Did you know that:
- Consistently presented brands enjoy more visibility than brands that hardly showcase themselves
- And 77% of customers make purchase decisions based on a brand name, not the product’s name
These statistics echo the need for companies to invest in brand marketing. Often, companies are caught up in the nitty-gritty of building a brand and overlook the need to market it.
When they launch a marketing campaign, it’s to promote a newly launched product or service, forgetting that a brand needs as much publicity as its product and services. If you need to learn how to go about it, this article is for you. You’ll find out:
- What brand marketing is
- Why brand marketing is important
- How to build a brand marketing strategy
What is Brand Marketing?
Brand marketing is the process of promoting a company’s products or services to raise awareness about the brand as a whole.
It helps communicate the value a brand brings to its target audience. Brand marketing also strengthens a brand’s presence and reputation in the market.
Note that the phrase denotes two concepts- branding and marketing. So, which happens before the other?
While marketing creates awareness about a brand and its products, branding has to do with how your audience perceives you.
As such, branding informs marketing.
KFC, for example, is known for its tasty chicken (branding). Since this reputation has earned it a loyal following, it rarely launches campaigns to promote other offerings on its menu(marketing).
During brand marketing, marketers use the same channels they use to market products and services. However, they will use different channels to reach a wide audience.
They could leverage email, content, and social media marketing platforms to increase brand awareness while reaching potential customers on various digital platforms.
Why Do Brand Marketing
Brand marketing helps you to attract repeat customers. The campaign creates a buzz around the brand and creates the feeling that it’s here to stay.
For example, moms trust Dettol to keep germs off surfaces, clothes, and wounds. The company has made a significant investment in educating its audience about the benefits of using its products, which has made Dettol the most trusted antiseptic soap worldwide.
If you get it right, future marketing campaigns will be easier to execute. Your audience will also be more receptive to new products you may introduce to your catalog.
How to Create a Brand Marketing Strategy
A successful brand marketing campaign begins with developing a strategy. Here’s how to go about it:
Step 1: Define Your Goals
Knowing your goals from the onset guides you throughout the process and helps you evaluate performance. It also keeps you focused while making it easy to evaluate the strategy’s effectiveness over time.
In this scenario, the goal is to increase brand awareness. Thus, metrics like brand engagement, email subscribers, website visitors, etc., can help determine whether you’ve achieved your goal.
Step 2: Perform a Competitor Analysis
Next, study your competitors to understand their strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats.
You learn how they have established their brand, product offerings, marketing strategies, brand identity, and position. Sometimes, buying your competitor’s products can help you understand what makes them different.
The information obtained helps you to understand your uniqueness and refine your brand message and positioning to gain a competitive advantage.
Step 3: Define Your Unique Selling Proposition
What makes your business or products stand out? This explains your unique selling proposition, which helps you curate a clear brand message and position that relates to your audience.
These attributes also tell people about your brand across all marketing channels. It’s this consistency that builds trust and customer loyalty.
For example, KFC’s unique selling proposition is the unique blend of herbs and spices that make its chicken taste better than chicken served in similar fast food eateries.
Step 4: Study Your Target Audience
Understanding your target audience is critical in any brand marketing campaign.
It helps you define their age, preferences, behaviour, income level, and pain points so your brand positioning and message resonate with them. This information also helps you identify the most suitable channels to market your brand.
Step 5: Curate the Brand Message
A brand message is concise and compelling enough to attract customers. It summarizes the brand’s core benefits and communicates its value proposition. For example, KFC’s value propositions are:
- Affordability
- Quick service
- Variety of flavours
- Delicious fried chicken
This message is consistent across all its marketing channels and addresses the customer’s needs.
Defining the brand message and incorporating it into your brand marketing efforts communicates the brand’s value to your audience and differentiates you from your competitors.
Step 6: Identify Suitable Marketing Channels
You want to focus your marketing efforts on channels your target audience is more likely to use. The study about your target audience should give you a clue about which marketing channels to use.
However, it would also help you understand the benefits and limitations of each channel and how well they fit into the whole marketing strategy.
Step 7: Develop the Strategy
Now, you can develop a strategy highlighting the specific actions to take to market your brand. You must include essential elements like the brand’s message, value proposition, and unique selling points to communicate the brand’s value. Also, identify the resources required to execute the strategy, e.g., people responsible for marketing the brand on social media, launching outdoor marketing campaigns, etc.
Step 8: Analyze Performance
After launching the marketing campaign, analyze its performance to determine if it’s working. The KPIs set at the beginning of the campaign help assess its effectiveness.
A brand whose goal is to increase awareness, for example, will look at the number of brand mentions on social media platforms. If the metrics show a negative trajectory, it might be time to change the marketing strategy.
Conclusion
These eight steps should help you build a solid brand marketing strategy. Remember, the goal here is to promote your brand as a whole, not your products or services. The strategy should communicate the brand’s value, position, and message and resonate with your audience’s needs and preferences. Be sure to track its performance to determine its effectiveness in meeting the desired goal.
