Every business has a brand. It’s the image of your business that you present to the public and how the public perceives your business. Brand marketing is how you develop, communicate, and manage the public perception of your brand. In this overview of brand marketing, you’ll learn its basic elements – including how it’s different, why it’s essential for your small business growth, and steps to leverage brand marketing for your business.
What is a brand?
While people often think of a brand as a business’s name or its visual elements, such as a logo, it’s about much more. It’s also about how current and potential customers perceive your business and the resulting emotional connection to it. For example, when you think of Apple® and Nike®, an apple and the ‘swoosh’ immediately come to mind. But their brand identities can also make you feel that they’re creative, inspirational, and innovative, and by purchasing and using their goods, you’ll feel this way too.
Businesses work hard to create these perceptions, their “brand identities,” and for many, a strong brand identity is essential for success in highly competitive markets and industries. However, this isn’t just for large businesses, your small business can benefit as well.
What is brand marketing? How is it different from other marketing?
When marketing your business’s products and services, you develop promotions that help you gain the attention of your target demographic with the goal of making a sale: That’s performance-based marketing.
Unlike that type of marketing, which focuses on defined outcomes such as short-term sales, brand marketing is about creating a long-term emotional connection with your audience. Think of it this way: When you market your brand, you’re not only promoting what you do or offer, but also the kind of experience that a customer can expect when engaging with your business.
Brand marketing is both different from and embedded into your product and service marketing – and it can also exist on its own.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you’re a wedding planner. You offer a range of services that lead up to and include a wedding. When you market these services, you’re simply promoting the services with an end goal of booking clients – that’s performance-based marketing.
However, you also have a brand. You can use your copy to create a perception for a potential client to help them determine a planner that suits their style. Here are two different versions:
- Love & Luxury: Bespoke service, impeccable attention to detail, and only the best of everything down to the smallest detail, created just for you for the most memorable day of your life.
- Junebug Weddings: Forget the tux and gown! At Junebug, we create weddings that are as fun as they are memorable without fuss, frill, or expense. It’s your wedding, enjoy!
You can also take all this a step further by supporting your community through sponsorship of non-profit organizations – these investments demonstrate your brand promise. Which version would you expect to sponsor a non-profit’s black-tie gala for high-end donors, and which one would you expect to sponsor a fundraising haunted hayride?
While your brand identity should be supported in everything you do, optimizing and leveraging it can also help clarify the most effective strategies for differentiating and reaching your target audience.
What’s the impact of brand marketing?
Because you’re familiar with all the major brands, many small business owners mistakenly assume that brand marketing is a tool reserved for big corporations. However, because every business has a brand, it’s actually one of the keys to long-term success for businesses of all sizes.
Creating a brand identity that resonates with your customers can be a tremendous tool for growth because it fosters awareness and loyalty. As a result, when faced with many choices – including competitors who offer lower prices or other offerings – your customers will gravitate to your business because of their affiliation with and affection for your brand. Even if the impacts aren’t always immediate or measurable, your brand identity still carries a lot of weight.
The long-term value of brand marketing
Done consistently and well, brand marketing pays off in the long run.
Here’s how: In marketing, there’s the 95/5 rule. It suggests that at any given time, only five percent of customers are ready to make a purchase, and 95% of people who see your marketing aren’t going to be immediate customers. Brand marketing helps nurture that 95% so when they’re ready to buy, they’ll remember your brand.
Here’s what brand marketing accomplishes:
- Increased customer loyalty and trust: Brands with positive associations create loyal customers, increasing your customer lifetime value. Trusted brands are also more likely to have some leeway when mistakes or challenges arise simply because customers believe in your brand.
- Reduced customer-acquisition costs: Brands with positive associations gain a competitive edge with reduced customer-acquisition costs. When your brand is recognized and trusted, word-of-mouth and organic traffic will increase, lowering your cost of acquiring new customers. This is especially important if you have a limited marketing budget.
- Competitive advantages: A strong brand helps differentiate your business from competitors in crowded markets or industries. This is true even when your products or services are similar, and yours are more expensive because a positive brand association can support higher prices.
- Resilience in tough times: Businesses with strong brands tend to withstand crises or economic downturns better because customers gravitate toward brands they already know and trust.
- Valuable brand equity: A great brand becomes a tangible asset for your business that gains value over time. This can make your business significantly more attractive if you look for investors or buyers down the line.
What are the brand marketing basics?
Now that you have a better idea of why brand marketing is essential for your business, let’s look at actionable and cost-effective strategies to develop and support your business’s brand.
1. Create your brand identity
Your brand identity has several components that work together to support your business’s brand. These include visual elements like your logo, brand colors, fonts, and tone, and they must be consistent throughout your communications.
If you don’t already have the visual elements in place – or if it’s time for a refresh – you can develop them yourself using free software programs such as Canva. You can also get inexpensive help through freelance websites like Fiverr, or through sites like Etsy, where designers can create logos and brand colors using your preferences or suggesting their own.
Your brand identity also includes what your business stands for. If support for charitable organizations, a geographic area, or other elements of your brand promise are significant, this can also be worked into your brand identity. Authenticity is important here because if you’re not true to your brand, it will eventually show. In that case, it’s all right to show what you aspire to be as a business, and you can invite your customers along for the ride as you achieve this.
2. Be consistent in brand messaging
Brand messaging is how you communicate your brand’s values, mission, and personality through your language.
How you communicate matters, so be sure that everything you do supports your brand identity with consistency and clarity. Ensure your employees understand your brand identity and its importance to your collective success. For example, a business that presents as warm and casual in its brand identity will quickly lose credibility if you and your team don’t convey those attributes in your approach to customer service.
3. Be consistent across channels
Carry your brand identity through all of your communications – your website, social media, flyers, ads, packaging, digital marketing, and anything else needed to convey a consistent message. Consistency builds awareness and trust – and because everything’s connected in today’s digital world, be sure that what you put out there also personally supports your brand.
4. Focus on your audience
Involving customers in your communications can be a powerful strategy to help build and strengthen your brand. Consider how social media and other avenues can support your brand and the opportunities you can create to interact meaningfully. For example, in reviews, ask customers to share how they used your products or services in innovative and different ways. This shows that you value their feedback and ideas while giving potential customers a better sense of the value of your products and services.
5. Create an emotional connection
Brand marketing should eventually lead to sales, but it’s primarily about making emotional connections with your target audience. If your brand brings feelings of joy, aspiration, safety and security, accomplishment – or whatever you want your target audiences to feel when they think of your brand – then use brand marketing to support that.
Pursuit can help you build and market your brand
Building a strong brand takes time, but creating your brand identity and putting it to work for your business can start as soon as you launch, when you’re ready to grow, and at any point in between. The steps in this guide are just the beginning, and when you’re ready to implement your strategy, we can help you secure the financing you need to succeed.
With loans and a line of credit from $10,000 to $5.5 million and business advisory services, Pursuit can help you get the financing you need for working capital, to update or improve your products and services, for the purchase or construction of commercial real estate and more for businesses in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Nevada, Illinois, and Washington.
Contact us to learn more.
