What Is Brand Marketing?

What is Brand Marketing?

Brand marketing is crucial to your business. After all, these efforts help distinguish your company from the masses. In our guide below, we'll discuss some key factors for building a brand and creating a solid marketing strategy.

Branding

Before we jump into brand marketing, let’s first explore the art of branding.

Branding refers to your company’s identity that helps differentiate it from other companies. Your brand makes your business unique and recognizable, encompassing everything from your logo and tagline to your jingles and tone of voice. These elements are called your brand attributes.

Let’s say you have a symbol representing your company or a special tune in all your commercials. Whatever it is, your consumers should always associate that design, song, font, imagery, color, and personality with your company.

Let's consider some successful branding from household names to see this in action. For example, when you see that iconic "swoosh" design, you immediately think of Nike, and when you hear "Ba da ba ba bah, I'm lovin' it," your mind goes straight to McDonald's (and by default, its famous golden arches). You instantly recognize Coca-Cola's white cursive lettering set on a red background, and of course, you associate that half-eaten apple icon with the tech giant. These are all examples of companies that have used branding to make their businesses stand out from the rest.

Branding is essential because it helps potential customers distinguish your company from your competitors and helps your customers understand what to expect from your business. As your brand becomes identifiable, you'll begin building brand equity. This refers to your brand's value, including how your customers recognize and perceive your brand and their associations with it.

Brand Marketing

Now, what’s the difference between branding and marketing? Branding focuses on defining who you are as a company, while marketing involves the tactics you take to promote that identity.

So, what is brand marketing? Brand marketing refers to the efforts to build brand awareness or the degree to which customers recognize your brand. Brand marketing emphasizes consistency, ensuring your brand attributes run through every inch of your business, from your Instagram posts and radio ads to your SMS campaigns and product labels.

Brand Marketing Strategies

When building a brand, one of your main goals should be to create a positive perception of your company. Your brand marketing tactics can and should evolve, but representing and promoting your brand should always be at the core.

A strong brand marketing strategy will encompass various elements, all of which should work together. And because each company is unique, you’ll need to experiment to find which tactics yield the best results for your business. That said, the following are a few factors to keep in mind when marketing brands:

Create Brand Guidelines

Creating and marketing your brand is all about consistency, and crafting brand guidelines is one of the best ways to hold your company accountable to the standards you've set. Your brand guide should be the holy grail for every aspect of your brand, from the specific colors and font you use to the tone of voice you incorporate into messaging. Whether hiring a new social media manager or onboarding a writer, every employee should know your brand guide inside and out and follow it to a T.

Find Your Target Audience

Branding in marketing is similar to traditional marketing in attracting and reaching potential customers. To avoid wasting valuable time and money, do your research to determine your target audience so you can make more intentional marketing decisions.

Who are your ideal customers? What is their age range? How do they prefer to make purchases? And where do they spend most of their time online? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you get the right sets of eyes on your marketing content.

Furthermore, understanding your ideal customers can help you tailor to their preferences, keep their interest, and boost customer retention rates.

Use Various Marketing Channels

Once you've defined your brand and identified your target audience, it's time to begin experimenting with different marketing channels. To start, you may run a few social media ads on the platforms your ideal customers use most often and begin an SMS campaign with a unique promo code. If you're a small business, you could place ads on local TV channels and partner with local businesses in your community. From sending emails to writing engaging blog posts, there are countless ways to promote your brand.

Remember, any marketing messages and assets must strictly align with your brand guidelines, as veering away from them could confuse—or even deter—your customers.

Track and Monitor Your Campaigns

Your job’s not done once you’ve set some brand marketing campaigns in motion. You’ll want to track and monitor your marketing efforts to determine whether you’re getting your desired results.

For instance, maybe your SMS campaigns have set record-high engagement rates, while your blog posts haven’t gained any traction. Use this information to tweak your tactics and experiment with your approach to establish a well-rounded brand marketing strategy that achieves all your marketing goals.

SMS Marketing Can Help Promote Your Brand

There’s more to your brand than a flashy logo and memorable color scheme. After all, a big part of branding involves maintaining a consistent style, tone of voice, and personality when addressing your customers—all of which you can convey and promote through SMS campaigns. Additionally to branding strategies, don’t forget to check out our customer list growth tools and business lead generation tips.

Contact us today to learn more about small business marketing and how an SMS platform like EZ Texting can give your brand marketing strategy a leg up.