building awareness among potential customers. That being said, you need to craft strategies that convey your product information in simple and clear messages. Here’s how brand marketing works, its benefits, and how to implement a practical approach to make your brand memorable.
Table of Contents
- Identify Your Target Audience
- Know Your Competitors
- Create Brand Guidelines
- Develop brand advocacy messages
- Plan your brand marketing campaign
- What’s the Difference Between Branding and Marketing?
- Brand Marketing Defined
- Tips and Best Practices
- The Power of Graphic Design in Marketing
These five steps can help you design and implement a solid brand marketing strategy.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Researching your target audience is crucial in creating a brand marketing strategy. This involves identifying your prospective customers’ demographic factors, values, beliefs, and preferences. To effectively define your customer persona, consider these key aspects:
- Demographics: Age, marital status, location, occupation, education.
- Lifestyle: Daily routines, interests, hobbies, shopping preferences.
- Psychographics: Values, motivations, needs, concerns.
- Purchase Behavior: Recent purchases, preferred shopping channels, decision-making process.
2. Know Your Competitors
Just like researching your audience, it’s important to identify your competitors. Determine their brand positioning or how they market themselves. You can also note their design elements, brand voice, and key personality traits. This research is relatively straightforward. Browse competitor websites and social media accounts, review marketing materials to learn about their brand strategy.
3. Create Brand Guidelines
Once you understand your brand and audience, you need to thoroughly understand their needs and preferences. This knowledge should then be translated into a comprehensive brand style guide. This guide emcompasses logos, color palettes, typography, and brand voice. It ensures consistent and impactful communication across all marketing channels, ultimately strengthening brand recognition.
4. Develop brand advocacy messages
Advocacy messages are key points that are consistently communicated across all brand marketing channelsFor instance, a health food company might advocate for mindful eating and healthy living. Then, they’ll integrate these messages into their product packaging, social media campaigns, and in-store nutrition guides.
In brainstorming for advocacy messages, you must consider them as the bridge between core values and the needs of customers. To do this, ask yourself why your target audience should choose your company. Track their answers and organize your findings into three to six brief statements of your company’s value.
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5. Plan your brand marketing campaign
The final step is about setting goals, establishing timelines, selecting marketing channels and techniques, determining who will handle the creation and distribution of marketing materials. In addition, you must plan how you will track performance.
Popular brand marketing tactics include content, social media, and email marketing. You can also support your efforts through paid advertising like running an ad campaign or hiring a brand ambassador.
What’s the Difference Between Branding and Marketing?
To understand the concept better, we first need to compare branding and marketing and which comes first.
Marketing is how you build awareness of your brand and its products or services and drive sales. Branding is how you tell who your business is for and what it is all about. Branding is the core identity and message of your brand, while marketing is the activities and strategies used to promote and sell your products.
Branding is a primary building block of your marketing strategy. It means branding should always come first. For example, if your brand were Nike, your branding would be the iconic “Swoosh” logo and the empowering “Just Do It” slogan.
Your marketing would be everything you do to inspire and motivate your customers to buy and wear your athletic gear, like your TV commercials featuring famous athletes, social media campaigns showcasing user-generated content, and sponsored sports events. This illustrates the distinction between branding and marketing.
Brand Marketing Defined
Brand marketing is about creating a unique and compelling identity for a business. It aims to build strong connections and loyalty with its intended audience. Instead of highlighting an individual product or service, this process aims to raise awareness about your brand as a whole and drive interest in the core values, purpose, and messages that define your brand.
The channels for a brand marketing strategy are the same as those that businesses use for product marketing. These can include paid search advertising, digital advertising, and social advertising. An effective strategy involves using different channels together to create a campaign that reaches a broad audience.
Brand marketing is a long-term investment that distinguishes your offerings and cultivates strong customer loyalty. This overarching strategy should guide every advertising campaign.
Tips and Best Practices
Here are tips and things to avoid in implementing your brand marketing efforts.
Lead with values
Customers trust companies that share their values. Brands respond by integrating values-based messaging into their marketing strategies. Follow this strategy by finding authentic values reflected in your business and incorporate them into your brand message.
Explore various channels and tactics
Diversifying channels and tactics drives optimum results. Utilize organic marketing and paid marketing efforts while exploring different channels. For example, you can curate some social media posts to share your brand story. Share how your products are developed and use social media to widen reach and boost engagement.
Develop a brand story
Brand storytelling details how and when the company started, discovered a problem, and offered a solution. This technique encourages more prospective customers, making your brand recognizable and memorable.
Align your strategy with your product offerings
Don’t forget your product or service. For instance, a company specializing in high-end athletic wear should focus on claims related to performance, durability, and style rather than promising to ‘cure insomnia.’ Similarly, a local bakery should avoid grandiose claims like ‘revolutionizing the food industry’ and instead emphasize the quality of its ingredients, the craftsmanship of its pastries, and the unique flavors it offers.
The Power of Graphic Design in Marketing
An effective brand marketing strategy demonstrates professionalism and attention to detail. A cohesive marketing material design improves your brand’s reputation and assures your customers they choose the right product or service.
Consistent, high-quality graphic design is crucial throughout the branding process. From initial strategy to ongoing marketing efforts, ensure your visuals are unique, detailed, and accurately represent your brand identity.
If creating design strategies and assets becomes challenging, try Penji. Outsourcing graphic design offers access to diverse skills, resources, and specialized tools. Check out our work for inspiration, or watch a demo to start a creative project with us.
