If you want people to buy your products, you market your products. But if you want them to remember your brand, you market your brand. With brand recognition comes sales because your brand is often top of mind when people want to buy the types of products you sell. This is why some of the world’s biggest brands focus on building an effective brand marketing strategy.
Not sure what brand marketing is and why you need it? This post serves as a complete guide to brand marketing strategies and how to create one for your brand. Let’s get into it.
The Complete Guide to Creating a Brand Marketing Strategy:
What is Brand Marketing?
Brand marketing is the practice of raising brand awareness and boosting brand reputation to inspire purchases and garner loyalty. It involves creating a positive brand perception and establishing your brand as a leader in the market.
Like regular marketing, brand marketing may be carried out through various channels using a combination of strategies. What makes it different is that you’re not simply marketing the features and benefits of a product, but you’re trying to tell stories and create communities that would make people want to buy the product because of your brand.
Think of how Nike establishes itself as a brand that inspires the athlete in everyone. The brand doesn’t solely focus on promoting its products. Instead, its brand marketing strategy is built around people who serve as an inspiration to others. Nike works closely with inspirational athletes across a number of disciplines and uses succinct messaging to motivate people.
Why You Need a Brand Marketing Strategy
So what’s the big deal about creating a brand marketing strategy? Here are a few ways that your brand can benefit from having an established brand marketing strategy.
Improve Brand Recognition
One of the most direct benefits of a brand marketing strategy is the ability to improve brand recognition. Your strategy would involve crafting a brand identity through colors, themes, and logos that people would instantly associate with your brand. This makes it easier to set your brand apart from the competition and remain top of mind during buying decisions.
For example, McDonald’s is instantly recognizable through its iconic golden arches. You don’t have to spell out the brand name to know that the following French fries are from McDonald’s.
Source: mcdonalds.com
Establish Credibility
A strong brand marketing strategy helps to establish your brand credibility in the market. It allows you to position your brand as one that customers can trust to provide high-quality products and services. This gives consumers the confidence to choose your products or services over those of your competition.
For example, HP is one of the most trusted brands in the world with a trust score of 21,395. In addition to consistently producing reliable tech products that people can count on, the brand has a strong promotion strategy in place to support its brand marketing efforts. HP has been able to establish credibility through positive media coverage in the form of press releases and product reviews.
Earn Customer Loyalty
Brand marketing involves building a community around your brand. Combined with high-quality, dependable products, this community will keep customers coming back to you. As such, you can nurture customer loyalty when you strategically market your brand in a way that will form a strong connection with your audience.
Think of Apple’s loyal community of users who flock to the brand’s stores whenever a new product is launched. Each year as a new iPhone model gets released, Apple stores see hundreds of people lining up to get the latest model.
Attract High-Quality Talent
A strong brand attracts strong candidates for job openings. In fact, 84% of organizations believe that having a well-maintained employer brand allows them to hire quality talent. So your brand marketing efforts eventually help you make quality hires, which eventually contribute to your bottom line.
For example, the brand marketing strategy for Electronic Arts (EA) extends to LinkedIn, where they regularly share content featuring employees and interns. Besides celebrating career milestones for their employees, they have interns providing testimonials about the company’s internship program. This strengthens the company’s employer brand and enables them to attract high-quality talent for their internship program and job openings.
5 Steps to Successful Brand Marketing
Now that you know how a brand marketing strategy can benefit your business, it’s time to find out how you can build one. Follow these steps to build a successful brand marketing strategy.
Step 1: Identify Your Purpose
Start with a clear idea of the purpose behind your brand marketing strategy. This is necessary to give your strategy more direction and shape different aspects of your branding efforts. Why does your brand exist? What makes it different from the competition?
While every business wants to ultimately make money, there should be other factors driving your brand. Whether this may be sustainability or ethicality, it should play a key role in every aspect of your brand marketing strategy.
For example, TOMS focuses its branding on being an organization that contributes to the greater good. As such, the brand invests one-third of its profits for grassroots good such as funding access to mental health resources.
The brand also maintains transparency about these efforts and even goes so far as to highlight how it measures up to other leading brands in driving sustainable change. By having a clear purpose and following through with it, TOMS has managed to build a brand that’s known for its ethical and transparent practices.
Source: toms.com
Step 2: Craft a Compelling Brand Story
From the inception of Apple in Steve Jobs’ parents’ garage to the humble beginnings of KFC’s legendary Colonel Sanders – there’s a good story behind some of the world’s most recognizable brands. Similarly, you need to find the story that makes your brand. This is the story that will connect your brand with your target audience and set you apart from the competition.
Crafting your brand story requires answering several questions related to the business. These include:
- How was the business founded?
- What led you to build the business?
- Were there any noteworthy events leading to its inception?
- What problems and pain points does your brand address?
- What values and principles are followed in the organization?
- How do you develop each product or service?
- What makes you different from other businesses selling similar products or services?
Based on your answers to the above questions, you’ll be able to come up with a rough idea of your brand story. Polish this to develop a coherent narrative that can be used consistently across all your brand channels and marketing collateral. If you’re getting stuck with this, consider working with brand storytelling agencies to craft a compelling brand story.
The Bose website has a dedicated page detailing the brand’s complete history and timeline of inception. The brand’s story begins with the birth of its founder, Amar Gopal Bose whose dissatisfaction with the sound quality of existing stereo systems led him to research and innovate. This story aligns with the brand’s desire to always “dream up something better than what (they) created yesterday.”
Source: bose.com
Step 3: Maintain Consistency
Once your brand story and purpose have been developed, it’s time to promote it consistently across every single touchpoint and channel. This would involve developing your brand identity and laying out all the details that will define your brand including everything from its tone of voice and messaging to its overall look and feel. Based on this, you can then come up with marketing messages and assets that truly align with your brand.
This is important so you can have a cohesive messaging and visual identity to use consistently in your brand marketing efforts. The goal is to ensure that every message and every marketing asset you share adds to your brand and strengthens brand association. In other words, you want to make sure that people can associate your brand with specific messages and branding elements.
You’ll need to use your branding across your brand’s website, landing pages, product pages, social media channels, storefronts, and packaging. For example, Aesop is a luxury cosmetics brand characterized by timeless and sophisticated branding elements. The brand’s focus on sustainability and simplicity is exhibited in its minimalist packaging designs and artistic storefronts.
Source: aesop.com
Similarly, these design elements extend to the brand’s website and social media accounts. You can see the Aesop Instagram grid dominated by clean lines and subdued hues, closely aligning with the brand’s visual identity.
Source: instagram.com
Beyond this, your brand marketing strategy should also extend to your marketing and advertising campaigns. Every new ad creative you produce and every campaign you execute should closely align with the brand’s visual identity and messaging. If your brand identity is centered around minimalism, for example, you may use minimalistic product close-ups with serene music to promote new products.
Step 4: Build a Community around Your Brand
Your brand marketing strategy should focus on building a community of loyal customers. When you create a community around your brand, you build an emotional connection with your audience. It makes them feel like they’re a part of something bigger, which creates a sense of belonging and caters to their desire to build relationships.
As a result of this, people are more likely to have a strong affinity with your brand. It connects them with like-minded individuals and enables them to engage in activities and conversations they enjoy. This allows you to foster a strong bond with them and earn their loyalty.
Start by naming your brand community so members can identify themselves with a specific name. Then nurture this community through social media conversations, forums, and loyalty programs. You could even host challenges and create more opportunities for people to get invested in the community through participation.
For example, Canva has several communities for different types of users. While the Canva Design Community is suitable for all users, you can also find a community of Canva Verified Experts, Creators, Education Creators, and more. The brand encourages members of these communities to participate by sharing designs, engaging in discussions, and receiving feedback.
Canva also regularly engages its community of users through monthly design challenges. The brand encourages users to create unique designs based on a chosen theme and share it with the hashtag #CanvaDesignChallenge.
Source: canva.com
Step 5: Get Your Employees Involved
Employees are the face of your brand. As such, they play a vital role in your brand marketing strategy. How your employees interact with your customers and how they represent your brand across various touchpoints and social media channels will influence how people perceive your brand.
If a brand presents itself as warm and fun, people are naturally going to expect a similar experience when interacting with the business. Make sure that employees are well-versed in how to communicate on behalf of your brand so you can ensure consistency in your brand communications. Whether this requires being friendly and bubbly or calm and professional depends on the brand voice that you’ve defined earlier.
Many social media management tools now offer a saved replies feature to help you achieve this type of consistency. This would allow employees to make use of pre-created replies for common queries and situations that have been crafted to match your brand personality and voice. With minor tweaks, they can ensure that the responses are in tune with how you want to present your brand.
Source: support.sproutsocial.com
Additionally, you could feature employees prominently to humanize your brand and strengthen your brand marketing efforts. This may include sharing employee stories and showcasing the team that makes the brand. That way, people can authentically connect with your brand through the people representing it.
Sprout Social regularly creates fun and relatable content featuring their employees. This helps the company to connect with their target audience of social media managers while strengthening their brand identity.
Build a Strong Brand with a Brand Marketing Strategy
Brand marketing isn’t an option but a necessity for businesses that want to build a strong and memorable brand. Make the most of the steps and examples outlined above to effectively create your brand marketing strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a brand strategy in marketing?
In marketing, a brand strategy is the framework for presenting your brand to customers so as to set your business apart from the competition.
What is a brand marketing strategy?
A brand marketing strategy is a long-term plan that lays out the tactics, processes, and channels to be used for improving your brand perception in the market.
How do you write a brand marketing strategy?
You write your brand marketing strategy by identifying your target audience and establishing your unique brand position. You then need to craft a compelling message and develop a brand identity to be used consistently across various touchpoints.
What are the four types of branding strategies?
The four types of branding strategies are product or range extension, co-branding, brand extension, and brand licensing.
What is a brand story?
A brand story is the story of your business, whether it’s about the history, inception, mission, values. This story helps people connect with your brand on a more emotional level.
