In order for your brand or agency to reach clients and customers, it is important that you market your business effectively. By marketing your brand, you help it reach a wider audience, motivate that audience to purchase products, and encourage positive reviews that generate a bigger audience. Marketing your brand helps it to expand and grow; generating revenue and spurring success.
If you’re a new brand, introduced a new product, or want to get a greater return from your existing digital strategies, read on for advice on how to market your brand successfully.
Above is a report from BrandZ listing the most popular brands in the world in 2021 along with the change in value experienced by these brands since last year. Obviously, none of these brands got where they are without paying careful attention to how they market themselves. While your brand might not already be in the same league as these giant brands, with efforts to market your brand effectively, you might compete with these giants someday. After all, in 2000, many pundits discounted Amazon as they had yet to turn a profit. Now, they have the most valuable brand on the planet, even before the pandemic drove everyone to purchase online.
If you’re interested in reading more about brand value, check out their study by clicking the link under the image.
How to market your brand
Develop a sound marketing strategy
The first thing you should do to market your brand successfully is to develop a sound market strategy based on past performance as well as a thorough review of your external and internal environments. A marketing strategy is essentially a plan detailing how your brand plans to reach its target market and how it plans to turn this audience into new customers while retaining existing customers with the context of uncontrollables such as the economy, competitor actions, and changes in the way consumers make purchase decisions. Learn more about putting together a strategy to market your brand in a prior post that you’ll find here.
A marketing plan contains concrete actions planned for the next period (commonly 12 months) and identifies less concrete plans for the long run, such as the next 5 years. Action plans are part of the short-term marketing plan and provide greater detail on individual campaigns and tactics you plan as a means to market your brand.
Below, you see an action plan template for a specific social media campaign. Notice the high level of detail including goals, timeline, and a budget, along with specific actions and responsible parties for each action. These plans ensure proper implementation to help you reach your marketing goals.
Advertising to market your brand
There are many ways to market your brand using advertising. For example, you could choose to advertise through traditional forms of media, such as television or radio, or you could use digital media such as websites or social media. Both forms of media are successfully done correctly, with a sufficient budget, and when you match your target market’s preferences for where to consume advertising.
Just remember that advertising isn’t all there is to marketing. You must also focus on other aspects such as price, distribution, and the product itself. Consumers buy solutions to their problem, so ensure your product solves a real need, sells for a price that represents value to the consumer, and is available when and where the consumer needs the solution.
Create a website
Regardless of whether you’re selling your products online, selling through a retailer (including an e-commerce platform like Amazon), or operate your own physical store, you need a website. A website ensures you:
- look professional
- offers opportunities to showcase your products
- allows you to transmit positive reviews that encourage others to buy
- answers questions and hosts explainer videos about your brand, its use, and how to set up your products to get the most value from them
- offers maps, phone numbers, and other information critical for mobile users searching for your products on the run
- 87% of buyers, even those who prefer to buy in a physical store, start their product search online.
Take inspiration from other experts in your field. Ice House Design, for example, has a uniquely designed website that stands out against the competition. Creating a website allows your potential customers and clients to get to know your brand and your products a bit better.
And, designing a website isn’t nearly as hard as it seems. Using a CMS (content management system), a template, a few plugins, and some nice images (including a logo), even a novice can design a good website. I even provide an ebook to guide you through the process of building a website with step-by-step instructions and a ton of screengrabs to help you.
Social media
Today, there are hundreds of social media platforms but your target audience is only on a few of them. The trick is to determine which social platforms are worth your time (because your target audience is there and it fits your goals). Below is a graphic to help you make that decision. In addition to audience demographics, the graphic shows the most efficient uses of each platform to help you create goals and strategies for a complete social media marketing plan.
Be consistent
One of the best ways to ensure that you market your brand successfully is consistency. As you market your brand, ensure you maintain a singular brand image, brand personality, and voice across your multiple contact points. A style guide helps with this consistency by identifying the color scheme, fonts, images, logos, and other visual style elements. A close team working on all your digital communication helps build a singular voice so that all communications use the same or similar text components such as benefits stressed, tag lines, and ad copy.
Build elements of your communication into your marketing strategy, whether the strategy includes posting across a number of different social media sites or developing flyers to hand out in your store or on the street. Being consistent helps buyers and prospective buyers figure out who you are. For instance, it was common (and still is in some places) for automobile brands to generate confusion when the manufacturer produces slick ads while the local dealer produced an unprofessional commercial that didn’t reiterate the benefits highlighted in manufacturer ads.
Conclusion
In conclusion, by following these few simple tips you ensure you’re marketing your brand successfully, helping to attract new customers, and allowing your agency to expand.
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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.
