The Importance of Brand Marketing

Maintaining franchise brand consistency is one of the most important things to get right with your franchise marketing.  Consistency throughout your brand helps you to attract new franchisees and customers. It is vital that you retain control over your promotional materials, logo, images, and theme.

Franchise brand consistency is required to create a uniform marketing message and maintain a strong identity across all franchise partners. Brand values need to be maintained across every piece of marketing you produce. It is important to remember that brand consistency extends to your company’s product and services, for example, operations, marketing, customer service, and quality control. Consistency defines your business clearly, cements the reputation of your products or services, and differentiates you from your competitors.

The main aim of brand marketing is to make a brand more personable and appealing to consumers. Gone were the days where a simple logo was all you needed to make yourself known in the market.

With the influx of an increasing number of companies entering the market, start-ups are struggling to stand out. Establishing a brand’s personality through clever brand marketing is, therefore, essential to make you more recognizable in the market.

In the AIDA funnel, brands are shown a specific outline to improve their sales. By garnering attention from consumers and building their interest in your brand, you can instill in them a desire to take action and buy your products.

Your brand strategy defines your company’s values, services, and personality, so creating something of this nature can be a complicated process. Here are some of the brand marketing strategies that are in use today:

Marketing your brand in an effective manner:

Nowadays, a brand is more than just a logo, a pithy tag line, or some aesthetically pleasing content. A brand’s identity goes above and beyond just simple graphic design.

Marketing a brand, if done right, can improve the brand’s equity and perception in the market. Brands like Apple and Google are thought to rank high on brand equity.

Some of the ways you can improve your brand’s value are listed below:

#1. Create value:

In order to provide value to the general public, your brand needs to stand out. Building a strong brand is about more than just marketing; it’s about ensuring that your customers are receiving the treatment they deserve.

In a highly impersonal world, people are beginning to look for brands that treat them as valuable entities, rather than just cogs in a machine. Similarly, they are making mindful decisions about product sourcing as well as working conditions.

Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin group, holds the following opinion about customer and employee satisfaction:

Brands like Zappos really exemplify this thought process, as they even created a department that is dedicated to providing customers with consistent digital and human interactions across the board. This department is known as Zappos Insights, and it is a very interesting approach to customer satisfaction.

#2. Tailor your brand’s message:

Finding a target market is perhaps the most vital step in brand marketing. Approaching the people who are more likely to find value in your product might be more fruitful as compared to aiming for a much wider audience.

Knowing the ins and outs of your consumer base can really boost your brand’s identity. Take, for example, the Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star make-up palette.

Knowing that a vast majority of the palette buyers would be fans of their YouTube channels, Shane created an 8-part long documentary/web series that was titled “The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star“. 

The series detailed the lengthy process of creating a make-up palette from scratch.

Once the palette, named “Conspiracy”, was launched, it immediately sold out. By knowing his target market, Shane, having no prior experience with make-up creation before this, became a wildly popular “Make-up Guru”.

#3. Be consistent:

Consistency is key when it comes to establishing your brand firmly in your customer’s mind. Brands like Coca-Cola have mastered the art of having a consistent brand personality.

All of their social media sites and other digital ventures stay on the red and black theme, and they promote an air of positivity and community throughout their products.

By making sure that their tone of voice remains consistent throughout a brand’s digital presence, customers can find it easier to associate your content directly with your brand.

#4. A good design goes a long way:

Visually appealing design is a really important aspect of your branding. While branding is not only about the visual aspect of the brand, it is undeniable that color schemes and attractive graphic designs can really change the outlook of the whole company.

How you choose to utilize colors, fonts, and overarching themes to visually communicate the core personality of your design is completely up to you. Ultimately, how you package your brand can change the way it is perceived by your consumers.

Perhaps the most interesting rebranding story is that of Old Spice.

Old Spice had been leading the market for men’s deodorant, but Axe, a rival company, had managed to create a foothold in the market with the help of their suggestive advertisements. 

Old Spice managed to revamp their branding strategy by changing its target consumers towards a younger audience. Their playful ads, with spoofs regarding how masculine their deodorant would make users, were a huge success, and just like that, Old Spice was back in the game.

#5. Make your brand meaningful:

If your brand has an intrinsic value, people will flock to it. Changing how consumers perceive your brand can really turn your business around.

Take luxury brands as an example. High-end brands like Gucci and Supreme make themselves out to be unattainable. Their products are seen by many as the height of luxury, and their goods are viewed as a status symbol.

Note how the model in the picture looks aloof and unattainable.

Gucci markets its luxury products in a way that makes consumers feel accomplished if they can get their hands on their products, thus creating additional value for the brand.

Each brand has its own way of creating value, and one of the more recent examples would be that of Bellroy. This company went viral for its stop-motion ad, which outlined how they make use of discarded ocean plastic to create high-quality goods like backpacks.

Their ad not only targeted consumers who are conscious of their carbon footprint but also provided consumers with a good that would make them feel like they were contributing to a good cause.

#6. Provide valuable information:

Content creation is one of the best ways to demonstrate your brand’s values and ideals. What matters when creating content is the quality, not the quantity.

By recognizing the needs of the average consumer, you can figure out what would be of value to people, and then aim towards creating content that falls under that category. Take Buzzfeed as an example.

Their viral articles revolving around pop culture may not be considered hard-hitting journalism by any means, but that’s because they’re not aiming for that. Their aim with regards to content is to provide readers with a break from the harsh news cycle.

By talking about trends and other viral phenomena, they are providing readers with a lighter, relatable outlook, which is why their company is so wildly popular among the younger generation.

Conclusion:

Brand marketing aims to provide your brand with a personality, as well as a relatable outlook that consumers can find similarities with. Building a brand’s intrinsic value can result in lead generation, insight, and give depth to a company’s image.

Branding remains an important aspect of any new company. It can lead to a lot of advantages such as user loyalty, credibility, and emotionally connecting your target audience with your goods in the long run.

By mastering the art of marketing your business, you can create more than just a company; you can create a brand.

This article was written by Ashish Patel and originally appears here.