Ways to Build Great Brand Marketing
Great marketing is all about delivering the right message to the right person — at the right time. To do this, you need to build a strong brand and have a solid strategy in place to get the word out to your target audience. Here are five key steps for building brand marketing that truly resonates with your audience and helps your brand thrive.
1. Do your research
Before you can hop on social media and start making sales, you need to do a bit of research and planning to understand your target audience and the types of messages they respond to.
You can start by analyzing your competition. How are your competitors positioning their products? What do their brands look like? What social media outlets are they using, and what type of content are they posting?
Don’t forget to check their reviews on Google and other consumer sites. Reviews for your competitors will give you a great sense of who might be looking for a brand like yours, what their pain points are, and where your competitors are succeeding and failng. By positioning your brand to address the specific concerns your competition isn’t responding to, you gain a competitive edge.
Once you’ve started to identify your target market and their mindset, the research doesn’t stop. Don’t hesitate to conduct polls, focus groups, and studies to help you and your marketing team truly understand the mindset of your target audiences. Research is never truly “done,” either. Once your brand has launched and built a steady customer base, don’t hesitate to ask customers to complete satisfaction surveys or write reviews, so you can better understand their needs and shift your offerings and brand positioning.
2. Make your brand stand out
With the insights you’ve gained from research, you’re ready to start building a brand that stands out. Carefully consider the visual elements of your brand — colors, fonts, and visual style all have a significant impact on consumer behavior. In fact, about 71% of consumers say packaging design influences their purchasing decisions. In some specific sectors, such as wine, as many as 80% of consumers base their purchasing decision entirely on the appearance of the label.
3. Use social media to promote your brand
Social media is one of the most effective ways to build a consistent brand presence that your prospective customers will begin to recognize and trust. Social media is a simple, effective way for consumers to discover your brand and learn how your offerings address their pain points.
Do your best to stay on top of trends and understand what each platform’s current best practices include. Timeliness is the name of the game with social media, and posting trends months (or even days) too late can cause your brand to get lost in the noise or make you appear irrelevant and out of touch to your target audience.
It’s important to remember that your brand doesn’t need to be on every social media channel to connect with your audience. For instance, if you’re a cosmetics brand targeting Gen Z and younger millennial consumers, you won’t likely find an audience in a purchasing mindset on LinkedIn. By the same token, if your brand is focused in the B2B, technology, or financial space, it’s highly unlikely you’ll get any kind of ROI from TikTok content creation.
Adding in the right mix of paid social media can also help you expand your reach. For a fairly reasonable paid social investment, you can run short campaigns with specific messages to carefully targeted audiences. On most platforms, you can even build “lookalike” audiences who share demographic and behavioral attributes with your current followers and customers.
4. Find the right words to describe your brand
While the look and feel of your brand are critical to helping you stand out, you also need to carefully consider the message you’re delivering and the specific words you’re using to deliver it. Consider not only messaging about the hard facts of your brand and its offerings, but also the voice you need to deliver those facts.
Your brand voice might be playful and cheeky if you’re trying to reach a millennial audience, while Gen Z tends to like a bolder, in-your-face approach. Older generations tend to lean toward brands that are more straightforward and reassuring in their messaging, offering confidence and approachability.
As you’re figuring out your voice, don’t be afraid to do a bit of A/B testing on messaging, especially in a paid social format. By looking at the analytics on a post or an ad that’s identical aside from a single variable, you’ll be able to easily understand what messages and tones are working, and which should be cut from your brand presence.
5. Rewrite your sales pitch to suit your audience
Even within a single audience demographic, no two people will respond to the same message. Your sales pitch should come in a few different formats, with careful consideration of the various stages of the buyer’s journey.
When a customer learns about your brand for the first time, you need a solid “hook” to entice them to learn more. As they consider your product or service, they’ll need more persuasive messaging. And as they enter the decision phase, they’ll need specific messaging that assures them they’re making the right decision.
Tailor your brand messaging with not only demographic and behavioral needs of your audience in mind, but also these specific psychological situations. Ask yourself, “If I were my target persona, what would I need to make a purchase?”
Ask the experts
If you’re a business owner, sales manager, or marketing director, you have a lot on your plate. Building a brand strategy is no easy feat, and you’ll likely need some assistance and a sounding board to bounce ideas and get advice. Solvable creations has helped brands of all sizes thrive, and we’re here to help you build a brand that makes an impact. Get in touch to see exactly how we can help your brand reach the next level.