A crucial part in being a successful brand is understanding how to market your brand as a whole. Brand marketing is important in so many ways because successful brand marketing can help establish a solid brand association and communicate your brand’s identity. But let’s back it up for just a second.
What is a brand?
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines brand as “a class of goods identified by name as the product of a single firm or manufacturer” and a “public image, reputation, or identity conceived of as something to be marketed or promoted.”
Farmers and cattle owners often mark (or brand) their cattle with a hot iron with a certain logo or image as a way of telling other people who that animal belongs to. Similar to that, you want people to be able to recognize your products and know that it belongs to your brands.
What is marketing?
In simple words, marketing is the action of getting people interested in your products or services through methods like promotion and advertising.
Marketing includes aspects such as social media, advertising, public relations, and so much more. Marketing is really any method that you use to promote your brand and increase the amount of people that know about your products or services.
So that means that brand marketing is…
The long-term strategy of actions that are taken to boost your brand’s visibility and recognition. It is bigger than advertising a sale or special promotion as brand marketing is often a slow-and-steady process. Think of it like this: brand marketing is the whole big picture while everything in between creates smaller pictures to make the bigger picture.
5 Steps for Successful Brand Marketing
1. Know Your Target Audience
As a company, you have a certain group of people, known as a target audience, that you are typically aiming your products at. However, many companies simply want to target anyone and everyone that could buy their products. By understanding your target audience, you are able to utilize marketing efforts and gain the attention of those that are more inclined to purchase from your company.
Knowing your target audience goes past understanding their basic demographic information. It isn’t enough to simply know your audience’s age, race, and sex and instead you should also look at psychographics. Get to know your audience and build a marketing plan from there.
Don’t forget! You still want your strategy and plan to align with your company’s vision and values.
2. Understand Your Purpose
You and your company have a purpose. Be it to sell security systems, audio systems, or electric shades. In order for you to effectively market your company, you have to understand the purpose of your company and products. Anyone can market a product, but the best way to stand out is by marketing how your product solves a problem.
3. Be Real
Your company has a certain brand identity. Make sure that the look and tone of your campaigns matches the values and mission of your company. You have an excellent opportunity to tell the story behind your brand and integrate that into your marketing materials. Being real allows for a deeper connection with customers and showing them the people behind the products.
4. Get to Know Who You Are Up Against
Knowing your competitors is not only helpful business wise, but it is also extremely important to know your competitors on a marketing level. If you are selling similar products, you have to find a way to market your brand in a way that stands out from the competition. It would be a nightmare if you put out a campaign that is similar to something your competitors have already done.
5. Find Your Success and Study Them
It is important to take a deep look at campaigns that you have enacted and to look at what worked for them and what didn’t necessarily work. Once you are able to see what has helped lead to your success, you have an excellent opportunity to figure out how to incorporate that process into other campaigns.
Brand Marketing Examples
Brand marketing is all around us. We see brands big and small develop their brand marketing strategies so that when we see logos, slogans, or even colors, we think of that brand. Here are some examples of brands that have developed effective brand marketing.
1. Nike
Nike is just one example of a brand that has crafted their marketing strategy over time. They have launched campaigns that pull more towards the emotions in the viewer and focus more on selling a story than a product. An example of one of these ads is Nike’s Dream Crazier ad that highlights female athletes and the barriers they have had to push through. They tell a story about their products without making it the center focus of their ads because based on designs and tone, one can till it is a Nike ad.
2. IHOP
One story that comes to mind is the times that IHOP played with their brand marketing. Known as the International House of Pancakes, this restaurant chain has crafted their logos, colors, and even their font to be easily recognizable to consumers. In 2018, IHOP tweaked their brand marketing and “changed their name” to be IHOB, the International House of Burgers. In this advertisement, the company announced the change as a push towards advertising their burgers. While this was simply a prank that the company had built up to, we can see in the advertisement that their brand marketing still was consistent in style and identification.
3. Tesla
Tesla has an interesting brand marketing strategy that plays on their luxury brand without including the prices. Tesla produces electric vehicles that are of higher quality and longer range than that of their competitors. Instead of their ads including the prices of the vehicles, they include more of the benefits and unique features of their products. Not only that, but their unique shaped cars and identifiable logo, continue their brand marketing on a consumer-to-consumer level.
