necessary for the company to demonstrate its ability to adapt to the times! To illustrate, do you think these offensive vintage ads would get published today? Nope! But as unfortunate as it is, those probably worked before without hurting their brand marketing efforts. As an advertiser, you should be ready to embrace change. Clinging to the norm only hurts the company, especially if the existing data supports the need for a change.

Going for the Money

What’s the point of winning the battle if you’re going to lose the war? Trust us; brand marketing is an all-out war where only the winners are remembered. For some business owners and advertisers, it’s hard to balance the desire to reach profit goals and to maintain brand equity. From our experience and observations with brand marketing, it’s hard to come back once you’ve fallen out of favor. If you need to jeopardize the image of your company to secure huge financial gains, we recommend thinking twice before proceeding to do so. You may have to do even more extensive brand marketing moving forward to win any customer base that has been lost.

Failing to Create an Emotional Connection

The relationship between a company and its customer used to be transactional, but that won’t work nowadays. For brand marketing to be successful, it should build an emotional connection between the two entities. Your strategy should involve evoking positive emotions from your target market, like happiness, comfort and security. Still, brand marketing is about appealing to their humanity. It’s not enough to show that you’re the best.

What is Marketing and Brand Strategy for You? Your Chance to Make a Mark!

Sustainable success lies not only in generating sales for the business but also in ensuring the long-term relevance of the company. That’s where brand marketing comes in. With a good brand strategy, you’ll be able to reinforce the presence of the company, become trusted in the market and even elevate the perceived value of your brand. To reach your target market wherever they may be, be sure to include native ads in your efforts. Sign up on MGID to access our resources, tools and highly engaging supported ad formats. Through AI and programmatic advertising, we can quickly match your materials with a relevant audience. Let’s make your mark in the industry, shall we?