Nothing is worth as much in a business as its brand.
Google’s algorithms and social media, PPC campaign costs, digital marketing trends… they change. They always change. The brand, however—if it’s built well—remains.
That’s why, whether it’s a corporate brand or a personal one, with a solid brand you’ve already done a large part of the selling; and that’s where the importance of brand marketing comes in, meaning the marketing actions used to create and strengthen yours.
But brand marketing goes much further than that. Way further!
Let’s look at an example: think of a cola soft drink. What’s the first name that comes to mind? Pepsi? Not a chance, no matter how good their advertising is.
Coca-Cola holds the key to brand marketing, and its recipe isn’t even a secret: become the go-to brand, whatever it is you sell.
But can all brands do brand marketing?
What exactly does this strategy involve?
How can I put it into practice, even if I have a small business?
The answer to these and other questions, examples included, below 👇
What is a brand in marketing?
When we talk about a brand, we mean the result of physically marking something — a stamp, a branding iron, or any action that identifies something with a mark others can recognize.
When it comes to the concept of a brand in marketing, however, this term has evolved and given rise to one of the most significant concepts in this field.
Essentially, a brand in marketing is a distinctive element that helps consumers identify a company’s product or service.
With that in mind, the most basic element of a brand is its name, but its logo or a unique symbol are usually important too, especially for the most powerful companies.
Sometimes the message is so deeply integrated that it identifies the brand on its own, as happens with slogans like Just do it or I’m lovin’ it, which show just how powerful the message-brand combo can become.
But a brand is a marketing concept that goes beyond the symbols or messages that represent it. It’s also something intangible that strategically shapes the feelings you want to instill in clients and consumers, even those who don’t buy that product.
In Coca-Cola’s case, we’d be talking about happiness, freshness, spontaneity, magic, and even universal, brotherly love.
But now that we know what a brand is, let’s get a bit more specific about this brand marketing thing.
How does branding differ from marketing?
Before explaining brand marketing in more detail, it’s very important to understand how it differs from branding.
Wait, they’re not the same thing?
No. While both concepts are similar and closely related, they’re different.
The definition of branding is tied to brand management, which relates to the techniques used to increase the perceived value of a product line or brand over time.
So, what is branding in marketing? Branding would be made up of all the actions carried out to strengthen, manage, and communicate the brand.
It’s also important to distinguish between branding and brand identity: brand identity is related to consumers’ perception of it.
In other words, brand identity has to do with how its essence is expressed to the world, and it revolves mainly around visual aspects, which determine how the public sees it. This, among other things, is what sets a company apart from the competition, even if they sell the same thing.
So, now let’s get into it…
What is brand marketing?
Now that we know brand marketing and branding aren’t the same thing, brand marketing is defined as building a company with the purpose of increasing consumer loyalty by creating emotional connections with them.
To achieve this, brand marketing focuses on creating a unique image, a consistent message, and a distinctive personality, as well as on generating recognition and building trust in the brand.
So, brand marketing is the part of marketing that focuses on developing and maintaining a brand’s overall reputation.
But this isn’t achieved overnight. In fact, brand marketing is a comprehensive, long-term, constantly evolving strategy that requires planning aligned with the company’s goals.
Brand marketing goals
The goals of brand marketing can vary from brand to brand depending on their products, market, or outlook. However, most brands tend to share these goals:
- Developing an identity and image: in other words, making a brand recognizable through visual elements like symbols, logos, colors, packaging, etc.
- Increasing recognition: this means getting customers to identify and remember the brand and its products.
- Building loyalty: this means consumers not only recognize the brand, but also keep using its products over a long period of time.
- Gaining brand ambassadors: this means increasing the number of customers who recommend a product or service to others, vouching for its benefits, quality, etc.
- Creating interaction and engagement: users interact with the brand by visiting its website, checking out products, placing orders, taking part in different campaigns, etc.
Can you imagine achieving all that? Boom! 💣
Brand marketing vs. performance marketing
As a strategy, brand marketing is part of a much bigger, more ambitious plan, which in turn involves other methodologies. One it’s very often compared to is performance marketing.
Let’s refresh our memory.
As we’ve seen before, performance marketing is a type of digital marketing based on actions with measurable results.
When it comes to results, brand marketing has it tough, since it’s much harder to objectively measure the returns of brand marketing as such.
However, both strategies work very well together. In fact, performance actions are very useful for getting measurable results in campaigns. While there’s no guarantee that brand recognition will hold up in the medium or long term, it does allow for assessments and short-term decisions.
The digital nature of performance marketing gives access to data that can help optimize brand awareness campaigns. It offers, for example, performance indicators, click-through rate, and conversion rate, among other useful data that add a lot of value when evaluating a conversion funnel.
Brand marketing and performance marketing are becoming increasingly interdependent in constantly growing scenarios: combined, these two strategies help build relationships with consumers and deliver personalized campaigns.
That said, performance marketing is more geared toward achieving short-term goals, while brand marketing works much better over the long term. Remember what we told you at the beginning, that in marketing everything changes, but the brand remains? Exactly that ✊
How are you doing with creating strategies?
How to develop a brand marketing strategy
Developing the brand of any business or product requires having a brand marketing strategy. All brand communication actions are useful for positioning it in consumers’ minds and achieving brand relevance.
But how do you do that?
There are several ways to launch brand strategies; the most important steps for developing a good brand marketing strategy include:
1 Understand your brand’s purpose
Understanding why your brand exists and how it meets your audience’s needs is essential for planning your brand marketing strategy.
That includes answering questions like who your target audience is, why they should trust you, how your brand makes them feel, or what needs it solves, among others.
2 Research your target market
It’s important—no, extremely important—that you know who your customers are.
To do this, spending time defining your buyer persona will be very useful, since it gives you a very complete picture of your ideal buyer.
This also helps you create more and better emotional connections with your audience, with messages and concepts that match your buyer’s profile.
3 Know your competitors
Just as relevant as knowing your audience is understanding your competitors’ positioning.
It’s important to identify the differences with them and use them to craft your own distinctive message, drawing on your brand’s most outstanding values.
4 Define your brand and what it stands for
Related to this, it’s also essential to be clear about what defines your brand and what it represents.
This starts with the basics, like having a well-defined mission, vision, and values.
But after that, you need to work on more specific aspects of the brand’s personality. Imagine your brand were a person: what are its main traits and attributes? What strengths and weaknesses does it have? What would its biggest aspiration be? And its biggest fear? Its big promise?
Nailing down these points will let you create a consistent, coherent message that communicates its real value to your audience.
5 Identify the right communication channels
Depending on what you want to convey, who your ideal customers are, and even what the competition is doing, you’ll need to choose the channels that let you connect with your audience.
There’s no need to be on all of them, only on the ones where you can achieve real impact. This will let you implement the strategy consistently across the rest of the relevant channels and platforms.
6 Measure the success of your strategy
As we saw earlier, combining brand marketing with performance marketing lets you measure the actions you’ve taken. But here are 3 quick ideas for analyzing and measuring your brand’s success without getting into paid campaigns:
- Measure the number of brand mentions on social media and analyze the sentiment of the posts that mention it.
- Measure the number of Google searches your audience makes using your brand name (known as branded searches).
- Run satisfaction surveys among users and customers.
This will not only help you know whether your brand marketing efforts are paying off, but also let you make any necessary adjustments to improve results.
Okay, this all sounds great, sure… But in practice, what do brand marketing actions look like? What do brands do?
Let’s go over some practical examples, since that’s the best way to understand things.
Brand marketing actions (and examples)
Let’s look at some examples that had a big impact at the time and that you almost certainly know, the best proof that they were effective.
Red Bull
Red Bull claims its energy drinks boost both cognitive and physical performance.
You know its slogan all too well: “Red Bull gives you wiiings.”
And its brand marketing initiatives are well known, since it organizes and sponsors high-profile sporting events, especially extreme sports, which reinforce its message of freedom and a dynamic, exciting lifestyle.
Its strategy is aimed mainly at young people, so it also creates marketing actions tied to music events and sponsors high-performance sporting events and challenging recreational activities.
GoPro
GoPro is a maker of action cameras that let you record anything while wearing them or mounting them on your helmet or the vehicle you’re riding.
You can even record underwater.
Its motto is closely tied to the aspirations of many of its users: “Be a HERO.” Be a hero.
This slogan fits perfectly into its brand marketing strategy, based on content generated by its own users.
They not only get the chance to be heroes, but also to share their exploits with the world.
Nike
Nike is a clothing and accessories brand for athletes that has won over the hearts of the young… and the not-so-young.
Its motto couldn’t be more direct: “Just do it”. Just do it.
This slogan carries a huge emotional charge that invites anyone to go further and give it a try, because just by doing something you’re closer. Maybe closer to achieving a dream. Or simply closer to getting a little better every day.
Through different actions, Nike conveys a culture of personal growth, largely based on telling inspiring stories of successful people that spark positive emotions in the audience.
Coca-Cola
If there’s one thing we all associate with Coca-Cola, it’s happiness.
When it comes to building this concept, Coca-Cola has outdone all its competitors, not only in the cola category, but in soft drinks in general.
One of its most famous campaigns was built around the slogan “Share a Coke.”
The power of this campaign goes beyond sharing a drink: it was about sharing happiness and good times with the people you love.
But you don’t have to be a big company to start putting brand marketing actions into practice. If you have a brand, you can—and should—work on it.
And give it love, so your potential customers fall for it as much as you have.
And to wrap up: a bit of email marketing and brand marketing
It’s time to get to work.
When designing a brand marketing strategy, advertising campaigns are very useful, as we’ve already seen, especially on social media.
Video marketing—especially if it carries a good dose of storytelling—merchandising, and sponsorships will also help you stay top of mind with your customers.
But there’s more, something within everyone’s reach that you can start implementing right now: marketing through email.
Email marketing, of course, because email is a great channel that also generates little pushback.
A bit of copy here, a bit of strategy there… and you’ve got it. Well, you’d still need the tool, but that’s what we’re here for.
With an email marketing tool like Mailrelay, you’ll be able to easily develop your brand strategy, segment your audience based on what they open and read, and visit your leads in their inbox whenever you want.
And on top of that, you’ll be able to measure every action you take.
It couldn’t be easier. No excuses!
Doing branding right is the foundation of any solid brand strategy, and it’s worth reflecting it in your media plan too.