The importance of branding and strategic marketing for businesses

Successful branding can be the determining factor in whether a business succeeds or not. Good branding takes time to plan and put into action. If you are tempted to take shortcuts, you may lose your opportunity to make the best impression on your potential customers. Clear communication when reaching out to any specific group of potential customers is critical.

Here are some of the key points you need to consider to create a successful branding strategy and marketing campaign, no matter what size your company may be.

Consistency is critical to building brand name recognition

Brands need to stick with a consistent message when advertising on social media, in print form, online ads, and beyond. Even if the demographic targeted by the advertising is different, the overall message and branding must stick to the same core values and information.

Consistency is what leads companies to design memorable logos and mottos. Even using the same color patterns can be crucial in getting your company recognized more widely. Consider major corporations like McDonald’s and Target for a moment. These brands have been incredibly consistent with their marketing, and as a result, practically everyone from toddlers to adults can see their logo with no name and say what store it represents.

Companies with consistent branding practices may grow exceptionally fast. A logo itself can become a status symbol in popular culture. Consider the brands that were popular with your friends in high school and how much money you were willing to pay to wear the jeans or t-shirt with the designer logo or label on it.

Flexibility in advertising to reflect current market trends

Marketing campaigns need to happen regularly and reflect current market trends. Companies must pay attention to public sentiment and their competitors’ actions. Using commonly available data is one useful method. However, it may be worth collecting your own data throughout the year so you can always have a good idea of what your customers think. This allows you to see when needs and concerns change so you can adjust your marketing campaign accordingly. At the same time, it is important to consider what brought your customers to you in the first place. Making too dramatic changes or using a marketing campaign targeting just a tiny percentage of your current customers can lead to a backlash that costs you more customers than you might gain from trying to target a smaller demographic.

Current events and public sentiment have a huge impact on buying practices. For example, if the economy is not doing so well or if you know from data that your main customers are suffering more than some other groups from a financial standpoint, then you may want to concentrate on marketing your lower-priced products and services or at the very least, showing customers why your products are still great value and make their life easier.

In brands that are long established, it may be effective to mention the founding values and show the path the company has taken over time. This can appeal to older customers but also show younger customers or those yet to try your brand that they can trust it to offer a quality product and reliable performance.

Purpose of your brand

While it may seem apparent to you what your brand is all about, it is invaluable for management and marketing teams to nail down your brand’s true purpose and values. While everyone knows you want your brand to make money, people must have a good reason to spend that money. For example, the purpose behind Walmart is to offer convenient one-stop shopping and low prices by selling at a high volume.

If your company makes slip-on shoes, then your purpose may be to offer shoes that help people with disabilities or busy lifestyles.

Having a clearly defined purpose makes it easier to target your marketing campaigns to specific demographics that will help your brand grow through word-of-mouth advertising and great online reviews that show how your product specifically helped solve a problem they had.

Define your vision and goals

All companies need long-term plans and goals before making a major marketing effort. While it is impossible to foresee how your company will perform, you should make a realistic growth plan and try to exceed it.

Setting realistic milestones and goals is much better than setting your goals too high. There is a major sense of achievement when you set and achieve goals. It is terrible for company morale if you consistently set goals too high for yourself and your team and then do not meet them. This can actually have a huge impact on the success of your company.

Of course, it should always be clear that exceeding the basic goals is something to strive for but meeting them is an admirable achievement that will get the company where everyone wants it to be.

Team members must share the vision of the company. This means hiring people with a good idea of what type of message you are trying to send your customers. Employees who are passionate about your vision will work harder to ensure success.

Having a vision helps your company stay on track because they have clearly defined long-term goals to consider. When making business decisions, the vision helps because you can ask if something is going to help your company achieve goals or if it is too risky.

Consider the values you want your company to portray

Whether you are trying to appeal to specific demographics or the general public, it is important to home in on your company’s values to potential customers.

If a company is well established but looking to make some changes, like expanding into different markets, then it must consider the original values of the company and how it can make any new values mesh with the old so it can maintain its loyal customers while attracting new ones.

Marketing strategies must remain true to the company’s values, or customers may go elsewhere. If a company seems all over the place with its values, it is hard for a customer to form a lasting connection that leads to one or more purchases.

While marketing strategies can defer somewhat, those core values are key to a consistent image. For example, a marketing team may have a similar ad in multiple publications, but the ads may feature different models or backgrounds to appeal more to the specific demographic, even if the overall message is the same. This helps people identify better with a brand. For example, if you are a retiree reading AARP, then naturally you are going to identify more with an ad featuring people 55 years and older than one with teenagers.

Make as strong an effort as possible to know everything about your target customer

You may think you know your target customer really well, but there is more that you can learn that will help your business sell more products and services.

One advantage businesses have is access to a lot of industry-related data. It is much easier to conduct private polls and send out questionnaires than it used to be. Focus groups can be conducted entirely online, making it possible to reach out to a lot of people at a low cost. Some businesses provide small incentives to collect data, while others just cast a wide net and see who will respond. Adding some type of reward may seem like it would skew opinions. Still, since these surveys and focus groups are done entirely online, there is not as much intimidation factor involved, so data tends to be very useful.

Collecting and analyzing a lot of data for patterns can help a business better understand what its customers want and identify emerging trends. Analyzing data can save time and money by preventing bad decisions, such as developing a product that doesn’t have as strong a market as previously believed.

Companies often hire outside data analyst firms to analyze data for them. In contrast, larger companies have full-time data analysts to help them stay on top of current market trends and stay ahead of the competition.

Analyze the market and find a unique niche whenever possible

There are a lot of businesses out there in just about every industry. This means that competition can be very high. Finding a gap that needs to be filled in a given industry is invaluable and might just be the ticket to success. Tackling the needs that no one else seems to be tackling or that no one has realized are needs, can help a company break into an industry that, to an outsider, might seem saturated.

The answer may be as simple as a specific need exists in a certain region or area. For example, if your company develops real estate and rents out or sells apartments and houses, you need to see where there seems to be high demand for more housing or, even better, where land prices are very affordable. Still, there is reason to believe that demand for housing and overall values will increase significantly in the near future.

Make sure that your communications to your customer are clear and easy to understand

It is natural to want to say a lot in your marketing materials, but the truth is that you need to stick to the main points and not make your marketing so complicated that it is hard to understand or your main message gets buried in too many details.

If you want to gain great communication skills and help a company you believe in to reach the top, you should consider an SBU online degree in communications. A master’s degree in communications can be completed entirely online. Even if you dream of starting your own company one day, it is a degree worth considering since it will allow you to play a stronger role in creating an effective marketing campaign. Learning to utilize strategic storytelling is just one example of the valuable skills you will gain by earning your degree.

Plan out how your potential customers will learn about your brand and products

All the previous steps are about gathering information and establishing goals. Now it is time to create a strong marketing campaign. Here are a few of the tools you need to consider utilizing.

• Social media

While ads on social media are a great way to reach a lot of people, you need to consider what platforms you want to use. Facebook and Twitter are popular choices, but other social media platforms, such as Tik Tok are quite popular. With social media advertising, you can set demographic parameters that help your ads reach the desired demographic. With Facebook ads, you can adjust campaigns to reach more people. A lot of start-ups like that you can set an ad budget and see how many potential customers you might reach over a week. Of course, the more you are willing to spend, the wider your reach, but there is nothing wrong with starting with a modest budget and hoping that others help you spread the word.

• Working with influencers

Influencers can be a major help when you are trying to reach a specific audience and want to get a lot of attention without spending much money. Of course, there are some influencers that ask for more monetary compensation than others. Still, there are plenty that will help you promote products and services simply in exchange for free products or services that they can review and use to create content for their social media channels and pages.

Some companies offer influencers a commission for any products sold as a result of their promotion. This is a useful tool because it gives influencers incentive to work hard to show others how great your brand is. The bonus for your company is that if the promotion lacks the performance you thought it would, you have not taken a loss beyond offering some free products.

Just remember to get some clarification on what influencers are willing to do. For example, you need to be clear when contacting them if you expect a full product review or if you want them to post a set number of pictures of them using your products.

• Print media

While many companies do not use a lot of print media for advertising, it is still a tool that should be considered for some marketing campaigns. The decision to use print media largely depends on who you are trying to reach and your budget. While print publications know they have to offer competitive advertising rates, print ads are almost always more expensive for the number of people you will reach than online advertising. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. For example, if you are a large corporation, you may be able to advertise in a print publication that reaches hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.

• Network TV or online streaming services

A lot of people pay not to see ads when they subscribe to online streaming services such as YouTube Premium, Netflix, and Hulu, so the reach of any ads through these major services may be quite limited. YouTube is probably the exception. Network TV ads are fairly expensive, but if your company is large or wants to reach a specific audience, then television ads may work for you if your budget allows. Ads on local television stations are great for reaching a regional demographic.

• Online video or pay-per-click ads

Most people are familiar with online video ads. These ads often play in the corner when you visit some websites. They are common on news websites, for example. Pay-per-click ads are some of the more popular ways to do ad campaigns online. Google ads is one of the more popular services. With this feature, you set a budget and pay per person that clicks on your ad. This type of targeted advertising has great potential and helps your company make money around the clock. The beauty is that you only pay when a customer actually clicks on the ad and goes to your site.

Conclusion

Creating a detailed branding strategy lays the foundation for a series of successful marketing campaigns. Gaining widespread recognition takes time, and it is impossible to do without ensuring that your company stands out from the competition. Creating a memorable logo, catchphrase, or motto, and knowing your demographic well is key to gaining a cult following of loyal customers that will help you grow your brand even more.

Setting reasonable goals for growth and profits is essential to keeping morale high as your company works towards improving its recognition and market share. When there is a sense of achievement and progress, your employees will strive for even more success.