You made it to the first stop, you now own a business, but it doesn’t just end there. If you own a startup business, you need to market it to grow and foster it. But with a wide range of enterprises in the market, you must brace yourself from the competition and what sets you apart from others. Thus you need to develop a brand and make it last. And brand marketing will make it possible.
But first, what is brand marketing?
Branding is the name and slogan of a product that makes it unique and distinguishes it from its competitors. A brand is your particular identity. Brand marketing is how you could encourage others to choose you over the many options available. Effective brand marketing evolved and became complex as you must be memorable among customers and satisfy their needs.
The more you grasp how intricate effective brand marketing is, the easier it will be for a startup business to grow through effective brand marketing. Don’t worry if you are new to this. This blog will guide you in detail about the concept and the strategies involved. Rest, you can leave it’s implementation to the expertise of a creative brand strategist, using this link.
From branding to marketing, here are the seven strategies to help you win and stay ahead of the game.
1. Conduct an In-depth Market Research
Marketing is the method of obtaining data on your target market and customers to try the quality of a new product, assist your team in tweaking current products or assess brand perception to guarantee your team effectively expresses your company’s value.
Why should you do market research?
Market research is an effective brand marketing strategy as it can provide answers to a variety of questions regarding the condition of your business. Market researchers look at numerous aspects of the industry, and it can take weeks or even months to get a complete perspective of the business.
Market research covers a wide range of topics, including campaign effectiveness, competition analysis, and consumer satisfaction research, to mention a few. Let us now concentrate on brand research. Brand research helps companies build and maintain brands or identities.
Visually and in terms of communication, how you portray yourself to the public is through strategies, and many companies excel at it. However, how users respond to your brand approach is primarily out of your control. Words, logos, and brand colors only serve to elicit responses; their potency is based on associations. You may rely on Removal.AI for the most extraordinary branding, as they supply transparent backgrounds for your images to use on your next project.
2. Develop Your Brand Message
Effective brand marketing is crucial as it represents your identity as a marketer, its goal is to let your brand speak on your behalf and build your character. Since potential buyers have only a split second to stay on your website, a compelling message is needed to convince them that their stay is worthwhile. Your brand could speak on behalf of your business. So how can you be sure that your brand can communicate the language you want to convey to your customers- through brand messaging as a tool.
So how do we formulate a brand message? Here are the following tips: you must include your mission, vision, and values statement like why do you do these things? You should carefully choose every word to capture the hearts of potential customers and evoke feelings. Consider Removal.ai’s testimonial tagline: from startups to established brands, you’ll be in good company. “From startups to established brands” refers to the journey you will have when you partner with them, and inclusivity among clients and creative designers is shown in the phrase “you’ll be in good company”.
Brand messaging matters as the success of your marketing depends on words. Your brand message should engage with the target market’s needs, wants, and desires. It should be the primary motivation for them to purchase your goods.
3. Create SMART Goals
SMART refers to Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. SMART goals are the specific objectives and key results that you want to achieve over time. Success marketing depends on how you carry out your plans according to these five characteristics to ensure the goals are reached. Why are SMART objectives so important?
Setting SMART goals is critical as it is useful for setting more specific and attainable objectives. It also gives benchmarks under which you may track your progress – modest steps might help you stay motivated if you have a larger, more challenging goal. It enables you to track your progress and help you make concrete plans. Let’s look at what SMART objectives are, why they’re essential, and how to set them for yourself.
For example, your goal is to boost blog traffic. Your specific purpose is to boost it by increasing publications in a week. You hire more writers to increase workload and outputs in a week to have 15 posts a week. The next target is for a specific goal where you aim for a 10% increase in traffic. The attainable goal is that blog traffic really increase for 7% a week. The realistic goal is as blog traffic increases, it could generate leads and conversion which allows sales. The time-bound goal is for 6 months. So your SMART goal is in six months, you will increase blog traffic by 10% by increasing publication to have 15 posts a week.
4. Establish Your Digital Presence
According to Google, 97 percent of people use the internet to look for local stores, so you should be investing on your digital presence too. No matter what size business you have or what industry you’re in, having a solid online presence is an integral part of your marketing plan.
In the increasingly crowded digital market, every startup business needs to stand out. Businesses must use successful digital product design strategies to achieve this.
Digital product design is the process of designing a product to satisfy the needs of the customer. When building a product, it’s important to focus on the user, integrate modern visual aspects, and take advantage of the latest technology with the assistance of product designers like Ifgraf design.
Brand marketing requires an online presence because it sells your brand and what you have to offer to your customers. In the time of a pandemic where people cannot go to physical stores to shop, you’ll need a web presence that helps illustrate why your product or service is so fantastic – since most of your potential consumers will go to digital platforms. So how can you create a strong presence online for effective brand marketing?
Every business should have a website, regardless of how small or big. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should provide the essential information that current and new customers require. Your website must be visible search engines after you’ve made it. According to an article by Vividfish, 89 percent of customers conduct research before purchasing a product or a service. Ensure that your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) is already in the area to take advantage of this. However, having a website is insufficient; you must also build a social media presence.
Customers may readily engage via a platform that is essential to them daily, such as Facebook and Twitter. Get a clear notion of the type of content you can publish once you’ve determined which social media channels to employ. Your followers are more inclined to like, comment, and share your posts if they are fascinating and engaging.
5. Create A Content Marketing Strategy
You will ask, “Is content marketing still an effective brand marketing strategy?” Yes. People are more likely to locate your business, know about your products and services, and come to you if you consistently publish content on your website, it is a popular strategy used for effective brand marketing.
The goal is to make potential buyers be aware so much about your product and services that when they reach you, they already know whether or not they want to buy from you, improving conversions and shortening the sales cycle while also making them interested about your company.
But did you know that content marketing is not just limited to blogs? There are more interactive formats you can create to engage with your audience. You can also create videos, infographics, podcasts and e-books. While setting up your content marketing plan, you must ensure that your objectives are in your framework. Allocate resources and time, develop how you write and establish your marketing persona.
The success of your content marketing plan is measured using KPIs (key performance indicators) you strategized in the beginning. It will be easier to see what content is working and what needs to be changed if you use KPIs that include: page views, conversion rates, lead metrics, and sales metrics.
6. Hire Influencers or Key Opinion Leaders, and Implement PR Strategies
When you think of influencers, do Kardashians and Jenner families come to your mind?
As we all know, celebrity endorsements are famous on TV. But not all influencers are celebrities. Influencer marketing is where an influencer collaborates with a brand to promote it. Content creators with specialty audiences, on the other hand, can frequently provide more excellent value to brands in today’s digital age.
Influencers are individuals who have devoted and active social media followers. They can use social media to influence others’ choices, preferences or lifestyles. You can collaborate with an influencer to promote your products or services.
On the other hand, according to an article by Prowly 92% of customers trust established news outlets, so when your brand is featured on television shows, magazines, and newspapers, it increases people’s trust in it. A press release can help raise awareness of your brand, product launch and other events.
How can you successfully implement a PR strategy?
- Establish a goal, its constraints, and a success indicator.
- Know your target audience
- Select the right platform for your message
- Write a compelling press release
- Disseminate PR wisely.
7. Cultivate your brand’s reputation
The public’s impression of a brand is called brand reputation. As the internet strongly influences public image, brand perception is mostly determined by online reputation. Brand awareness, consideration, choice, and long-term loyalty, is affected by your brand’s reputation. Customers understand how to do business online. Consumers are 91 percent more inclined to patronize a firm that has received excellent ratings. On the other hand, 82% said they are less likely to use a company with poor evaluations.
How can you establish a positive brand reputation?
You must provide the most incredible possible client service. An unsatisfied customer has many options for regaining control of their situation, including social media, reviews, and other options. They should never reach the point where they feel compelled to vent on social media merely to be heard when you deliver an exceptional customer experience at every touchpoint to ensure that customers are pleased with their contacts with your company.
You should respond when someone leaves a Facebook comment, mentions you in an Instagram story, or leaves an online review on your website. It’s essential that your customers feel the relationship with you and your company and that your customer’s sentiments are being heard. You must also give feedback and offer solutions to fix an issue if there are any.
Build A Brand that Your Customers Can Trust
Building trust for your brand is not achieved overnight. Don’t worry, we’ll get there. Successful brands before have come a long way to where they are now. It is an achievement that requires commitment and dedication. Having a startup business, you might find it difficult and overwhelming to market your product effectively and for the people to choose your brand against all your competitors. The seven tips shared may help you pave the way to your ultimate goal: earn customer trust.
You can pause for a while and rethink or evaluate if your market is doing effective branding or not. You may use the seven tips to ask yourself if you do any of the following:
- How do I conduct an In-Depth Market Research?
- How do I develop our brand message?
- How do I Create SMART Goals?
- How do I Establish my Digital Presence?
- How do I Create A Content Marketing Strategy?
- How Hire Influencers or Key Opinion Leaders, and Implement PR Strategies?
- How do I Cultivate the Brand’s Reputation?
There are also a lot of other tips on how you can do effective brand marketing, and may you find those seven tips helpful. Always remember that you need to make sure that you put your customers first as a priority because it’s them who are keeping the business alive.
Author Bio
Yen Pedrajas – Lead SEO
Yen is a digital marketing and eCommerce enthusiast who loves to write and share new insights about marketing and growth hacking for startup businesses.