Brand Marketing Strategy - How to create a brand marketing strategy

A brand represents a business’s entire personality. Besides excellent products, all the top companies have another thing in common — their branding. From Apple to Coca-Cola, people around the globe instantly recognize their brands and their products.

Each of these companies presented its own unified brand message. Through methodical planning, they stood out in the crowd for their unique identity.

Thus, to make an impact on your target market, you need an effective brand marketing strategy.

Today, one click can take your customers to several brands offering similar products. To stay ahead of the curve, you need to design a brand marketing strategy that aligns with your values and navigates the promotional campaigns seamlessly.

Developing a strategy that involves several marketing elements may seem daunting. But it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

In today’s article, we will show you the way to create a stellar brand marketing strategy in only 7 simple steps.

What is a brand marketing strategy?

A brand marketing strategy represents a long-term plan to position a brand in a more positive light. The strategy maps out the steps a company must take to carry out promotional activities across various channels and ensures the best outcome.

The typical components of a brand marketing strategy are– campaign objectives, ideal audience profiles, content strategy, KPIs, etc.

A proper brand marketing strategy is crucial for a company because it gives its efforts a unified direction. It allows you to identify what your target market wants and how to tie those desires with your business objectives.

How to create a brand marketing strategy in 7 steps

An effective brand marketing strategy doesn’t center its focus on only the products. It pushes your business as an idea that resonates with the target market.

While creating one may seem like an intimidating task, you can achieve it with only 7 simple steps. Here’s how:

Define your brand

The defining potential of a brand marketing strategy is how well it aligns with your brand image. So to create one that works for you, the first step is to have a clear understanding of what your brand stands for.

The elements you need to map it are:

• brand's value,
• market position,
• purpose,
• vision, and
• ideal customer.

To gain clarity on these before creating your strategy, you need to run a thorough brand audit.

Start with collecting data on the brand’s current position in the market. This will show where you should direct your efforts for the best possible results. Here, benchmarking against your competitors is the best way to go. You will not be able to measure the outcomes of your brand marketing strategy without these insights.

Find out what you do that’s better than your rival brands. Figuring out your USPs will set the tone for your brand marketing strategy and help you leverage your competitive advantages.

Create mission and vision statements that explain your company's product or services. All the steps you take should align with it. Then develop a brand image that subtly communicates your values as a business and resonates with your audience. The voice of your brand marketing strategy should support your collected data and research.

Set marketing goals and objectives

Brand marketing strategy already involves several crucial elements. Haphazard efforts and misguided planning will waste your resources and prove to be detrimental to your success.

To achieve something, you first need to understand what your aims are in the first place. Similarly, the secret to a stellar brand marketing strategy is to be confident about your short-term and long-term goals.

Now that you have defined your brand’s tone and voice, get clarity on your marketing objectives. Do you want to establish your brand as an industry expert? Or do you want to reach a certain crowd in the space? The bottom line here is to set achievable and realistic goals and create SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) objectives for each.

Analyze competitors’ data and figure out where your marketing efforts are lacking. Here are some of the goals you can target:

• Increase website traffic
• Boost social media following
• Get more engagement
• Boost conversion rate
• Create an email list with high-potential leads
• Drive more click-throughs on paid ads

Whatever your goals may be, make sure you have a clear vision before setting your strategy in place.

Identify your target audience

Your brand marketing strategy should accommodate your target audience’s needs and preferences. If you don’t have a clear ideal customer persona, your brand marketing strategy will not attract attention.

The key to brand marketing is personalization. For that, you need to familiarize yourself with your target audience. You need to know when they interact with similar brands, where they roam, and what their pain points are. This will help you create a map that delivers highly personalized content, follow-up emails, and effective customer service.

So, once you have realized your position in the market, identify what segment of the market you are targeting through your campaigns.

Run regular research on your audience’s digital presence. Track online conversations and see what they expect from your industry. You can also ask your existing customers for feedback. It will help you make constant improvements and establish yourself as a reliable brand.

Customer needs are constantly changing. To accommodate that, make sure you have enough information to design a flexible strategy. Collect first-party and third-party data on your customer’s demographics, behaviours, needs, and preferences. Examine their social media habits and purchasing patterns. When they come online and what kind of content engages them the most is some information you should be fluent in.

As you and your competitors share a similar target market, analyzing their audience base is also an effective approach. It will allow you to see what they did to appeal to their followers and embody those qualities in your own brand marketing strategy.

Develop a brand positioning strategy

While brands thrive on a good reputation, it can also be a very fragile aspect of running a business in a cutthroat market. One bad move, and you will be out of the race in no time.

How you position your brand decides your ability to stand out among your competitors. Hence, include brand positioning as a priority when you create your brand marketing strategy. Every action you take in designing a campaign should adhere to your decided guidelines of brand positioning.

Your planning should aim to engage your audience intuitively. This will help you remain relevant both in the market and in your customer’s minds. This will bring you repeat customers and will scale your follower base through brand awareness and customer advocacy.

Your strategy should highlight the quality of service you deliver. It should demonstrate why your brand is more convenient than the available alternatives.

Consider focusing some of your marketing initiatives around social causes. This will automatically attach a positive thought whenever someone comes across your products.

Analyze your competitors and discover the gaps. Then build a reputation on how your services can bridge them.

Think from the audience’s perspective and figure out the greatest perk of opting for your brand. Then examine how you can prove it to your audience. These answers should take priority in your brand marketing strategy. Only then can you control the narrative and position your brand in a positive light.

Choose your brand marketing channels

A brand marketing channel is a medium that communicates your brand image to your target market. There are plenty of options available in terms of such channels. But to be successful in your endeavor, you must ace the process of selecting the ideal ones for you.

Your choice of brand marketing channels should depend on your industry, business objective, and target audience.

For example, LinkedIn will be the ideal platform for you if your goal is to make industry connections. On the other hand, if you are a beauty brand targeting a younger crowd, Instagram and TikTok are your best friends.

Similarly, to target a market that predominantly consists of senior citizens, a combination of social media and offline advertisements is the way to go.

Here are some of the usual brand marketing channels companies use to reach their audience:

Social media

In this digital age, the best way to reach the maximum number of people is to enhance your presence on social media. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok boast an immense user base. With a methodical approach, you can leverage that to create a wider awareness of your brand through targeted content and drive new customers.

Email marketing

Somebody showed interest in your products but left the site without a purchase? Collect their email and follow up with attractive deals to drive them back to your site.

Creating an email list will help you personalize your marketing strategy and promote new launches without sounding too sales-y. By sending a warm welcome email or newsletters with valuable content, you will establish your credibility and heighten the chances of conversion.

Content marketing

With relevant and entertaining content, you add value to an audience’s journey while subtly nudging them to explore your brand. Content marketing focuses on delivering valuable information through engaging videos, blog posts, infographics, ebooks, case studies, interviews, white papers, etc.

Companies use content marketing to:

• Establish expertise in the industry
• Develop a loyal following
• Create brand awareness
• Retain customers

An example of a well-executed resource library is Zapier. From blogs to webinars, they have it all.

Influencer marketing

Influencers dominate the social media space. You can gain a sustainable and loyal following if an influencer endorses your brand to their huge follower base. Influencer marketing makes new audiences trust your brand and increases visibility.

For example, this collaboration between Dua Lipa and Puma has over 2 million likes and even more impressions.

Advertising

Digital marketing is the need of the hour for every brand. But the old-fashioned advertisements still haven’t lost their charm. You can run both online and offline advertisements to target specific segments of your target market.

Some of the best advertising methods include:

• Banners on Google, YouTube, and Instagram
• Billboards
• TV ads
• Business cards
• Fundraisers, etc.

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Create a content marketing plan

Creating engaging content is not enough. You should have a proper plan to market them so that they reach the right audience. A focused content marketing plan will smooth the way out for your brand marketing strategy.

Research the keywords that your target audience is searching for on Google and other search engines. Make sure you examine their search volume and add them to your content accordingly. Proper keyword research will also give you ideas for your future content.

Your content marketing plan should be consistent across each step. Constantly review your existing content to make sure they are evolving with your brand. Keep the information updated. Make SEO optimization a priority in your strategy.

To maximize engagement and reach, create a content calendar and editorial calendar. It will keep you on track and help you schedule content proactively.

Examine your resources to make sure they can support your content marketing plans. It will help you decide whether to produce your content in-house or outsource content creation.

Share both your new and earlier content on your social media accounts. Interlink content on your new blog posts. Make sure you include strong and visible CTAs like in the example below.

Measure and analyze results

The key to sustainable and successful brand marketing is to improve your strategy constantly. For that, measuring the important KPIs is the way to go.

Analyze your competitors and compare them with your marketing outcomes. Regularly measure metrics like engagement, website traffic, and follower count.

Every time you create an email list, analyze the conversion rate for the previous one. This will help you remedy your past mistakes.

Similarly, each time you make a change in strategy, see how it influences the marketing outcomes for your brand. This will allow you to improve your products and services and help you design campaigns that translate to significant ROI.

Get started with your brand marketing strategy

Creating a compelling brand marketing strategy is not an overnight process. It demands thorough research, discipline in content creation, and constant monitoring of important KPIs.

Focus your resources on data-driven insights and keep the steps aligned with your goals. Finally, make sure your brand marketing strategy is customer-centric. Only then can you elevate your business from a mere service provider to a well-known and trusted brand.

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