Understanding Brand Marketing and How to Get it Right Featured.jpg

Understanding Brand Marketing and How to Get it Right

These days, there are a lot of ways you could be approaching marketing. Lots of businesses take the approach of marketing their products or services directly, but more and more are seeing the huge benefits that come from marketing their brand.

Brand marketing is just that, marketing that’s centered around your brand. And, it can be beneficial to businesses in many significant ways.

The benefits of brand marketing:

  • It creates customer recognition - When customers start to recognize your brand, it goes a long way toward also building trust in your brand.
  • Gain an edge on your competition - Your brand helps to instantly set you apart from your competition, and the more people recognize your brand, the more competitive it will be.
  • It leads to customer loyalty - When customers feel like they really know your brand, it makes them feel more loyal to it. Loyalty is a powerful thing, because it creates lifelong customers.
  • Get a better marketing ROI - The more people start to recognize your brand, the more effective all of your marketing campaigns will be, because consumers will be more willing to give you a chance.

5 Tips for Marketing Your Brand

#1. Define what your brand is.

It may seem obvious that you need to define exactly what your brand is, but the reality is that many brands fail to do this. Failing to define your brand hinders a brand’s ability to set itself apart and prevents it from being able to establish a consistent voice. But, understanding why it’s important to define your brand and know how to do it are not one in the same.

What to ask yourself when defining your brand:

  • Why was your business created? - In other words, why do you do what you do? Building a small business isn’t easy, and if you’re like most business owners, you have a good reason for putting blood, sweat, and tears into doing what you do.
  • What is your story? - People connect with stories in a way that’s both real and memorable. Defining your brand is just as much about where you’ve come from as where you’re going.
  • What problems do you solve for your customers? - In order to define your brand, you need to figure out how you bring value to your customers’ lives and what problems you help solve for them.

#2. Monitor how people see your brand.

How you see your brand matters a whole lot less than how consumers see it. You can spend all of the time and money in the world working to make your brand say one thing, but if your customers are saying something else, at the end of the day, that will be what your brand is known for.

That’s why knowing what people are saying about your brand and how they see your brand is vital to your brand marketing campaign. There are many things you can do to move your brand forward, and the only way to know which strategy works best for you is to know exactly where you’re starting from.

There are lots of ways that you can monitor your brand online. Use a tool to help you monitor social media mentions of your brand. Google your brand from time to time to find out what people are seeing when they search for your brand online. Most importantly, read every review you get across every review site you’re listed on.

#3. Know and target your audience.

John Lydgate, a poet and monk, once said, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

The fact of the matter is that you can’t please everyone, and you shouldn’t try. If you do, you’ll end up tying yourself in knots, and it’s only going to make building and marketing your brand all the more challenging. You shouldn’t try to be the best brand for everyone. Instead, focus on trying to be the best brand to those who matter most to you.

It’s critical to know who your target audience is, because they are the ones you really need to worry about pleasing. So think about where your target audience lives, how old they are, and what they care about when marketing your brand.

#4. Be consistent.

Branding is all about consistency. Consistency is what reinforces the message you are trying to send over and over and over again, and it’s a key part of any successful brand’s message.

For the sake of your brand, it’s important that you’re consistent in everything you do. The voice of your brand — in other words, the tone you use when you get your message out — has to be consistent. The quality of your products or services has to be consistent. The kind of customer service you offer has to be consistent. The value you provide for your customers has to be consistent.

#5. Provide value for your customers.

Whether you’re a retailer or a service provider, whatever you do should be about providing some kind of value for your customers. Providing value doesn’t necessarily mean offering top-of-the-line products or services. Think of value brands, like Ikea or Target. People don’t shop these brands because their products are the fanciest or last the longest. They shop brands like these to get more for their money.

When figuring out what value your brand has to offer, think about what sets you apart from your competition, and how the value you offer differs from that of your competition. It’s also important to ask yourself if what you're charging for your products or services is fair for the value you’re bringing to the table.

Online, all of your brand marketing efforts, from social media marketing to online reputation management, come back to your website. Whether someone finds you in Google search results or on Facebook, they’re going to end up coming back to your website.

Your website shouldn’t be your brand’s only online presence, but it’s your brand’s main hub online. Make sure that it reflects your brand, and if it doesn’t, build a business website that does with the Websites 360® website builder.

Start building an effective website for your brand today.