With saturated markets of copycat products and fast, free shipping with a few clicks, creating a distinctive brand is the best way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
Developing a solid brand attracts customers, fuels interest, and provides a strong, consistent overall strategy. Companies with strong brands view the process as an investment, rather than a hassle, and understand that branding is a key component of long-term revenue.
If you think about top brands like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Disney, you can see the common factor of a successful branding strategy that fosters value, trust, and loyalty in customers.
This doesn’t happen by offering the best prices on products or constantly pushing sales. Building a company on promotions and heavy discounts may gain a market share, but it starts a race to the bottom.
Do you want to be the Tesla of your category, or the now-defunct Edsel?
Strong Branding as a Business Strategy
Branding can involve a lot of legwork, such as researching and testing brand names, trademarks, and other brand assets. While this may seem like a hassle, creating this solid foundation is vital to long-term profitability.
A brand influences whether customers buy a product or service and forms the perceptions of value, quality, and trust associated with the name. Once this foundation is built, a good brand can make branching out into new products and product line extensions easier and more profitable than starting from scratch.
You’ve seen this in action with brands like Procter & Gamble, Apple Inc., the Coca-Cola Company, and Starbucks Corporation. Several successful brands operate as umbrella brands and use the existing brand trust to launch new products, scale existing product lines, and enhance overall marketability with sub-brand names.
Another benefit of branding is customer loyalty and its influence on market share and pricing. Strong brands use that asset to mitigate risk of losing market share to competitors and offer premium pricing to leverage perceived brand value.
A positive brand experience is a key component of future revenue. When a customer has a good experience with a brand, they’re more likely to continue using the product or service in the future. Loyal customers are also more likely to stick with the preferred brand and experience less sensitivity over price and pricing changes. Even if the competitor’s products are of better quality or cheaper, a loyal customer is still likely to choose products from their preferred brand.
From the customer side, solid brands communicate value and a cohesive identity. Customers don’t have to spend a lot of time in the research and consideration phase, even with a product they’ve never used before, because they trust in the brand overall and their previous experiences using the products.
Brand Campaigns Can Improve Profitability
When you think of a successful, timeless brand that leveraged its strengths to grow and expand, Disney must come to mind. Disney has one of the most recognizable brands in the world – and has been that way for nearly a century.
This isn’t without an ongoing effort, however. Aside from Mickey Mouse, a logo in fancy script, and a nostalgic castle with a shooting star, Disney is known for its ardent protection of its brand assets – to the point of influencing U.S. Copyright Law.
Disney’s brand has, and will, stand the test of time. This didn’t happen through a "set-it-and-forget-it" strategy. This was possible because of creating a consistent, unique brand identity, fostering connections, telling engaging stories, and viewing the entire branding process as a work in progress. Profits may be the goal, but investing in brand strategy, brand assets, people, products, and content helped Disney skyrocket to success.
Brand strategy isn’t reserved for multi-billion-dollar corporations, however. Small companies have the tools to build a great brand without breaking the marketing budget.
A brand can offer up to six levels of meaning:
● Values: What the brand stands for
● Culture: The infusion of the brand throughout a business
● Personality: The human-like characteristics of the brand
● Attributes: The traits that characterize the brand
● User: The type of consumer that uses the product
Branding or a Brand Campaign?
The brand is a company’s identity and helps it stand out from the competition with perceptions of quality and value, customer recognition, and compelling messaging. These impressions are cultivated through marketing campaigns, the product or brand reputation, and past or current promotions.
A brand campaign differs from the brand in that it’s a marketing initiative to generate brand awareness in the desired audience. The campaign is still an extension of the brand and its traits, but seeks to share the brand story and get the message out to current and prospective customers.
Goals of a Brand Campaign
The primary objective of a brand campaign is brand recognition and the ultimate goal is to achieve growth as a business. How this growth is measured is unique and depends on the campaign you choose.
While there may be various reasons to launch a brand campaign and numerous ways to go about it, there are two primary methods of fueling growth. These include:
Brand Awareness
A lot of marketers, entrepreneurs and business owners get confused between brand awareness and brand equity. Brand awareness isn’t about self-awareness of your brand – it’s about getting your brand out into the public. Your audience should understand who you are, what you do, and how you can help them. On the other hand, customer-based brand equity is key to marketing the customer. When building a brand, you should think both short term and long term for your business so work on your brand awareness and equity simultaneously.Sales
Sales isn’t necessarily selling a product or service. Anything that generates traffic and increases revenue can be considered sales, whether that means membership signups or monetized website traffic.
Types of Brand Campaigns
You have plenty of methods to choose from to launch a brand campaign, but the one you choose depends on your target audience.
Here are some common brand campaign methods:
● Television and Radio: These traditional methods have a long track record of increasing brand awareness and sales, but they can be expensive. Make sure you’ve conducted the proper research to ensure that your campaigns will reach your audience.
● Print Media: If it suits your brand, print media can be a useful method for brand campaigns. Though a little old fashioned, print media is an effective choice if you’re working with a local or specialized audience.
● Email: Email is still one of the most effective marketing strategies. If you already have an email list, the audience has already shown interested in your product or purchased from you before.
● Social Media: As expected, social media is one of the best methods for a brand campaign. Most consumers are on multiple social platforms and want to interact with their favorite brands on social media, giving you virtually limitless opportunities to reach them. Be sure to research which platforms have your audience and focus your efforts on those, then consider branching out in the future.
Tips to Launch a Brand Campaign
Take a look at these tips to launch a successful brand campaign:
Think of Your Brand Positioning
No matter what, our brand has a reputation. This will happen whether you choose it or not, so it’s best to be proactive in shaping your reputation with brand positioning. Though the messaging and positioning will differ according to your unique company, it’s important to have a clear, consistent position to inform your marketing strategy.Define the Target Audience
Broad marketing efforts may seem like the best way to get the word out about your brand, but all it does is burn through your marketing budget. Broad messaging makes your story and goals vague, leaving no one interested in you. When you start your campaign, be sure to define your ideal audience and create buyer personas. You can use these insights to create relevant and resonant messaging that will provide exceptional value to your targeted audience.Think in the Long Term
Building a brand takes time, no matter how big your company or marketing budget is. Brand awareness campaigns have no shortcuts – they’re a work in progress that calls for patience and long-term thinking. Because of this, it’s best to avoid investing too much of your budget at the beginning of a campaign. You’ll need frequent campaigns to build awareness effectively, but it’s more important to put your effort toward consistent messaging and developing your brand’s foundation first. Overtime, you will be able to measure brand favorability and evaluate the impact of your brand campaigns.Consider Your Budget
Creating content and paying for advertising can be expensive, depending on the method you choose. Before you develop your campaign, consider your budget and make sure you’re positioning your campaigns in the most cost-effective ways. For example, some social media platforms have more expensive advertising options than others. You can also maximize your budget with free or low-cost promotional methods, such as contests and giveaways on social media. The spend is fairly low and generates traffic and engagement, since most people like free stuff, and boosts your brand awareness.Create Customer-Focused Touchpoints
Brand campaigns need adjustment and fine-tuning over time. Instead of trying to hit all the possible channels, focus your efforts on the channels that are preferred by most of your audience. Targeted efforts not only give you better opportunities to control the narrative and test your campaign ideas, but you can engage with customers directly and use insights to tweak your campaigns moving forward. Then, you have the foundation to scale when you’re prepared.
Choose Simple Messaging
Simple messaging is more successful than messaging with multiple levels of meaning. Customers aren’t likely to absorb all the subtext in one ad, so focus your efforts on refining one idea with targeted messaging and a direct call-to-action. The brand campaign is about one goal – sharing your brand with customers. Your entire focus should be about telling customers who you are and what you can do for them.Continue Evaluating and Refining
As discussed with Disney, brand campaigns aren’t something you put work into and leave. You will need to evaluate and refine your campaigns as you go, but you need metrics to see which aspects are working, and which aren’t. Your goals should guide the specific metrics you use, but common marketing KPIs and metrics are a great starting point.Get Up and Try Again
Brand campaigns can be challenging. One of the most famous examples of brand failure is Lego. In 2003, the company was on the verge of failing and saddled with $800 million in debt with lagging revenue. Lego could’ve boosted sales with steep discounts and promotions, but that was a quick fix that would only delay the inevitable. Instead of decreasing the brand value further, Lego pivoted to redesigning the brand with a lot of innovation, customer research, and legwork. In 2015, Lego eclipsed Ferrari as the "World’s Most Powerful Brand," according to BrandFinance. The company succeeded with all the traits of a solid brand, including loyalty, familiarity, and trust. Now, Lego has a spectacular brand with a loyal fanbase, and a plan to treat branding as an ongoing investment to protect those efforts.Fuel Long-Term Profits with Brand Campaigns
Becoming the next Tesla, Google, or Lego is all about building a successful brand as a long-term investment. Share your unique story, highlight what makes you different, and craft compelling messages and experiences with customers to create a lasting brand that drives revenue. Growth Hackers can help you propel your business. We are one of the top digital marketing & growth hacking agencies that can help your business with Content marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, and the likes. Contact Growth Hackers if you're looking to improve your brand as well as your growth marketing strategies.
Patrick Smith
With ideas for leading brands, I solve real-world business problems for enterprise organizations, startups, and everything in between. Prior to C2 Creative, I developed marketing campaigns at several leading advertising agencies and hybrid digital organizations. I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Design from Illinois State University.
