Table of Contents
What is Brand Marketing?
Brand marketing is establishing and growing a relationship between a brand and consumers. Instead of highlighting an individual product or service, brand marketing promotes the entire brand, using the products and services as proof points supporting the brand promise. The objective of brand marketing is to create the value of a brand and, as a result, the company’s value.
The channels available for a brand marketing strategy are the same channels that companies can use for product marketing activities, such as digital, social, and paid search advertising. A good plan is to use different media to create a media mix. that reaches a wide audience. For example, brand marketers can use a brand advertising strategy supplemented with email and content marketing to drive brand awareness and reach potential customers across various digital spaces. But when it comes to deciding the right messages for the right audiences in these spaces, we need to consider brand attributes first.
What is a Brand?
A brand is how a company differentiates itself from similar brands. You can think of a brand as the company’s personality, which is communicated through an identifying brand, logo, name, slogan, voice and tone. Some of the oldest and most recognized brands in the automotive, toy, and food and beverage industries have been around for decades, and some have more than a century of consistent and recognizable brand development.
There are three main types of trademarks: company or corporate trademarks, product trademarks, and personal trademarks, which apply to natural persons. The rules of brand marketing apply, regardless of type. Now that we know what a brand is let’s talk about how to create a brand marketing strategy.
What are the Attributes of the Brand?
Just as people have unique personality traits, brands also have unique attributes. Attributes are identifiers that consumers see as part of a brand. These can include the name and tagline, the colours, or even the music or sounds often associated with the brand. Furthermore, attributes can be the feeling that a brand evokes. Example “feel” attributes include authentic, innovative, trustworthy, honest, or transparent.
What is Brand Equity?
Brand equity is what a company’s brand is worth or a measure of consumer perceptions of the brand. Strong brand equity has to do with how well consumers know the brand, their preference for it over others, their level of connection with the brand, and their level of loyalty to it. Strong brand equity opens doors for brands to innovate and grow their businesses with the support of their loyal consumer base.
Brand equity is measured by comparing brand recognition, loyalty, preference, and financial statistics.
- Brand awareness determines how many consumers recognize a brand and is measured through surveys and focus groups, social listening tools, and web and search traffic insights.
- Its loyalty is measured using insights into purchasing behavior, such as repeat purchase behaviour and time between purchases.
- Preference is measured through insights such as purchase intent statistics and surveys.
- Financial statistics relate to increased sales as a result of brand marketing campaigns.
To create strong brand equity, it is important to establish a strong relationship between the brand and the consumer.
What is a Relationship Between Brand and Consumer?
Brand-consumer relationship, also called consumer-brand or brand relationship, is how well a brand and consumers are connected. Is it a strong or weak connection? Is it a positive or negative connection? Are consumers functionally connected to the brand or emotionally involved with it? The best brand connections are strong, positive, and emotionally grounded. These connections help turn consumers from one-time shoppers to lifelong brand advocates.
Why is Brand Development Important?
Brand building is perhaps more important than ever as marketplaces become more saturated and it becomes harder to make genuine connections with consumers. Branding allows companies to tell their unique stories and change perception by giving customers something to believe in. Arouse interest and invite customers to discover, learn and establish a special relationship with your brand. Branding is about what a company stands for more than specs and features: who it is at its core. Branding is about making consumers feel good about supporting a company and making an emotional connection.
Create a Brand Strategy
A brand strategy is a roadmap that companies follow to develop their brand. A well-defined brand strategy is essential to creating a strong brand. Every brand strategy should include the following elements.
Research
A company’s branding strategy should be based on research describing the competitive landscape and how the brand addresses a unique need. It helps the brand set realistic growth goals and understand how similar brands position themselves.
Goals and Objectives
Goals and objectives include measurable brand and marketing statistics and the overall brand objective. What is the brand promise? What are the experiences consumers can expect with each brand interaction? Working from there and answering these questions first will help businesses define who they are and what they serve consumers for.
Audience Definition
Every brand and marketing strategy must include clearly defined audiences based on internal and external information. Develop personas (fictional representations of ideal consumers) that include demographic and behavioral data to help inform the brand’s tone of voice, media buying, and strategy for reaching the right audiences.
Create a brand identity
When it comes to branding, identity means all the design elements that work together to make up the brand’s visual representation. It includes the name, logo, tagline, colour palette, fonts, and image style. A clear and consistent brand identity contributes to greater recognition.
Define Messages and Positioning
What messages will the brand use to reinforce the brand promise? How will the brand be positioned about other similar ones. Defines internal and external brand messages, with an internal focus on communicating with employees and stakeholders and an outward focus on communicating with consumers. Be sure also to define the brand’s mission, vision statement, values, and positioning statement: what the brand does, for whom, and how it delivers on its brand promise. Done right, these elements of the brand story narrative will linger in customers’ minds much longer than the memory of the individual products they purchased.
Develop Brand Guidelines
The brand guidelines are the comprehensive scheme of how and how not to use the brand elements to guarantee cohesion in all axes. Brand guidelines explain brand voice and tone, highlight image style, include a content style guide, and outline proper logo and typography usage. Brand guidelines are a critical piece of branding and your marketing strategy because they allow companies to implement. A large brand while everyone uses the same toolkit. It also includes the Brand Asset Library, where marketers can obtain authoritative brand assets.
Implementation Schedule
The brand marketing strategy should include an implementation schedule, including details on when elements such as a complimentary web presence and supporting digital advertising campaign will be launched. Remember that if it’s a rebrand, everything from email signatures to social media to newsletter templates to signage needs to be updated as well.
Brand Measurement
It is important to include detailed statistics and how a company will monitor and measure the brand’s success both in the short and long term. It measures brand satisfaction through the Net Promoter Score, which measures customer loyalty and enthusiasm; customer satisfaction score; brand recognition and awareness; brand relevance, and differentiation. To help with measurement, Amazon Ads’ brand new customer insights can help advertisers identify strategies that can drive efficient customer acquisition and business growth on Amazon. According to Akama Davies, Director of Global Solutions and Innovation at Xaxis, “Brand marketing needs robust and accountable statistics. Using insights can make all of your branding activity more measurable, accountable and integrated.” 1
Three Things to Remember in Brand Marketing
Brand marketing can be overwhelming for both new and established brands. The following are three things marketers need to remember regarding brand marketing.
- Remember that branding and marketing are different. A company’s brand is its personality; marketing is the company’s way of sharing that personality with consumers.
- Invest time in research or measurement. It isn’t easy to differentiate the brand without diligence to know how similar brands are position. And without proper marketing attribution, it’s hard to tell whether or not a brand has made noticeable changes. Spending time on both research and measurement will help define your brand strategy and success.
- Show the attributes of the brand (instead of saying them). A company may want to position its brand as trustworthy, but it should not be reliable. Instead, it would help if you showed trustworthiness through dependable products and customer service.
Examples Of Effective Brand Marketing Strategies
The most effective brands have a clearly defined purpose and evoke a feeling when consumers interact with them. They differentiate themselves from similar brands and take a personal approach to brand marketing. So that consumers don’t feel like they’re being sold something but feel like they’re part of a community. Here are three effective brand marketing strategies that brands use to grow their brand with Amazon Ads.
- Use brand and product advertising together: Some brands that work with Amazon Ads use Sponsored Brands and Stores together with Sponsored Products to connect with consumers who buy the types of products they sell and keyword targeting to reach audiences. With interest and intention that they buy products like yours.
- Drive engagement and sales with an Amazon-branded web presence: According to internal research, on average, businesses that link a Sponsored Brands campaign to their Store have up to a 17 per cent better return on investment. Compared with those that connect the movement to the product page. 4 That’s because Stores offer a branded presence directly on Amazon, curated by business to tell their brand story through video, lifestyle, product images, and content.
- Optimize brand marketing campaigns with analytics: MidWest Homes for Pets used Amazon Attribution to gain a unique view of advertising initiatives on and off Amazon, which helped them determine which strategies were driving the most activity shopping. By optimizing profitability, the company could generate more sales and improve ROAS (return on ad spend).
Conclusion
Brand marketing is all about emphasizing a brand’s strengths to give it long-term staying power. It focuses on strengthening relationships between brands and consumers. Like Blogger outreach service involves publishing content on relevant blogs for natural brand mentions. When done most effectively, it is use in conjunction with marketing activities to establish more distinctive attributes that help foster promotion and brand loyalty.